Page 170 of Where Darkness Bloomed
“Did you spread your legs the moment he looked at you?” Menelaus snarled, voice thick with venom and drink. “Were you moaning for him like a bitch in heat while my men died by the thousands?”
He stumbled closer, spittle spraying from his lips.
“You think they’ll crown you with garlands when we return?” he hissed. “Call you queen again? Sparta will see you for what you are, a harlot in gold.”
His eyes were wild, his breath sour.
“You should’ve thrown yourself into the sea the moment he finished inside you. Spared me the disgrace of dragging a Trojan’s whore back to my bed.”
Helen said nothing.
After everything—the war, the pyres, the gods and blood—her voice was useless. It was no longer hers, forfeited long ago.
To the people of Sparta, she was guilty. To the women, she had sent their husbands and sons to their graves. To the men, she was a curse gildedin beauty.
To Menelaus, a living reminder of his humiliation. Her death was written in his bloodshot gaze.
The only one who might have stood between her and that fate now lay dead beneath Troy’s crumbling towers, felled by an arrow to the heel. With him, with the dead of Troy, Helen of Troy had also died.
What remained of her now was only a shadow.
Menelaus’s sneer deepened. “You want to be kept like a whore?” he spat. “Then I’ll let the men teach you how a common whore fares.”
He lunged forward. Thick hands seized her shoulders, fingers digging into her skin. With a savage wrench, he tore at her garment. The fabric split with a sharp rip, falling around her like leaves in a storm.
Left naked, Helen did not cry out. Did not recoil. Familiar numbness rose like a tide, veiling the sharp edges of fear.
But as Menelaus’s gaze settled on her bare flesh, lingering there—something shifted. The fury drained from his eyes. In its place, hunger rose. Possession.
A predator’s gaze, filled with the need to conquer again what had once been his. To defile. To reclaim. Until her body bore the mark of his ferocity as it had Paris.
Cold clarity settled like a shroud, and she knew—
Death would be kinder.
Abruptly, Menelaus turned away, barking to a servant, “Find her clothing.”
But before he disappeared up the stairs, he stopped. One hand braced against the beam as he swayed with the ship’s motion. His voice dropped, low and slurred, thick with poison.
“You think you have ruined me? Shamed me?” His shoulders shook with each heavy breath. “I took the city. I burned Troy’s halls and temples. I bled to end the war you began with a quick fuck.”
He turned back to her one last time, eyes raking over her bare form.
“I am a king triumphant, crowned in victory. And you—” his voice curled, thick with contempt, “what are you now?”
He lurched up the stairs, leaving her alone in the dark.
Only when the silence returned did Helen whisper the truth hidden among the small, shattered remnants of her barely beating heart.
“Not yours.”
***
But the gods, for once, were merciful.
That night, Menelaus boarded a separate ship, detouring through Rhodes before returning to Sparta. Poseidon saw to the rest.
A storm rose from the sea, dragging his ship off course with violent waves. One of the many ships lost in the wake of Troy’s ruin.
