The king’s great hall filled with noblemen with thinning hair and swollen pockets, draped in fabric finer than anything Amyklai had ever seen. King Mene laus’s eyes would crawl over the maidens like flies, his gold-ringed fingers wrapped around goblets and favors alike.
There would be music. Perfumed air. Oil lamps that never burned out, because someone else was always there to fill them.
I imagined columns inscribed with stories older than Sparta itself, and a gilded throne in the center of it. And somewhere in the middle of it all … me. Not Helena of the dust. Not Helena of Amyklai. But something new. Something hungrier.
Calismae had always believed in me, maybe too much. Like my father—
No.I shoved the thought away. I couldn’t think of him.
But the memory bloomed anyway, bitter and poisonous. Blood slick on the floors. Screams echoing off the manor’s walls no matter how far I ran. The way his body had writhed, the foam at his lips tinged red.
“Helena!” Calismae snapped tensely and my gaze flickered to her, that familiar feeling of terror clinging to my skin like the smell of rotted fruit.
The girls had returned. I hadn’t even noticed. They stood frozen with their steaming pails, watching me like I might shatter.
Gods. What had they seen in my face? The household would be whispering about it for a week.
“Stop gawking and pour the water before I die,” Calismae snipped.
There wasn’t much staff around the manor, but the rest weren’t nearly as nervous as these girls appeared to be. Calismae wasn’tthatterrifying.
Usually.
They poured the water into the copper tub, some of it splashing to the floor again in their haste.
Calismae moved like lightning, seizing one of the girls by the ear. The girl squeaked and went still, trembling in her grip.
“Do you know what that drop cost?” Calismae hissed, her voice a venomous whisper. “Each one is worth more than your dowry. More than your life.”
The girl’s eyes welled with tears.
I winced, not because I disagreed—in Sparta, waterwasmore precious than gold, more precious than its citizens—but because it was one of the crueler things Calismae had said recently. And that was saying something.
Still, I liked to pretend she meant it with a certain … affection. The begrudging sort you offer a stray cat who repays you in scratches.
Even if, in twenty years, I’d yet to find proof of that theory.
She finally released the girl, who bolted as if she’d been shot from a catapult. The copper bucket banged against her leg as she ran, and her shoes smeared red powder across the clean floor.
“Useless,” Calismae spat, eyeing the footprint with a sneer stretched across her face. Her gaze snapped to me. “Get in the tub!”
“Yes, ma’am,” I muttered, peeling off my red silk sleeping gown and letting it slide to the ground like spilled wine. I lifted my leg to step into the basin … and paused.
A thin film of red dust floated on the water’s surface. “No,” I whispered in horror, gesturing toward the tub. In my mind, I was already counting the cost.
Three full jugs of water to fill it halfway. Maybe four. That was nearly a week’s ration gone in a single morning. And to replace it?
My fingers curled at my sides.
Calismae growled and rubbed a weathered hand down her face, muttering something decidedly unholy under her breath.
“Slop out the dirt and bring another bucket to rinse her,” she ordered one of the girls still lingering by the door. Her voice held the tight edge of panic.
Panic. From Calismae. My spine went taut. She never panicked. Not when the fields first dried up. Not when the Dread took ten villagers in one night … Never. Until now, apparently.
And yet … I understood.
It had been three years since Cynisca, the Queen of Sparta, had died, suddenly and without warning. In Sparta, a queen was not born, but chosen, tested in a series of trials that every village sent one woman to face.
