“Behold,” she said, “those who would be queen.”
The crowd stilled, the only sound the pacing of the lion and the women’s anxious breath around me.
“Sparta stands upon four sacred pillars. Discipline. Loyalty. Strength.Fertility.A Spartan woman is more than a wife. More than a bearer of sons. She is the soil from which warriors rise. The fire that tempers steel. The softness that calls a man home … but never weak.”
She turned toward the king, her voice lowering to reverence.
“Sexuality is not shameful,” the High Priestess said in a resonant voice. “It is power. It is an offering.” Her eyes burned as they swept over us. “It is through the body that power speaks. Through desire we remember we are not mere vessels, but creators. To master this is not to be base. It is to bedivine.”
Another wave crashed through me, hot and sudden, like fire licking up from beneath my skin. My breath caught, unsteady. I shifted where I stood, toes digging into my sandals, the ache building … spreading.
It was getting harder to stay still, harder to pretend nothing was unraveling inside me. The herb in my blood answered the High Priestess’s voice like dry fields catching fire, sudden, wild, and all-consuming.
“To stir hunger,” she went on, “to awaken longing with a glance, a breath, a shift of your hips. That is not vanity. That iscommand. And command is the seed of an empire.”
My skin prickled. The floor felt far away as heat continued to pool between my legs. I glanced down, surprised there wasn’t a puddle of my lust on the floor beneath me.
The High Priestess bowed to Menelaus. “Tonight, these women perform to prove they are worthy of you, my king. That they are worthy … of Sparta.”
Menelaus’s mouth curved, a flash of teeth that wasn’t quite a smile.“Worthy,”he echoed, like he was tasting the word. “A tall task indeed—to find a goddess fit to stand beside a god.” His voice rumbled through the hall, smooth and self-assured, carrying both challenge and certainty.
He lifted his goblet, the wine within catching the firelight like blood. “Begin.”
A melodic rhythm began to pulse through the room. The hum of lyres slipped beneath my skin, sweet and sinuous. Drums followed, low and steady, like heartbeats not my own. Then came the flute, high and twisting like a ribbon of light, winding through the air and piercing something deep and hidden.
The sound didn’t just fill the chamber. Itownedit.
It shot through my veins, coaxing my pulse into its rhythm. My chest rose, unbidden. My thighs shifted. Every note seemed to find a place inside me, a lock to fit, a door to pry open. I swayed without meaning to, my breath gone shallow, and my nipples tightening as though the sound itself had grazed them.
The High Priestess gestured, and the concubines, led by Hetairis, stepped forward, their silks a waterfall of sensuality. Hetairis moved like she’d been born from the idea of desire itself, each motion fluid and unhurried, a dance spun from secrets and sin. Her silks clung and slipped in turns, catching the torchlight in a thousand flickers. Every motion of her hips was a verse, every lift of her hand a spell cast in plain sight.
Behind her, the other concubines mirrored her movements, lesser stars orbiting a sun. Their arms arched overhead like swans, hips rolling in patterns too fluid to name.
Hetairis turned toward us, her voice precise with command. “Chosen, step forward. It is time to be seen. To seduce … to make themwant.”
The concubines closed in around us, their touches gentle but insistent, pressing at our backs, adjusting our arms, whispering reminders into the folds of our veils. One tugged lightly at my wrist, guiding me like I was a puppet pulled by strings.
We moved, stepping into the firelit circle at the center of the chamber. My feet obeyed, though I couldn’t feel them. The marble beneath me could’ve been mist,or wind, or nothing at all. I was untethered. Floating. The ache in my body had turned into something all-consuming.
Another pulse of the herb thundered through me. My breath hitched as heat flooded quick and biting, a dagger made of want. The ache between my legs had sharpened into agony, no longer gentle or ignorable, but cruel in its hunger. Every step sent another throb spiraling through my core, my thighs slick and trembling.
My mouth parted. I couldn’t close it. I couldn’tthink. Thought was a distant continent. I was a creature now, made of pulse and ache and need, hollowed out by longing and filled again by every glance, every motion, every echo of the priestess’s voice.
“Let go,” Hetairis murmured behind me, her breath cool against my ear. “Stop clinging to thought. Fall into it—the music, the feeling. That’s where your power is.”
The words slipped into me like water into cracked earth, and something inside gave way.
I stopped fighting.
The music wrapped around my limbs, pulling me under. My hips began to move, not with intention, but instinct. My hands lifted, wrists soft, guided by rhythm rather than reason. The chamber, the throne, the watching eyes … all of it faded.
I stood there, lost in the spell of it. No longer Helena, daughter of Amyklai.
But something else entirely.
Somethingstarving.
Chapter20
