Seeing Achilles again was the last thing Henry had expected. But he’d thought about it plenty. About what he would say. What it would be like to come face-to-face with the boy who betrayed them. The boy who killed Odysseus, and who had killed Henry, too, in their other life. In Henry’s imagination, their meeting was always the same. Achilles won. Now Achilles was here, and it took everything Henry had not to turn tail and run. But he was acutely aware of Andie, standing on the other side of the room. Andie, who would probably do something very brave, and very stupid.
The fists that hung by his sides clenched tighter. No one would lay a hand on her, as long as he stood.
Achilles paced lightly in front of him, the walk of a caged lion. His eyes never left Henry’s. Not for one second. Demeter had been right. Killing Henry was all he wanted.
“You’re unarmed,” Henry said.
Achilles stopped and held out his empty hands.
“No spear in your chest today. Nothing so easy. This time I want to do it up close.”
“All that time we trained together this winter,” Henry said. “You know I don’t remember being Hector. I guess that doesn’t make a difference.”
“Not a bit. No amount of time is going to make me forget what I lost. What you took. My best friend. And you thought you were killing me.”
Henry wondered what part stung Achilles worse. The loss of Patroclus, or the idea that Hector had thought, however briefly, that he was the better fighter.
“What would you know about friendship?” Andie shouted. “Odysseus was your friend!”
“Our sides weren’t the same,” Achilles replied, as if that explained everything.
But that was how Achilles worked. In simple terms. With or against. Not in complex terms like right or wrong. Henry wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he did. Another ghost of a memory, tattooed into his skin.
“It must have been hard,” Henry said, “to throw that sword into Odysseus instead of me. It must’ve been hard to pretend that you could become a friend.”
“Pretending?” Achilles asked. “Is that what you think I did?” He shook his head, almost sadly.
“I would have stayed with Athena, had she been strong enough. I thought that she was the one. The goddess of battle!” He threw up his arms and grinned. “Who could beat that?”
Behind him, the Moirae writhed. They seemed larger than they had on Olympus. They would have towered over Athena. As they towered over Achilles.
“The sad fact is,” Achilles said, “I did like you, Henry. And I loved Odysseus. As for that dark beauty there,” he winked at Andie, “who knows what might have happened?”
Andie made a crude gesture and spit on the floor.
“I think I liked your sister the best, though,” Achilles said. “She’s a scrapper. And she’ll be coming round to our side, soon enough. Where she was always meant to be.”
“No,” Henry said. “She won’t.”
“I suppose it’s hard to grasp,” Achilles said. He pointed over his shoulder toward the Moirae. “They are the Fates, but Fate is a thing. It’s an ‘it,’ and a ‘they.’” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’m one of their weapons, and Cassandra is the other. You can’t fight Fate, Hector. You knew that once. I think I read somewhere that you knew that once.”
“Stop calling me that. It’s not my name.”
“It’s always going to be your name,” Achilles said.
“No it isn’t. I don’t have to be back in Troy, and you don’t, either. We can do something different. Have different lives than the shitty ones they gave us.”
For just a moment, something changed in Achilles’ eyes. The crook of his mouth faltered, and he looked somber, almost soft. They could shake hands and walk out of there. Things could change. For just that moment, Achilles considered it. Maybe he even wished for it.
“Come on,” Henry said. “Don’t let them collar you.”
Achilles’ teeth flashed white.
“Collar me?” he asked. “You just don’t get it, do you? We could have been friends. Lived our mortal lives. I could have forgiven you.” He smiled. “But now I don’t have to. I get to be a god.”
“Cassandra was right about you,” Andie said. “You’re a real shit.”
Achilles chuckled, but his jaw flexed hard. The fierceness of him made Henry take a step backward.