“What?” The word rasped out of me, thick with disbelief. My thoughts pitched sideways. No. No, I’d seen her just yesterday. Laughing. Her hands had shaken when she hugged me. She’d said I saved her life. She’dthankedme.
This—this couldn’t be the same girl.
“When?” I breathed, reeling. “When did she—” I couldn’t finish.
Because there she was, being lowered to her knees in front of Menelaus’s statue, her palms pressed against the marble. She looked so small. Like a child trying to be brave.
I turned to Menelaus again. “You said she volunteered—” The words tangled. “Why would she do that? Why would Anysa choose that at all?”
Even as the question left me, the answer rose on its own and my breath hitched. “What … what did you offer her?” Because there had to have been something. Something he’d dangled before her until she saw no other path.
“She was given a choice,” he replied, his voice still frustratingly patient. “The runner-up is always sacrificed in these trials. She could either face her death willingly, and her village be richly rewarded with enough grain and gold to last a generation. Or she could refuse, and her village be shamed.”
No one had ever explained that was the fate of the runner-up. Surely that would have been passed down somewhere along the way.
“She’s innocent—she—she didn’t lose. She wasn’t meant to—”
“It was her choice,” Menelaus interrupted gently, finally turning his head to look at me. There was no anger in his expression. No malice. Only certainty.
“She is not you. And so she will serve in the way Sparta requires.” He lifted the goblet higher, his voice ringing louder now. “As is tradition. As Sparta demands. She understands this.”
My hands curled into fists at my sides. The paint cracked across my knuckles. Tradition. The word lodged in my throat like a shard of bone, jagged … unmovable. My gaze drifted to the statue of Menelaus—no, not Menelaus. It just hadthe king’s face. That statue had once been Apollo, the god whose place the king now claimed.
He loomed in shadow and firelight, formed from marble veined faintly with gold, taller than any living man. His bow rested across his back, fingers poised as if he might draw an arrow at the slightest provocation. His face was all serene beauty shaped around cold, effortless violence. A god who could compose hymns with one hand and end bloodlines with the other.
And for a breath, I wondered … would Apollo have been any better?
Would any god?
A cold tingle slithered down my spine and the hall suddenly reeked of blood even though none had been spilled tonight. As Anysa knelt before him, her lips moving in a feverish prayer, I could have sworn the statue’s mouth curled. Not in cruelty. In appetite.
Anysa bowed so low her forehead touched the stone. Her shoulders trembled, her chest rising and falling in shallow, uneven gasps.
I took a step forward. My voice caught in my throat—then broke loose. “End this.”
Menelaus lifted his brows in surprise, like what I was suggesting was shocking.
I forced strength into my voice. “What you offered her was no choice at all. Her village is starving. The crops failed. The river’s drying up. She’s a young woman, not a warrior, not a priestess. If you offered them bread instead of death, they’d bow to you all the same.”
He didn’t respond so I pushed forward. “We can help them,” I said, my heart slamming against my ribs. “Without this. Without her.”
The words scraped out of me like blood from a wound. I could feel the room watching, weighing, waiting.
“This—this isn’t a sacrifice,” I added, quieter now, but still standing tall. “It’s a woman who thinks dying is the only way to save the people she loves.”
Anysa still hadn’t moved. She still knelt in front of the statue like she belonged there, like this was what she wanted. Offering herself up like a lamb in a borrowed ceremony that stank of power, not piety.
I stepped forward again, every instinct in me bracing for the king’s rebuke. “Please,” I said, locking eyes with Menelaus. “There’s still time to stop this. You don’t need these blood sacrifices like the old gods did. You’re better than them, more powerful!”
There was steel in my voice, but underneath it—desperation. Because this was my only chance.
I leaned in, my fingers brushing against Menelaus’s chest, letting my touch linger, trying to use my beauty to do what my voice could not. His breath hitched, just faintly, and he stared at me, his pupils dilating with lust.
For one second, I thought he might listen.
Menelaus’s gaze shifted though, cooling into something that held no warmth at all, something that was shaped like pity, but was thin and cutting as a blade.“I gave you the choice,” he said at last, his tone maddeningly calm. “During the Trial. I didn’t take it from you.”
He nodded toward Anysa’s shaking form, as if presenting evidence. “And I won’t take it from her either.”
