The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

When I stood to follow him, my limbs ached from so long seated on cool stone. My chest trilled with something I could not quite name. Escape, and danger, and hope all at once.

last, he said: “Do not let what you gained this day be so easily lost.”

I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.

His eyes, green as spring leaves, met mine. “Patroclus. I have given enough to them. I will not give them this.” After that, there was nothing more to say.