Chapter Text
Beauty is a gift as much as it is a curse—Helena’s mother knew that firsthand.
Helena doesn’t remember much of Leda. Her daughters only ever saw the beautiful, cold exterior. Never a warm mother. Never a competent queen. The former ruler of Sparta was a small flame surrounded by water. And now, in the silence of her confinement, Helena wonders if there was ever any fire at all inside her mother’s soul.
Fierce Leda. Strong Leda. Great Leda.
Were those words ever truly hers? Or just names borrowed from those who knew her before—before the swan, before Zeus. Before everything broke.
Mortals and gods are not so different. They take what they want, without warning. Sometimes they stay, tied to some honor code Helena will never understand. Other times, they vanish—evaporating like water under heat. Only women remain, even if they’re just ghosts of what they once were.
Leda was never the same. People spoke to her like she was an empty shell. Helena knows her mother preferred it that way. She never honored the gods again after the swan.
Still, Helena holds a few tender memories. Like that time Leda combed her hair and called her her sun, only to turn cold again in the next breath. As if something in her children always pushed her away.
Did Leda know the fate that awaited them? Castor and Pollux, doomed to be torn between life and death. Clitemnestra, full of pride and fury, a husband for power, a son for a daughter. Helena herself, destined to be claimed, taken, worshipped, and hated.
Did her mother know what men would do to her?
She doesn’t want to think about it.
Because if Leda did know—
Why didn’t she stop the first monster that came to her door when she was twelve?
Twelve years have passed, and already she has lived a lifetime.
She remembers Theseus—and his friend, a nameless shadow in the dark. She never paid attention to him, or to the path they took. Her dove eyes, still full of unbroken hope, could only focus on one face. One man. The man who had pulled her from the bed she shared with Clytemnestra. The same man who sat on the edge of the room, playing with a set of dice as if the world could be decided by chance.
“My brothers are going to skin you alive. My sister will have your head. My father will not forgive you.”
Which father—divine or mortal—didn’t matter. She was Spartan. She was a princess. That was supposed to mean something.
But even the sweet daughter of Zeus is not safe from the whims of men.
She still remembers the moment the dice landed. The flicker of amusement on Theseus’ lips. The game had ended. Her fate, sealed. They had gambled for her—twelve years old, and already reduced to a wager.
No gods came for her.
No golden blood stirred, no divine gift awakened. There was only beauty. And beauty, she quickly learned, was a language she didn’t yet speak.
A gift she never asked for.
A weapon she didn’t know how to wield.
Not at twelve. Not then.
When the twins found her, she was nothing but the same shell Leda had become—soiled with dirt, dried blood, and silence.
She returned to the palace months after sharing a bed with Theseus. Her father didn’t look at her. He didn’t ask what had been done, or by whom. He gave no orders. No justice.
"You must understand, your value is the same. You are still worthy."
Worthy. Useful. Because of divine blood. Because of lineage. Not love.
She had prayed to Zeus. Pleaded, wept, begged for protection. But nothing came. Two fathers—neither present.
It was much later that she learned: Theseus’ dearest friend had been dragged to the depths of Hades. Her uncle had taken half the man who broke her. The gods of the underworld always listen to the most vengeful prayers. Some secrets are whispered down there—secrets that keep mothers awake at night in quiet despair.
And with age came more suitors.
Wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Hovering. Smiling. Circling.
They called her graceful.
They spoke of her golden hair, her rosy cheeks, her quiet poise.
They said she was a bride. They meant she was a key.
She could still feel him, even from the high walls of Troy.
Menelaus.
She spent her nights, her days, whispering prayers into the marble. Was he alive? Did he miss her, the way she missed him? That dread never left her—coiled beneath her ribs, cold and whispering.
What if he thinks I love Paris?
She didn’t love the prince. Not his brother, not his city, not his golden rooms. Every time news reached the palace, it was the same: Hector, valiant and noble, defending Troy with honor. And Paris? Always returning untouched. Always the last to arrive.
Helena stood now on the terrace, the sea barely visible through the mist. Troy shimmered in the heat below, indifferent to her thoughts. Around her, the other women whispered. Their glances sharp. Their silence louder than anything spoken.
They didn’t bother to hide it anymore. The disgust. The blame.
To them, she was the storm. The curse.
No one asked what she had wanted. Only what she had cost.
