You had not expected him to be beautiful.

Feared him, perhaps. Imagined the boy with the sea-born name would wear his legend like a cloak, all hard edges and bronze-forged pride, shaped by the forge of Thetis’ hands and Peleus’ will. But beauty? No. You had not imagined that.

Yet he stands before you now, in the high chamber where the light cuts in like blade-edges through the narrow windows, and he is radiant.

The sea, visible just beyond the terraces, gleamed like a polished shield, and somewhere below, the voices of boys in training rang out—sharp shouts, the bark of wooden swords meeting in ritual. But here, in the long golden stillness of the palace, all felt hushed. Measured. Each footfall across the inlaid stone, each breath pulled through your teeth.

He is barefoot, and the floors do not dare chill him. His hair is gold not like a crown but like flame—alive, moving even when he does not. His tunic is pale and sleeveless, the hem undone like he had forgotten to care for it. And his eyes—those eyes are the sea itself: unstill, unyielding, vast enough to lose a man in.

You stand at the threshold, thin from travel, your cloak still dusted with the salt of exile. The guards did not strip you of it. Perhaps they pitied you. Or perhaps they knew who you were coming to see.

Achilles tilts his head, studying you with a gaze that is neither hostile nor welcoming. Assessing.

“So,” he says, voice like warm marble, “you’re the exile.”

You do not answer. There is no point. Your name would mean little here.

“And are you dangerous?”

He asks it plainly, but something in the way he asks it makes you look at him. Really look.

Achilles' lips quirk. “You needn’t answer. If you were, I’d have already known it.”

He moves past you then, toward a low stone bench. The light catches on his wrist as he sits, and for the first time, you see it—a nick at the base of his palm. Small. Healed. Human.

You nod. Once. Achilles turns his back to you, and you watch the way his shoulders move beneath the linen, broad and fluid, like a creature not made for human stillness.

“They send you here like a scrap tossed to dogs,” he says, pausing beside a brazier. He does not look at you. “They think me soft enough to keep you.”

Then—finally—he turns. He steps toward you.

One pace. Then another.

You do not move.

“You are to stay here,” he says. “My father has offered it. My mother did not argue. That is rare.”

You arch a brow. It is the first gesture you offer, and it seems to amuse him.

“It must be because you are the son of Menoetius.”

You incline your head. He thinks.

“You do not look much like him,” Achilles noted, circling—curiosity. Like a lion studying an unfamiliar shape in its forest. “He fought beside my father once. A good man. Steady. His sword never wavered.”

Assessment. Again. Then, a shrug. "What is your name?"