Page 174 of Where Darkness Bloomed
Her breath caught.
This was the Underworld—of that, she was certain. So perhaps death had already claimed her.
Before the thought could settle, Achilles came to a halt before her. Slowly, she tipped her head back to look up at him.
He was taller than memory allowed. Broader. And his beauty, far from fading, had only sharpened, refined by death itself. The proud curve of his mouth. The hard line of his jaw. The restrained ferocity in his gaze. Fierce features that might have belonged to a god but shared the torment of a man.
Finally, she found her tongue.
“Are you here to kill me?” she whispered, unable to steady the tremor in her voice.
He regarded her in silence. The pause lingered until it frayed her composure. But then the iron in his eyes softened, if only slightly.
“You are in the Underworld,” he said, voice deep, almost gentle. “What do life and death mean here? In the world above, I killed many. They say you did the same.” That piercing gaze grew quieter still, searching her face. “Now, we dwell among them.”
Her fingers curled tightly in the fabric of her chiton. A fragile tether. “I will not return above?” she asked.
“No.”
The word fell like a closing gate, echoing with finality.
“Your suffering in the world of men is over,” he continued. “Even now, they destroy themselves in your name. To save Sparta, you were brought here.”
It struck deep, cracking something brittle inside her. Her breath trembled. Before she could stop herself, the guessed truth slipped free—quiet, raw.
“To be with you.”
A beat of silence passed between them. Then—
“Yes.”
For a moment, there was only the hammer of her heart.
Achilles looked past her to the river carving its endless path through the Underworld. “When I first crossed into this realm,” he said quietly, “he was waiting.”
There was no need to ask who.
“We walked the fields together, just as we were. No war, no blood between us. We spoke of all we had endured. All we had loved and lost. Of the men we had become... and the peace we had found.”
His gaze returned to her.
“He asked me what I would do, now that peace was mine. I told him the truth—that I would wait for the soul who had once reached for me across Troy’s ruin. Who tried, even then, to spare others, to keep innocent blood from spilling.”
A pause.
“That I would not turn away from her suffering.”
His voice came lower, steadier. “In life, I loved him as fiercely as the world allowed. But love is not a chain. It does not bind, it frees.” A breath passed. “He freed me. So that I might come to you.”
Helen’s eyes burned. Her throat cinched too tightly to speak.
Then Achilles extended his hand. A warrior’s hand—hard and calloused, made for the grip of a blade, for tearing men from life into death. But in the quiet between them, it became something else entirely.
Not a weapon. An offering.
“Once you reached for me,” he said quietly. “Once, you sought my help. I was blind for too long—lost in pride, drowned in wrath. My hand came too late.”
He paused, and the silence brimmed with something unsaid.
