Chapter 8
The guards’ hands were cold.
They didn’t carry him with the reverence usually reserved for a prince.
They gripped his small arms like they were handling a piece of fragile, expensive pottery that had suddenly developed a mind of its own.
Helenos didn’t struggle.
He didn’t shriek.
The fire that had driven him to the stables, the raw, bleeding terror of the cliffside, had curdled into something else.
It was shame.
He was an idiot.
A complete, utter fool.
He was a man who had lived twice.
And yet, the moment the world reset, he had been so stupid.
He had mentioned Sparta. He had mentioned the tower.
He had looked at his mother and sister as if they were monsters, which they were, but he wasn’t supposed to know that yet.
The guards dragged him through the long, echoing hallways of the Mycenaean palace. The limestone was white and unforgiving under the torches.
They reached the doors to his sister’s quarters.
Clytemnestra was already there.
She stood in the center of the room, her chest still heaving slightly from the punch he had thrown. Her face was a mask of confusion and a sharp, growing anger.
Leda sat on a chair nearby.
The Queen.
His mother.
She didn't look like a mother.
The guards dropped him.
Helenos hit the floor. His knees stung, but he welcomed the pain.
It was a tether to this new reality.
This wasn't just a restart.
The air felt thicker.
The shadows in the corners of the room seemed to move differently.
But the ending remained the same.
Eight years.
He had eight years until she came.
He had to fix this. Now.
"Helenos," Leda said. Her voice was like a knife sliding through silk. "What was that? What was that display in the stables?"
Helenos didn't look up. He let his head hang. He made his small, childish shoulders shake.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
His voice was thin. It was the voice of a seven-year-old. He had to be a seven-year-old. He had to be the Dodo they expected.
"Sorry is not an explanation," Clytemnestra snapped. She walked toward him, her sandals clicking against the stone. "You spoke of towers. You spoke of tea. You said I would sell you."
She grabbed his chin, forcing him to look up.
Helenos let his eyes well up with tears. Real ones. The fear was still there, under the surface, and it wasn't hard to pull it to his face.
"I had a dream," he sobbed.
The lie felt heavy in his mouth.
"A bad dream. The sun... Thalia said the sun was too hot. I fell asleep on the bench and I saw a woman with iron teeth. She took me to a tower and made me drink dirt."
He let out a jagged, ugly wail.
"I thought you were her! I thought everyone was her! Don't let her take me! I don't want to get married!"
He saw Leda’s eyes narrow.
"Married?" the Queen asked softly.
"The woman in the dream!" Helenos screamed, throwing himself forward to grab at his mother’s robes. "She said I had to be her husband. She said she bought me with ships. I don't want to leave!"
He buried his face in the expensive fabric of Leda’s dress. He felt her hand rest on his head.
It wasn't a comforting hand. It was a hand checking for a fever.
"He is hysterical," Leda murmured over his head.
"He bit me, Mother," Clytemnestra insisted. "He looked at me as if he hated me."
"He is seven, Clytemnestra. The heat, the stories from the slaves... his mind is overactive. He is a divine child. The gods speak to him in ways we do not understand. They have sent him a nightmare to test his spirit."
Helenos felt the tension in the room shift.
It was working.
He had to be the idiot. The beautiful, difficult, unpredictable child.
If he acted like a soldier, they would treat him like a threat. If he acted like a prophet, they would lock him away for the oracle.
But if he acted like a brat with a fever, they would eventually stop looking.
"I want honey cakes," Helenos whimpered into his mother’s lap. "And I don't want to go to the gardens anymore. There are snakes in the gardens."
"Take him to his rooms," Leda commanded the guards. "And tell the physician to prepare a draft for his nerves. He is to stay in his chambers for three days."
"Yes, my Queen."
The guards picked him up again.
As they walked away, Helenos caught a glimpse of Clytemnestra’s face.
She wasn't convinced.
She was looking at her hand, where he had bitten her.
She was looking at him as if he were a puzzle she hadn't quite solved yet.
He had to be careful.
The next seven years became a slow, agonizing dance.
Helenos lived in a state of constant, quiet performance. He was the boy who spent hours staring at the sea, looking empty and vacuous.
He didn't go back to the stables to talk to Lysandra.
He saw her sometimes from a distance. He saw the scars on her arms. He saw the way she looked at him with a strange, lingering suspicion.
But he never spoke to her.
He couldn't.
Every time he felt the urge to train, every time he felt the need to pick up a blade, he remembered the cliff.
He remembered the spear.
He would be a ghost.
He would be nothing.
That way he could hide away from Melenaia.
From his memories.
He stopped trying to be irreplaceable. He became the opposite. He became a burden.
He was moody. He was lazy. He pretended to be sickly, coughing into his sleeves whenever his mother looked his way.
He hoped that if he were less perfect, the Queen of Sparta would stay away.
He hoped that if he were a flawed asset, Leda would keep him in a corner of the palace and forget about him.
But the years didn't care about his hopes.
The years moved with a grinding, mechanical certainty.
He grew taller. His skin remained perfect, despite his attempts to mar it. His hair grew long and thick, catching the light like spun copper.
He was beautiful.
