At least not in front of anyone but her.
Calismae’s gaze slid to me … and the slight smile on my lips didn’t stand a chance.
It didn’t take much effort to smother it though. This wasn’t a day for amusement. Not with so much on the line … not with what had happened to Thalessa.
The jergins snarled again, their eyes gleaming with something that didn’t belong to animals bred for pulling. I glanced toward them, fighting the familiar wave of revulsion. They’d always unsettled me.
But it wasn’t like we had pegasi grazing in the red fields of Sparta, waiting to be kissed by soft-hearted girls. No. We had these.
Monstrous, giant lizards with foul tempers and gruesome features.
Their forked tongues lolled from gaping maws, tasting the air with lazy menace. Their thick, low-slung bodies were marked in violent yellow and red stripes, a warning painted into their very skin. With every step their claws scraped against the stone like flint.
One turned its head, black eyes glossy and bottomless as it fixed its gaze on me. My spine snapped straight. I held my breath, then forced myself forward, sandals slapping against the step of theokhèma, where my mother had already vanished behind silk-draped shadow.
I was almost inside it when I hesitated, pausing on the threshold as I glanced back. Calismae stood where I’d left her, rigid as a temple pillar left out in the saltwind. But her face …gods.
She looked like she was mourning me.
I couldn’t have that.
“I’ll make you proud,” I called in a steady voice. Not a plea. Apromise.
It rang louder than I intended, enough to make the nearest jergin twitch, but I didn’t flinch. I held her gaze like it was a prophecy … and I planned to rewrite it.
She didn’t speak, just watched me. And in that silence, I searched for something—hope, certainty, the smallest tremor of belief.
But there was only sorrow, old sorrow. The kind that seeps past skin and nests in the soul.
Slowly … she lifted a fist and pressed it to her heart.
My breath caught.
That gesture … it wasn’t comfort. It was farewell. What Spartans gave soldiers when they marched off to die.
“With your shield or on it,” she called softly.
The words scored into me. A Spartan ethos, drilled into boys before they could walk and whispered to warriors before battle. Return victorious, carrying your shield … or be carried home upon it.
I wasn’t a soldier. But Iwaswalking into a different kind of war.
“Helena.”
My mother’s voice was as smooth and cold as a knife through curdled cream. And for once, I was grateful for its chill. It anchored me, gave me something solid to grip on the quicksand of what came next.
I lifted my chin and stepped into theokhèma.
And if the gods were watching, I made sure they saw my spine.
Chapter4
If my mother ever had a warm thought, she likely smothered it before it could surface.
She sat across from me now, back straight, hands folded, every inch of her as pristine and severe as the day they’d lit my father’s pyre. The black veil still framed her face, the mourning robes stiff with age and starch, clinging to her like obligation made cloth. She hadn’t taken them off in five years. I wasn’t sure she remembered other clothing existed.
The door clicked shut behind me, final and unforgiving. I settled onto the bench opposite her, the cushions too soft, the lavender oil too strong, the silence thick as wool. I drew in a breath anyway.
A film of red dust clung to theokhèma’s glass windows, thick enough to turn the outside world a darker, bloodier hue. I glanced down at the hem of my dress, where a pale smear of red dust had claimed the white silk while I’d walked to get in. The door should keep the stains from getting worse, but gods, I would’ve traded half my dowry for a lungful of that wind.
