“She doesn’t have a chance.”
I pretended not to hear them.
But beneath the veil, my jaw clenched. Of course they’d talk. It was all they knew to do, chatter behind linen and silk, tossing their little barbs from the safety of shadow. Let them.
Still, irritation itched under my skin. I hadn’t been given even a moment to fix my hair or smooth the sweat-slicked edges of my face. The state of me wasn’t a crisis—I wasn’t some washed-out thing who needed perfect linens to shine—but gods, I should’ve been clean. Composed. Prepared.
Instead, I stood among them like something dragged ashore after a wreck.
And why were we wearing these veils in the first place?
A far door groaned open behind us, and a hush wavered through the room. Every veil tilted toward the sound.
A woman stood in the doorway. Her ivory and gold robes swept across the stone floor in layers so delicate they shimmered with every step. Not a speck marred their perfection, as if even the cursed earth itself dared not touch her.
The woman’s skin was darkly toned and radiant, like polished onyx kissed by firelight. Coiled braids crowned her head, each twist meticulously pinned with amber beads. Her face was smooth as marble, unlined and expressionless, though her gaze hit like heat from a forge, searing and relentless as she surveyed us all.
Beside me, a girl flinched hard enough to rustle her veil. Another gasped, the sound cut off as she dropped her head in a sudden bow. The one in front of me collapsed to her knees like the woman’s appearance was more than she could take.
“High Priestess,” someone breathed—part prayer, part warning.
My stomach lurched.
High Priestess.
She was the High Priestess Dione. She’d once been the keeper of Apollo’s temple, and now she bent her knee to Menelaus as the guardian of his altar and the mouthpiece of his divinity.
She’d never set foot in my village, of course. But her name still traveled. In warnings. In half-whispered prayers. The kind of stories that made you sit a little straighter … be a little more careful about what god’s name you were invoking.
And now here she was, no longer a tale but something real and fierce and standing right in front of me.
She stopped a few steps from where we were gathered, arms held slightly out at her sides, palms open and facing forward. I recognized the posture from a temple rite, though I couldn’t recall what it meant.
Her eyes closed. Silence followed like a command. It stretched … suffocating, thick enough to strangle. I could hear hearts pounding—mine, theirs, all of ours thudding in a syncopated drumbeat of fear and awe. The priestess tilted her head back, chin lifting toward the ceiling like she was listening for some divine signal.
A prayer. Or the thing that answered prayers.
Her eyes opened, dark and depthless, and her gaze slashed across the room, raking over each of us with such ruthless precision I nearly stepped back. They landed on me, on the crusted mud smeared down my dress … and her nostrils flared, just once, as if the stench of the road offended her. “Present yourselves.”
Her voice wasn’t loud, but it didn’t need to be. It rang with command.
“The age of the old gods has ended,” she said dramatically. “Sparta kneels now to the divine made flesh—our king, Menelaus, lord of thunder and flame. Through me, his will is spoken today.”
A shiver passed through the line like wind through reeds. The girl beside me sucked in a breath. Someone at the front let out a quiet whimper and quickly smothered it. A few dropped their heads in reverence … or fear.
But I—I almost laughed.
Divine made flesh? As if Menelaus hadn’t crowned himself with the ashes of Olympus and called it holiness.
My eyes narrowed as I stared at her. I wondered if she truly believed what she was saying, if she’d convinced herself that mortal breath could carry divinity … or if, somewhere deep beneath the sanctimony, she still mourned the sun god who had once claimed her altar.
Did she really believe Menelaus was a god? Or did she simply know where power now stood and chose to kneel beside it?
“The will of our king is clear. He shall not rule alone. His power demands an equal.” Her pause lingered. “Sparta must have its queen.”
Queen.
The word echoed, louder than the priestess’s voice, louder than the girls shifting nervously beside me. I didn’t care if it was true—something divine or some carefully staged spectacle. Let them believe in omens and divine will.