That evening, the women of Troy watched as the wife of their prince stood upon the terrace, smiling at the approaching defeat. They whispered of her pride, of her arrogance. But none of them knew how long she had prayed for that moment.
She had promised herself she would jump—fall from those high walls into silence—if Menelaus failed. But Paris, cursed with charm and cowardice in equal measure, was too lucky to die. Too protected.
Aphrodite had saved him.
Now Helena was expected to return to their chambers, where the goddess would cast upon her the smallest mercy the divine could offer: submission. A charm laced in her breath, her blood, in every step she took toward that bed. Lust without love. Obedience disguised as pleasure.
She would forget, for a while. Forget the daughter whose name she no longer dared to speak. Forget her husband’s voice, his hands, the way he used to look at her without claiming her.
At least until Paris was buried deep inside her—until the only sound left was the breath of a sworn enemy filling the space meant for another.
Then the memories would return, stronger than ever.
And she would weep. Weep into golden pillows, with his arms around her like chains, whispering of love that never touched her soul.
They say he has a wife. A nymph. A son.
What of them?
Helena would give them Paris’s heart on a silver plate, if they asked. Because she doesn’t want it.Not now. Not ever.
A woman older than most entered the chamber, her body swathed in layers of silk that moved like smoke around her limbs.
She walked with no sound, yet her presence was thunder.
And Helena knew.
She had learned to recognize the shape Aphrodite wore when she came cloaked in mortal skin.
It was survival, after all.
The first time she had tried to speak—tried to protest the weight of it all—no pleasure followed, only pain. Pleasure, the goddess had whispered, must be earned.
Now the voice came again, honeyed and thick like nectar left too long in the sun:
“He calls for you.”
Soft, sweet, maternal.
“He is tired. Full of despair. He needs you, the love of his life.”
Helena did not answer. But the heat curled low in her belly, the divine coaxing already humming in her blood. Words from a god were not mere requests; they rewrote the flesh. She could already feel it begin.
So instead of begging—for it was useless—she asked, in a voice barely above breath:
“Do you love someone?”
The woman smiled. Not unkind, but not human.
A smile with too many meanings.
“I love everyone, my child. That’s what I do best.”
She laughed like she’d said something obvious, something beautiful.
But Helena’s eyes remained downcast, fixed on the hem of her own gown. Her fingers trembled, caught in the fabric, white-knuckled.
She was suddenly afraid. Afraid not of pain, but of hope.
“I mean…”
She swallowed.
“Do you love someone more than the rest? Do you ever feel… complete?”
There was a silence then—brief, but sharp as broken glass.
“I feel desired,” said the goddess, tilting her head.
“I feel beautiful.”
“But not loved,” Helena whispered. She pictured Menelaus, a younger boyish stranger who had the mane of a lion, red as the fire she feels she lacks.
The air changed. Aphrodite’s silks fluttered without wind. Her eyes, once soft, narrowed like blades. So the goddess of love cannot understand, or maybe she just pretends to be unaffected by the situation, maybe gods are just as selfish if not more than, mortals.
“Careful,” she said, voice dipped in honey and venom.
“I can still take your tongue, little mortal.”
Helena lifted her gaze then, slow and steady, and for one terrible moment—just one—she looked the goddess in the eye.
“I know,” she said.
“Good” Helena knows the battle is lost, so she prepares mentally for Paris’s hands “Your husband will live”.
“I know”, and the venom pours around the edges of the words.
“No silly girl, the first one” And that is enough merci, because she can endure anything if that means her heart is safe, they can take her body, name her like the city, take away her nation and pride. But not Menelaus, he would life, and come back for her. And if destiny decides that death awaits her then she would greet her uncle with a smile waiting for his cold judgment.
The wine remained untouched. Fruit glistened on a silver plate, ripening into rot beneath the perfume-drenched air. Outside, the city screamed. Inside, Paris reclined as if deaf to war. Helena stood still, sculpted in silence. The room was decorated by thousands of roses, golden and red ones intertwined.
“Do you like it?, I made the gardeners do this for you.” He performs like a prince, a prince noone would have mistaken for a peasant years ago.
"Do you find this fair?" she asked at last, voice low, as though speaking too loud might break the glass between her and the world. A rose in hand, she never liked those.
He turned to her lazily, a half-smile ghosting his lips. “Fair?”
She did not blink.
