She didn’t answer right away.
That expression—lips tight, eyes distant, something haunted flickering in their depths—I’d only seen it once before.
And the day she wore it had changed everything.
Her gaze skimmed across my face like she was reading an omen. Her hand lifted, fingers cool and calloused as they grazed my cheekbone.
“That face,” she murmured, more to herself than to me. “I hope to gods it can save us.”
I straightened. “It better,” I said, brushing her hand away with a gentleness I didn’t quite feel. “Because I’m not leaving that castle without the crown.”
Her eyes widened slightly, but I didn’t let her interrupt. My blood felt like it had turned to fire.
“If my face won’t save us,” I added in a biting voice, “then something else will. My spine. My teeth. Mywill. Whatever it takes.”
I smiled, but it was the kind that came with barbs.
“I’ll burn the whole throne room down if I have to. But I’m not walking out empty-handed,” I vowed.
“Zeus, may He keep … don’t you dare lead with that line, Helena, or Menelaus will think we’ve raised a barbarian,” she moaned, shaking her head in despair as she stepped back.
“Gods forbid,” I muttered, glancing around to see if anyone else was listening. If Calismae had mentioned Zeus like that out in public, she would have beenpunished. Though, if anybarbarianexisted in Sparta, it was the king. He was the one letting his people starve to death. Proclaiming himself Sparta’snewGod, but withholding every gift the old gods had once bestowed.
Calismae clapped her hands, and the sound cracked through the air like a command.
Two girls burst into the chamber a breath later, their red robes billowing behind them. They skidded to a halt, faces flushed, eyes wide, like Calismae had summoned them from the Underworld itself and they were afraid she might send them back.
“What are you waiting for?” she barked. “Draw the bath before I turn to stone!”
The girls jolted into action, robes tangling at their ankles as they scurried out again. I crossed my arms and fixed her with a look. “We’ve already reached our water allowance for the week. If—”
“Hush, now,” Calismae snapped, waving a weathered hand like she could swat away drought itself. “Your mother sold her last jar of Cretan saffron and half her Mycenaean beads for this day. We are not sending you into that palace smelling, even if the rest of us may never get to bathe again.”
I blinked. “She sold her beads?”
Calismae didn’t flinch. “She offered them.”
A hollow silence yawned between us.
The Mycenaean beads, deep blue and smooth as river stones, had been a gift from my father before he’d passed. One of the only beautiful things she’d been able to keep after years of Sparta’s misfortune. A flicker of mourning slid beneath my ribs.
Calismae caught the look on my face and softened, just a little. “They were gathering dust, and your future was not,” she said.
Our land had been stripped bare by drought and blood and time. Sparta’s once-proud rivers were now little more than withered memories, and the sea, our vast red Aegean, offered salt, occasionally some fish, but definitely not salvation.
First the water, then the beads.
More sacrifices that added to the myriad of reasons why there was no choice but to win.
“Tonight, you will look your best.” Calismae stepped closer, her voice resolute, thick with the kind of conviction that I’d seen make Menelaus’s priests nervous and nobles far above her station listen with trembling awe. “The other maidens will vanish in your light. They’ll be dull … forgettable. Now strip. If the gods won’t give you magic, you’ll go in with perfume, petals, and prayers clinging to every inch.”
She lifted a strand of my blonde hair, letting it fall through her fingers like thread. “You will shine tonight, Helena. When you step through those palace doors, no one will remember the others’ names.”
I swallowed hard, her words settling over me like armor. “I hope so.”
She jabbed a finger at my chest. “I don’t care if the other women have more silk or more coin. They are not Helena the Beauty,” she said, her eyes gleaming. “They are notyou.”
I tried to picture what it would be like tonight.
