The wine is warm and dark as blood.

You can taste the cloves on the rim of the cup, feel the gold thread of your gown slipping off one shoulder as the breeze from the sea sighs through the lattice. The lamps burn low—oil-flickered and honey-hued—and somewhere below, the city of Troy hums with the soft throb of lyres and night markets and a thousand whispers not meant for kings.

But here, in this high room above it all, it is quiet.

Or it was.

Now there is laughter.

Low and edged with something more dangerous than mirth.

Paris lies half-stretched across the couch, bare-chested and indolent, his dark hair curling over his temples in the humid heat. His mouth is still red from the kiss you left there, though he speaks now not to you, but to the man opposite him.

Menelaus.

Your husband, still half-armored, ever the soldier, his lion-red hair tousled from the climb up your stairs. His hand grips his goblet, and the bronze rings on his fingers catch the firelight as though they would rather be weapons.

“And tell me,” Paris murmurs, voice slurring into a grin, “did Sparta miss me, or only its queen?”

Menelaus raises an eyebrow, tilts his head, and sips. Leisurely.

“She missed the silence more than either of us,” he replies, mouth curling into a dry smile. “But she likes the sound you make when you’re lovesick, so I let it pass.”

Paris lets out a laugh—genuine, unoffended, the kind that curls smoke-like between your ribs. He sets his cup down and leans back on one elbow, eyes glittering.

“And you don’t mind sharing?”

“Would I be here,” Menelaus says, gesturing loosely to the low couch, to the glint of bronze, to the wine-slick dusk that swaddles the room, “if I minded?”

You rise from your place between them, the silk of your skirts whispering against bare ankles. Two kings. Two men who have called you theirs. Who have carved ships and fire and fate around the shape of your face. And yet here they are, side by side, drinking from the same wine, burning beneath the same torchlight.

You go to Paris first. He watches you with the lazy pride of a lion sure of his queen, tipping his head back so your fingers can slide through the dark of his hair.

Then Menelaus. You take his hand, kiss the knuckles as one might kiss a votive, and watch the last tension melt from his shoulders.

“You never kissed me like that in Sparta,” he says, quiet but pleased, casting a glance to Paris who only grins in response. “I would’ve lost fewer wars if you had.”