“All of it,” she said. “This palace gilded in grief. The screams you step over on your way to my bed. And yet, in my room there's always pretty things.”
“I’m your pretty thing?” he grinned, winking as he circled her like a cat might a flame. His hand brushed her waist as though she were soft silk spun for him alone. “Your brute of a husband nearly killed me.”
“Menelaus was always a good fighter,” she answered, her voice sharp as the edge of a mirror.
Paris’s smile faltered, just a flicker. His charm cracked—barely, but she saw it.
He tried to recover. “So now you praise the man who shackled you? The man who dragged a thousand ships for a body?”
Helena tilted her head, eyes steady.
“No,” she said. “I praise the man who fought for me. Who wanted to stop the bloodshot with a challenge that could have ended such dispair.”
His jaw tightened. “I came for you. I chose you before all goddesses. I brought you to the most beautiful city in the world.”
“No,” she said, coldly. “You brought me here because of lust.”
“Not lust, love.”Paris holds her face, desperate “what we have is love Helena, but I understand you cannot feel it yet, you are still stuck in the past, but I will make you forget”.
A silence bloomed between them, thick and hot. He stepped back, wounded, but too proud to show it.
“Did the man you praise ever know how to surround you with such delicacies?”
Paris spread his arms, gesturing to the silks, the gold, the perfumes soaking every corner of the chamber.
Helena didn’t answer.
Not with words.
Instead, her mind slipped backward—past the towers of Troy, past the days of war and the nights of velvet chains—into something quiet. Something before.
She remembered the sweetest moment of her childhood, before she was a bride, before she was a mother.
A boy with fire for hair and dirt on his knees, standing under the Spartan sun, triumphant in a field of wild grass.
In his outstretched hand: a single violet, trembling between his fingers like it too understood the weight of that moment.
He had no kingdom. No divine promise.
Just a brother’s support and a heart too large for his chest.
He didn’t think she would choose him.
But she did.
The only choice in her life she had ever truly made.
She could still hear his voice, low and unsure, spoken without the flourish of gods or princes:
‘Helena, I’m nothing but what you see. I don’t tend to beg… but if I could stay by your side—even without touching you—just to see you smile like that… that would be enough.
I would sail a thousand miles for a single look from you.
I like violets. They mean sorrow sometimes.
I think maybe you’re sad sometimes.
Maybe this flower could keep you company.
I can try to cheer you up.
What I mean is…
I can be good for you. I can try.’
And trying had been more than enough. Helena blinked, returning to the present, where everything smelled of opulence and nothing felt like love. She looked at Paris, who still waited for her to validate his fantasy. She gave him nothing but a faint smile and said:
“He only needed one violet to sweep me off my feet. You could’ve filled every corridor of Troy with roses, and I would still dream of the man who knew the scent of my skin before any god claimed it.” A hand in her womb was enough to understand the time of memories ended.
A hand resting lightly on her belly was enough to remind her—the time for dreams had ended. The memories had been her sanctuary, but now even they grew dim.
Paris’s face tensed, but the smile he wore didn’t break. Not yet.
“Then I’ll just have to reclaim you,” he said, voice low and burning. “Over and over again.”
The bed was still soft. The screams of mourning mothers outside had long been swallowed by the stone.
“You will love me, Helena. You have no choice.”
And so she was claimed, again. Not by passion, not by a man—but by a story written by gods too cruel to write endings. Claimed by a city that wore her like a prize.
Helena of Troy.
But in her mind—always—she remained Helena of Sparta.
When Paris finished, he rolled away with a sigh. His hands were too soft to belong to a warrior. Too small to ever hold the weight of her.
Then she heard it.
A commotion outside, louder than usual. Voices raised. Guards scrambling.
“That must be the Greek,” someone said near the threshold. “My brother says he’s protected by Ares. We cannot kill him—yet.”
Hope, that ancient traitor, stirred in her chest. A soldier protected by a god. Still alive.
And suddenly, impossibly, she wanted to save him.
“Can I keep it?” she asked. Like a child asking for a stray dog. Like a woman asking for a moment of control in a world not hers.
Paris looked at her, puzzled. “Would that make you happy?”
She turned to him, her face lit with an innocent sweetness, the kind only the truly broken can master.She smiled, softly. Sweetly. Not yet old enough to play the game, and far too old to pretend she didn’t know how it ended.
“Very much,” she said. And then, just to be sure she was playing well the game “My love".