Anysa wasn’t crying anymore. I watched as she lifted her chin, not to the throne, not to the king, but to the statue above her bearing his face. Her gaze locked on that sculpted likeness with a steady, unsettling defiance … as if daring it to crack, to soften, to reveal even a flicker more mercy than the living man seated before her.
But as the sacred hand lifted his blade, I knew, deep in the marrow of me, that gods didn’t save women like us. We were not daughters worth plucking from the altar. We were pawns, set on the board by other hands, moved where it pleased them, sacrificed when the game demanded blood.
The blade climbed higher, catching the torchlight, bending it into a sickle-shaped gleam—a sliver of moon sharpened for slaughter. The torches themselves seemed to recoil, their flames shuddering in the thick air.
My lungs ached, my throat burned, my pulse battered at the base of my skull. The air closed in until it felt like I was drowning.
I opened my mouth, desperate to tear the hall apart with my voice, but all that slipped out was a sound too small, too human to stop anything. “Please.”
“For the God of Sparta,” the sacred hand said in a clear voice. “For the blessing of favor upon this sacred union.”
Anysa’s hands stayed pressed to the ground.
Something cracked inside me as the blade swept down in one practiced arc, catching the torchlight, then her throat.
The sound of her dying wasn’t loud. It didn’t end in a scream, or a final gasp, or anything monumental that might have marked her passing. She died with a wet, muted slice, small enough to be swallowed by the murmur of the crowd.
Anysa’s body slumped forward onto the marble, her white gown blooming red so fast it looked like it had caught fire from the inside out. A fan of crimson spread beneath her, bright and slick, seeping across the marble in an uneven creep.
The silence that followed wasn’t reverent … it wasexpectant. Watching. Like everyone in the hall was holding their breath, waiting to see if some sign of Sparta’s good fortune would appear.
None did.
Only Anysa’s blood, and it kept moving, pooling,reachingas if trying to finish the prayer her lips would never speak.
Chapter32
Icouldn’t stop staring at her.
Her eyes were still half open and glassy. Her body looked even smaller now. The man had stepped back, his expression serene, as if he’d just crowned her instead of slaughtered her.
A scream built in my chest and clawed its way up my throat, but it got caught on the splintered edges of my grief. I couldn’t even scream for her.
Tears blurred my vision, and I couldn’t help but let them fall.
The blood hadn’t even finished spilling across the marble when Menelaus leaned toward me, the reek of wine heavy but his expression perfectly composed, as though the ceremony had been nothing more than a line recited in a play he’d already forgotten.
His voice brushed my ear, low and almost conversational. “Her decision brought her village great honor,” he murmured. “Sparta will speak of her selflessness for years.”
My stomach twisted. He spoke of it the way others spoke of a well-cooked feast or a well-tuned chorus—admiring, satisfied, utterly unbothered by the lifeless body cooling at our feet.
“Tradition holds such power in our lands,” he went on, straightening, lifting his goblet as though toasting the room. “I’ll explain the rites to you more fully tomorrow. There’s much you’ll need to learn as queen.”
Tomorrow.
As if he’d already moved on from tonight, from this moment.
His other hand had been moving as he spoke, following the thread of his words, sliding along the curve of my thigh where the red paint glimmered. I watched his palm spread it, smearing the marks the priestess had so carefully drawn, possessively dragging across skin he assumed belonged to him.
I stared straight ahead, past the throne, past the guards, past the laughter that had returned like a sickness to the hall. My nails dug into the gilded armrests as his touch burned like acid.
It was all I could do not to reach for the sword at his hip, to unsheathe it and drive it straight through his throat. The thought came unbidden, violent and visceral, and for a moment Isavoredit—the weight of the steel in my hand, the gurgle of surprise in his throat, the blood spilling not in ceremony, but in justice.
Was I still meant to have hope for tomorrow after this? Was anything Anysa and I had dreamed of still possible when this had been her end?
Across the hall, the music swelled again, lyres and auloi picking up their melody like nothing had happened, as if Anysa’s blood wasn’t still staining the marble. The guests returned to their goblets. Their laughter. Their whispers of silk and secrets. A few clapped softly, praising the priest. One woman giggled behind a jeweled hand and took a sip of wine redder than the blood that now painted the floor.
Servants came and they lifted Anysa’s body with ritualistic care. They didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. Her limbs dangled like a broken doll’s and her hair swept across the floor like a farewell.
