Excerpt: Helen

The next morning came too early. When Helen had fallen back to sleep, the dream had continued. Or begun again. She wasn’t sure how she knew they were related, but she could feel that it was all the same. There was a man, sitting at her father’s table. He watched her, his face shadowed.

Her father was absent from the hall, and Meneleus sat in his seat. Laughing with other men and drinking wine. Meneleus, her friend. Meneleus who had taught her how to fish when her brothers had refused. But when he looked at her in the dream, there was no friendship in his expression. Lust rolled off him in waves.

The other man, the stranger, sent his wine cup rattling to the stone floor. He stood up and left the room. She could feel his jealousy, but she did not know why. She didn’t understand it.

She left the table some time later to return to her rooms, but when she arrived there they were not empty. The stranger stood within, in the dark. When she tried to call for the guard, he clapped his hand over her mouth, drawing her tightly against his body, trapping her against him. Where their skin touched, she felt as though she were burning.

“I know you will not hear me, but I love you, Helen,” he said in her ear. “I am meant to have you. Aphrodite herself has said so, and I will not rest until it is done.”

Then he kissed her, hard and rough, his mouth bruising her lips, and she felt the fire burn through her. There was something too familiar about his kiss. About him. But he stopped as abruptly as he had started, and when she opened her eyes again, he was gone.

The room around her was transformed into the belly of a ship, rocked by the waves. She felt her way to a ladder and climbed up to the deck, blinking in the sun. The man stood at the helm, he turned at the noise of her approach and smiled. It was the first time she fully saw his face. The first time she looked into his eyes.

She knew him at once.

And knew too that she was staring at the end of the world.