I believed in power.
Sparta would have its queen.
Me.
“Three Trials will be held to ensure that Sparta’s new queen is worthy.”
My breath caught, just for a second.Worthy.The word thudded through me.
I pictured the little girl with hollow cheeks who’d laid a tribute at our gates just yesterday. The mothers who wept over their dead beneath a sky that had forgotten how to rain—unless it came in a cruel deluge that washed away everything we’d scraped together.
Thalessa’s defiance as she struggled to stay upright, bloody rivulets pouring from her mouth.
I could be worthy.I was worthy. I would prove it—no matter what it took. I had to.
“Menelaus will ordain her. Sparta will crown her.” The High Priestess raised her arms, fingers splayed toward the heavens in a fluid, reverent motion. A hush fell again, deeper this time. The girls around me shifted, some shaking, some blinking back tears most likely, all of them spellbound.
But not me.
I didn’t need omens or flame to tell me what I already knew.
My jaw tightened. My spine straightened. And I closed my eyes, envisioning myself walking toward a throne.
“Your training and the Trials,” the High Priestess said, her voice ringing clear as an oracle’s cry, “will begin on the morrow. But tonight, I will choose who is worthy to face them.”
My eyes flew open.
Choose?
Was that what she’d just said?
I blinked, my pulse thudding in my throat. Around me, a few of the other girls shifted—barely perceptible movements, but enough. A braced spine. A caught inhale. They hadn’t been expecting this either.
It was one thing to fight … to earn my place with grit and will. That, I understood. That, I was ready for. But I’d never heard anything about achoosing. About being sifted through before the Trials even began.
I searched her face, a hot rush of fear crawling up my neck. How would she do it? What would she see? My dried mud? My posture? My bloodline?
For gods’ sake, she couldn’t even see my face. We were wearing these infernal veils.
My hands curled into fists at my sides.
I couldn’t go back.
Not to the cracked, red dust roads of a starving village. Not to the children with hollow cheeks and mothers who’d buried too much.
Not to Nikandros.
If I wasn’t chosen …
If I failed here …
Then I hadn’t just failed myself.
I’d failed them all.
Chapter10
The veil was hot against my skin as I panicked. It was thin and nearly weightless—but still it clung to the sweat on my brow, refusing to let go.
