Page 67 of Where Darkness Bloomed
Then it crested, white-hot, obliterating.
She cried out against his shoulder as pleasure tore through her.
His arms locked around her, hips snapping once, twice more—then he groaned, a deep, rough sound, as he spilled into her, heat flooding deep. A violent shudder wracked him, and for a moment, they clung to one another in the still-burning aftermath.
He braced above her, breath ragged, chest heaving. Their hearts thundered together in a wild cadence, bodies still entwined, passion spent and skin slick.
Finally, he rolled to his side, drawing her with him. One arm curled heavily over her waist, dragging her into the cradle of his body. Tucked against his broad side, Aglaia listened to the slowing rhythm of his heart beneath the rise and fall of his chest.
His lips touched her temple, soft and lingering, so at odds with the ravenous hunger that had consumed him moments earlier.
She sighed, boneless in his arms, content and utterly spent. The weight of exhaustion curled around her like a lullaby. Sleep pulled at her, gentle and insistent.
Just before it claimed her, his voice rumbled low, a vow that etched deep into her soul.
“I regret nothing, Aglaia. I never will.”
Chapter 30
Achilles jerked the leather laces tight as he strode forward, the bracer biting into his forearm.
Troy’s gates loomed before him. He approached alone, ignoring the wary eyes of soldiers lining the parapets above.
A faint breeze stirred. Weeks earlier, it would have caught his long hair.
Now, there was nothing left to catch.
The long locks were gone, cropped close to the scalp by his own sword. Most had been cast into the sea, flung into the waves with the last scrap of his honor.
All but one lock—that had been saved for the pyre.
Patroclus had lain untouched for days, pale and still.
Achilles had been unable to surrender him to the fire. He’d bathed the stiffening limbs with shaking hands. Wrapped him in the finest linen he possessed. Sat beside him through sleepless nights, whispering to him as if Patroclus might stir, might answer.
When the body had begun to change—when the skin darkened and the air thickened with the stench—he did not flinch. Refused to look away.
The priests came. Then Odysseus, urging mercy and reason.
He would not listen.
Could not.
The men had stayed away, wary of the silence in Achilles’s tent, of the foul smell that clung to it like a warning. Whispers of madness rose.
Then—she came.
Thetis had risen from the sea, a veil of foam and sorrow trailing in her wake. Her eyes, dark as the deep and full of grief, were fixed on him.
But he could not look at her. Only at Patroclus.
“My son,” she said quietly, kneeling beside him, “you shame him. This is not honor nor mercy. This is love turned to ruin.”
There was no scorn in her voice, only sorrow.
“Then let me be ruined,” Achilles rasped, voice cracked and hollow. “I have no honor, not without him.”
She had reached out then and touched his face, her thumb brushing his cheek as she had when he was a child. “You do,” she said softly. “Even now.”
