The High Priestess drew the final stripe of red across my shoulder, then turned and passed the bowl to one of the veiled attendants. The second stepped forward with something smaller, an ivory-colored jar sealed with wax.
Without a word, the High Priestess took it and peeled the wax away. The scent struck first again, and I briefly wondered if her true intention was to keep everyone at a distance from me with smell alone.
From her robes, she withdrew a long brush with a handle that looked to be made from bone. She dipped it into the jar, the thick, black pigment swallowing all light as it slicked up the bristles.
“The red marks your body as his,” she said. “The black … marks your soul.”
I bit down on my lip. If only the High Priestess could make that true. Make me not able to think of any other man but him ever again.
It would certainly be easier.
I stared past her shoulder, forcing my gaze to a crack in the stone wall. Small, harmless. Something I could focus on while she worked Menelaus’s meaning into me with paint.
“These glyphs are not decoration. They are wards. They are chains. They are memory.”
She pressed the first stroke to my skin.
A cold bite lanced down my left arm, shoulder to wrist. I hissed but didn’t move. The High Priestess’s brush dragged through the red, the black sinking over it in dark strokes. From her careful, unhurried lines, the symbols took shape: coils, harsh slashes, forms I didn’t recognize but felt all the same.
“This is the Binding of Silence,” she said as the brush swept across my upper chest. “To hold your tongue when the truth would undo him.”
Another symbol at my throat. “The Sigil of Obedience. That you may follow, even into fire.”
A final flourish was made above my heart, tight and knotted in a way that made my skin prickle.
“This is Sacrifice. That you may give all to Sparta without breaking.”
Her voice softened, almost to a whisper. “Some queens wear these in gold. Others in ink. But you”—her gaze met mine—“you wear what’s meant to echo blood.”
A chill ran over my skin. Blood. As if I were being dressed in the memory of wounds I hadn’t taken yet.
She dipped the brush again and drew a spiral just below my collarbone.
“These glyphs are old,” she murmured. “Older than Sparta.” The last mark trailed down the inside of my arm. “They will stay with you every day. Even in death.”
I swallowed hard, my throat burning as she stepped back and stared at the work, not like a woman admiring her craft, but like someone bracing to watch a pyre take flame.
“You are ready,” she said, the words edged with a tension she didn’t bother to hide. She turned toward the door, then paused.
Her eyes found mine once more.
“You carry the fate of a kingdom, Helena. Be careful what you let stain your skin next.”
With those cheerful parting words, she slipped away.
Her warning lingered long after the door shut behind her though, like a prophecy I wasn’t entirely sure I was prepared to claim.
Chapter30
Ipicked at the meal under watchful eyes.
The priestesses stood like statues around me. One had placed the tray in front of me moments ago: a handful of pomegranate seeds, a few olives, a sliver of dried fig. Simple fare that was just enough to keep me upright.
I lifted a single seed between my fingers. It shook before I brought it to my lips. The burst of sweetness was too much. It clung to my tongue like something I wasn’t meant to have. I chewed anxiously, forcing it down. Then another. And another.
The figs were easy. The olives, far less so—salt clashing with sugar, bitter pushing against sweet. I did my best not to grimace.
None of them spoke. Not even when I dropped a pit back on the tray too quickly and it clinked loud in the quiet. They just watched. Like I was something they had prepared and weren’t quite sure would last.