He was the most beautiful thing in Mycenae, and no amount of coughing or staring at the wall could hide it.
By the time he was fourteen, the world began to smell like lilies again.
The messengers arrived first.
They spoke of the young Queen in the south. They spoke of her power, her ships, and her desire for a husband who would bring her the favor of the gods.
Helenos sat in the great hall, his head bowed.
He was fourteen.
He felt the age in his bones. He felt the phantom pain in his thigh returning, a dull throb that only he could feel.
Then she came.
Menelaia.
The Queen of Sparta walked into the hall with the same heavy, confident stride he remembered from the last life.
She looked the same.
The same sharp eyes. The same hungry smile.
She looked at him, and Helenos felt his soul shrink.
He was sitting next to Clytemnestra. His sister was a woman now, fierce and protective, but she was already looking at the Spartan Queen with a calculating eye.
Leda stood at the head of the table.
"The Queen of Sparta," Leda announced.
Menelaia bowed, but her eyes never left Helenos.
"I have come for the Prince," Menelaia said. Her voice was deeper than he remembered. Or maybe it was just the resonance of the hall. "I have come to bring the light of Mycenae to the stones of Sparta."
Helenos’ heart thumped.
He fell in love again.
No. Calm down Helenos.
Helenos stood up.
His legs felt like lead.
He looked at his mother. He looked at the woman who had birthed him and the woman who would sell him.
"I won't go," he said.
The hall went silent.
It wasn't a scream this time. It wasn't a tantrum. It was a quiet, flat statement.
"Helenos," Leda warned.
"I won't go," he repeated. "I don't want to be a husband. I don't want to leave my home."
Menelaia laughed. It was a rich, warm sound that made the hair on Helenos’s neck stand up.
"He has spirit," she said. "I like spirit in a man. It makes the taming more interesting."
She walked toward him.
Helenos backed away, but he hit the edge of the table.
Menelaia reached out. She took his hand.
Her skin was hot.
"You are beautiful, Helenos," she whispered. "More beautiful than the songs said. You will be very happy in Sparta. I will give you everything."
She looked at him with a terrifying, predatory kindness.
It was the same look she had given him on the ship. The same look she had given him before the tower.
Helenos looked at Clytemnestra.
"Sister," he pleaded.
Clytemnestra looked away.
She looked at the floor.
She had already made her peace with it. The trade was too good. The peace was too valuable.
He was a prince. He was a piece of the game.
"He is yours," Leda said.
The words were a death sentence.
The journey to Sparta was a blur of salt water and drugged wine.
Helenos tried to fight it at first. He tried to dump the wine over the side of the ship.
But the guards were always there.
He was fifteen.
His birthday had passed in the dark of the ship’s hold.
The world was gray. The memories of Mycenae were slipping away, replaced by the rhythmic thud of the waves and the smell of the Spartan Queen’s perfume.
They brought him to the palace.
They didn't put him in a tower this time.
They put him in a room with no windows.
The walls were cold stone. The bed was covered in furs that smelled of damp earth.
Menelaia came to him every night.
She didn't hit him. Not yet.
She just talked. She talked about the future. She talked about the children they would have. She talked about how he was hers, and only hers.
"You are so quiet now," she said one night, brushing a stray hair from his forehead. "Where is that spirit I saw in the hall?"
Helenos didn't answer.
He was waiting.
He knew the ending.
He knew the cliff was coming.
He had tried everything. He had been an idiot. He had been a burden. He had been silent.
And yet, he was here.
It was repeating. The days, they were repeating.
He felt the change on the last day.
There was a noise in the palace. Shouting. The sound of bronze on bronze.
The door to his room burst open.
It wasn't Elian this time. It wasn't Lykos.
It was a guard he didn't know.
"The Queen is dead!" the guard shouted. "The palace is falling!"
Helenos didn't wait.
He ran.
He ran through the corridors, through the smoke and the blood.
He found the stairs. He found the path to the mountains.
The air was cold. The wind was howling off the river.
He reached the cliffside.
He stopped at the edge.
The moon was full, casting a pale, silver light over the jagged rocks below.
He looked back.
He saw the torches of the guards pursuing him.
He saw a figure in the lead.
It was Mara.
She was older. Her face was scarred. But she held the same spear.
She stepped forward, the bronze tip gleaming in the moonlight.
"Prince," she said.
Helenos looked at the spear.
He looked at the long, indifference of the metal.
He looked at the void beyond the cliff.
He realized then that it didn't matter what he did.
It didn't matter if he was smart or stupid. It didn't matter if he fought or stayed silent.
It seemed as if it all ended the same way.
"Do it," Helenos whispered.
Mara lunged.
The spear entered his thigh.
The pain was a familiar friend.
He felt the wet shlick of the bronze. He felt the warmth of his blood spilling onto the cold stone.
He fell back.
His head hit the rock.
The vibration.
The crack.
The red dark.
As the world tilted into the abyss, Helenos felt a strange sense of peace.
He had played the part.
He had done everything right.
And still, he was dead.
He waited for the sound of the wire snapping.
He waited for the smell of lilies.
He waited for the next universe to open its eyes.
[Status: Dead]
[Restarting...]
