Every time Patroclus describes Achilles

## Chapter 3

* I could still remember the dark wreath against his bright hair, the way his pink soles had flashed along the track. *That is what a son should be...* In the five years since I had seen him, he had outgrown his babyish roundness. I gaped at the cold shock of his beauty, deep-green eyes, features fine as a girl's... He rolled onto his side to face me. A stray lock of gold fell half into his eyes; he blew it away.
* Across the room I caught the flash of bright hair in lamplight. *Achilles.* He sat with a group of boys whose mouths were wide with laughter at something he'd said or done. *That is what a prince should be.*

## Chapter 4

* In the huge hall, his beauty shone like a flame, vital and bright, drawing my eye against my will. His mouth was a plump bow, his nose an aristocratic arrow. When he was seated, his limbs did not skew as mine did, but arranged themselves with perfect grace, as if for a sculptor. Perhaps most remarkable was his unself-consciousness. He did not preen or pout as other handsome children did. Indeed, he seemed utterly unaware of his effect on the boys around him. Though how he was, I could not imagine: they crowded him like dogs in their eagerness, tongues lolling.
* On one of these days he sat closer to me than usual; only a table distant. His dusty feet scuffed against the flagstones as he ate. They were not cracked and callused as mine were, but pink and sweetly brown beneath the dirt. *Prince*, I sneered inside my head.

* Across the table the boys postured and prattled, about a spear and a bird that had died on the beach and the spring races. I did not hear them. His presence was like a stone in my shoe, impossible to ignore. His skin was the color of just-pressed olive oil, and smooth as polished wood, without the scabs and blemishes that covered the rest of us.
* Absently, he pushed the hair from his eyes; it had grown longer over the weeks I had been here.
* “I heard you were here.” A clear voice, like ice-melted streams.”
* You must say something.”

His insistence sparked anger in me. “You are the prince,” I snapped.

That surprised him. He tilted his head a little, like a curious bird. “So?

* His eyebrows lifted, and he regarded me. He was utterly still, the type of quiet that I had thought could not belong to humans, a stilling of everything but breath and pulse—like a deer, listening for the hunter’s bow. I found myself holding my breath.

## Chapter 6

* ...his bright eyes, the warm mischief of his smiles
* His face twisted with embarrassment, and in spite of itself my heart lightened. It was such a boyish response. And so human. Parents, everywhere.
* His eyes were dark in the half-light. I could not make out the gold flecks in the green.
* He turned to me, his eyes still filled with frustration, with a sort of angry bewilderment. He was barely twelve.
* He cupped a hand against his chin; his features looked finer than usual, like carved marble.

## Chapter 7

* THE NEXT SUMMER WE TURNED THIRTEEN, HIM FIRST, and then me. Our bodies began to stretch, pulling at our joints till they were aching and weak. In Peleus’ shining bronze mirror, I almost did not recognize myself—lanky and gaunt, stork legs and sharpening chin. Achilles was taller still, seeming to tower above me. Eventually we would be of a height, but he came to his maturity sooner, with a startling speed, primed perhaps by the divinity in his blood.
* My eyes drifted to Achilles. His fingers were stirring, just barely, in the air. He often did this when he was composing a new song. The story of Meleager, I guessed, as his father told it.
* Achilles shifted, and his tunic pulled tight across his chest.

> That day, I had overheard a serving girl whispering to her friend: “Do you think the prince looked at me, at dinner?” Her tone was one of hope.
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> This morning he had leapt onto my bed and pressed his nose against mine. “Good morning,” he’d said. I remembered the heat of him against my skin.
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> I felt a tug on my foot. It was Achilles, grinning at me from the floor.
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>

## Chapter 10

* I watched him. Other than the unsteady surface of the river, there were no mirrors on Mount Pelion, so I could only measure myself by the changes in Achilles. His limbs were still slender, but I could see the muscles in them now, rising and falling beneath his skin as he moved. His face, too, was firmer, and his shoulders broader than they had been.
* I sat again on the grass, and he resumed his stretches. I watched the breeze stir his hair; I watched the sun fall on his golden skin. I leaned back and let it fall on me as well.
* Other images came in their stead. The curve of a neck bent over a lyre, hair gleaming in firelight, hands with their flickering tendons. We were together all day, and I could not escape: the smell of the oils he used on his feet, the glimpses of skin as he dressed. I would wrench my gaze from him and remember the day on the beach, the coldness in his eyes and how he ran from me. And, always, I remembered his mother.
* Our feet sank into the cool mud of the water’s edge. Water still streamed from his hair, and I watched it bead, tracing across his arms and the lines of his chest.
* I passed him the statue. He examined it, his fingertips moving over the small marks my knife had left behind.

“It’s you,” I said, grinning foolishly.

He looked up, and there was bright pleasure in his eyes.

* He leaned forward.

Our mouths opened under each other, and the warmth of his sweetened throat poured into mine. I could not think, could not do anything but drink him in, each breath as it came, the soft movements of his lips. It was a miracle.

* I was trembling, afraid to put him to flight. I did not know what to do, what he would like. I kissed his neck, the span of his chest, and tasted the salt. He seemed to swell beneath my touch, to ripen. He smelled like almonds and earth. He pressed against me, crushing my lips to wine.
* I knew Achilles’ golden skin and the curve of his neck, the crooks of his elbows. I knew how pleasure looked on him. Our bodies cupped each other like hands.
* He was outlined against the painted stars; Polaris sat on his shoulder. His hand slipped over the quickened rise and fall of my belly’s breathing. He stroked me gently, as though smoothing finest cloth, and my hips lifted to his touch. I pulled him to me, and trembled and trembled. He was trembling, too. He sounded as though he had been running far and fast.
* His eyelids were the color of the dawn sky; he smelled like earth after rain
* His eyes were unwavering, green flecked with gold.
* ...he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong.
* I reached down to stroke the wisps of hair at his temple. He closed his eyes. I watched his face, tipped up to meet the sun. There was a delicacy to his features that sometimes made him look younger than he was. His lips were flushed and full.