My fingers barely felt the fabric as I tugged it free, the air cool against my cheeks where tears had dried. The sudden exposure sent a shiver down my spine, a strange awareness prickling beneath my skin. The veil had hidden me, made me one of many, faceless and silent. Without it, I was no longer just another girl in a line.
And then it struck me. Chosen or not, I would still be entering the Great Hall.
Where Menelaus would be.
He’d see me.
My face. My eyes. All the things the veil would have kept from him if I’d been chosen.
I bit my lip, thinking, the idea flaring wild and bright in my chest. Maybe this didn’t have to be the end. Maybe the priestess’s rejection wasn’t a curse but an opening. If I could catch his attention, make him see me,wantme, then perhaps there was still a way to change my fate.
The crimson-robed woman was already halfway down the corridor and she wasn’t looking over her shoulder to see if we were following. The other girls hesitated, staring after her forlornly, their shoulders heavy with agony.
But not me.
I straightened my spine, clutching my discarded veil in one hand, and followed her steps with a quickened pace. If the others trudged like mourners, I walked like someone reborn … or at least trying to remember how to be.
The corridor opened before us in a blur of gold and marble. Tapestries lined the walls, stitched with battles and victories I barely registered. Murals swept above them in wide, painted arcs of Menelaus’s face frozen mid-blessing, creatures mid-battle, and women crowned in laurel and light. The polished marble mirrored our procession, warping our shapes as we passed so that we looked less like women and more like forest nymphs marching toward judgment.
I lifted a hand to my cheeks, pinching them until warmth bloomed through the cold. My fingers combed through the tangles of my hair, smoothing what I could. I wiped at the remnants of tears, and pressed my lips together to bring back their color. If Menelaus was ahead, if this hall would lead me to him … then I would not meet him looking broken.
We turned a final corner, the hush of the corridor unraveling into a low thrum beneath my feet, the sound of celebration swelling ahead. The hallway stretched toward its end, where a set of massive gilded doors stood waiting.
They rose before us, two towering slabs of gold-veined wood, etched so deeply it looked as if the symbols had been scorched into place. Thunderbolts twisted around eagle wings, and at the center, the crowned sun of Menelaus blazed, its jagged rays stretching outward like spears of flame. The carvings seemed to shimmer, less ornament than omen, each line etched with purpose.
These were not doors meant to welcome. They were meant to warn.
The doors yawned open, and the servant motioned sharply, sending us forward like a dismissal. Light burst over the threshold, searing after the dim corridors, washing every surface of the massive hall beyond. My eyes took a moment to adjust, just long enough for the noise to crash over me.
It was alive in here.
Bodies moved in every direction, pressed shoulder to shoulder in their finest silks and armor. Bronze shields lined the arched walls, polished to a mirror sheen, while above them hung scarlet banners. The marble floors thrummed with the shuffle of sandals and the clash of greaves.
Laughter erupted as a goblet clattered to the ground, rolling past my feet before being kicked aside by a passing noble. A musician plucked the strings of a lyre, the screech jarring before he shifted into a faster rhythm—something wild and exultant that sent the dancers in the center of the room spinning, sheer layers flaring, limbs a blur beneath the firelight, mouths flushed and open in painted joy.
I stepped into it. Into them.
It struck like heat … perfume, laughter, the hum of voices colliding in surprise. Conversation faltered as heads turned, one after another. Eyes found me. Held me.
I slowed my pace, and my hand drifted through my loosened hair, coaxing a few curls forward to spill over my shoulder. The silk of my gown clung to my legs, torn and dust-streaked, but I wouldn’t let it matter.
They would all be looking at my face.
“Gods,” someone breathed, almost reverent.
“Is that her?” a woman whispered. “The one from Amyklai?”
“She’s—” a man’s voice faltered, too awed to finish.
“Even dirt can’t hide that mouth,” another said lustfully.
Laughter broke somewhere behind me, nervous and breathless, the sound of people unsure whether to worship or to spurn what they couldn’t possess.
I felt their reactions stir the air around me, a pulse I could sense against my skin like the beating of a single monstrous heart.
I’d been trained to be the center of all this, to make silence fall, to turn devotion into an art. What good was beauty if it couldn’t crown me? If it couldn’t save Amyklai? I had honed it for this—for the marble halls and watching eyes—for the moment a king might look and see more than another poor villager. My beauty was meant for this room, this chance, this throne. I’d trained myself to wield it like a promise, certain it would be my path to power, my one true weapon. It couldn’t be wasted now.
So I pretended not to seehim.
