Page 163 of Where Darkness Bloomed
Someone was there.
An icy chill lanced through him. His heart hammered against his ribs, but his grip held steady, pressing harder against Anticlus’s mouth. The footsteps were slow. Measured. The soft scuff of sandals against stone.
If a single whisper escaped, it was over. They would all die.
Near the horse’s mouth, Leonteus pressed his eye to the narrow slit in the wood. Then he turned back, lifting a hand to Odysseus. His fingers shifted, arching into the shape of a crown.
Royalty.
His hands moved again, forming a crude triangle—Sparta’s insignia.
Sparta.
Cold dread twisted in Odysseus’s gut, snaking down his spine. Royalty of Sparta. But Menelaus was with the army, waiting in the night beyond the walls. Which meant—
Her.
Helen.
She was below them. Helen of Sparta—now of Troy—moved beneath the horse, her presence as sharp and dangerous as a sword’s edge.
Inside, silence roared louder than a scream. Odysseus drew a slow breath through his nose, willing his pulse to steady.
Seconds bled into eternity.
Then at last, the footsteps faded, swallowed by the city’s uneasy quiet.
Odysseus exhaled, his chest loosening by the barest fraction. Rising, he swept his gaze over his men, phantoms in the dark, their eyes locked onto him, waiting. Through a narrow gap in the wooden slats, he glimpsed the sky. The moon loomed high, just shy of its peak.
Time was already a blade at their throats.
They had to move.
With excruciating care, Odysseus unlatched the hidden door. One by one, the men emerged from the belly of the horse, dropping silently to the ground. Leonteus landed last.
Odysseus seized his shoulder, drawing him close. “Take Philoctetes—light the beacon,” he whispered. “We make forthe gate.”
Leonteus gave a sharp nod and melted into the night with Philoctetes, swift as wraiths.
With the others, Odysseus slipped into the shadows, moving across the slumbering city, silent as death itself.
At the city’s gate, his blade flashed—a glint of moonlight, a whisper of metal. The first guard crumpled with a muted gurgle, clutching his torn throat. The next barely turned before his life, too, was extinguished in silence. One by one, they fell, their final breaths caught by Ithacan blades.
Overhead, a flare of light erupted.
Odysseus’s head jerked up as the great beacon roared to life, its flames clawing hungrily at the night sky.
Seconds. That was all they had left.
“Move!” he hissed, his command slicing the night air.
His men lunged forward, seizing the thick ropes that bound the massive bolt to the doors. Coarse fibers bit deep into Odysseus’s palms, tearing skin, but the pain was nothing.
Only the gate mattered. Only opening it before the city awoke in full, before Troy crashed down on them like a breaking wave.
With a tortured groan, the bolt shifted. An inch. No more.
Then—
