The dusty air clung to my damp body like a second robe. Sweat had begun to gather in the bend of my elbows and the small of my back, tracing a slow path down my spine that caught every fleck of dirt it met on the way. My hair was plastered to the back of my neck, loose strands sticking to my cheek, and the ends were already collecting dust. Blonde gone copper red at the edges.
It made something in my chest twist.
All that effort to prepare me for the Trials … and now I was trudging through filth.
I caught my reflection for a flicker of a moment in a darkened shop window, my skin blotched with grit, my robe hanging limp off one shoulder.
Still … my face was my face. So, the citizens stared.
Their eyes followed me even as their feet obeyed the call. Even as fear hollowed their features, theylooked. Beauty like mine demanded witness, or at least that was what I’d been told. My long, shiny hair, my unblemished, flawless skin, my unnatural eyes … they were a compulsion that forced their gazes no matter the circumstances.
Peering beyond their stares, I tried to see farther into the agora and what version of Tartarus awaited us there. But the square remained just out of view, hidden by the curve of the road and the looming shapes of buildings that had never felt so tall … or sosilent.
The air thickened with each step. The kind of building pressure that wrapped around your ribs and tightened, like a hand bracing to squeeze.
I scanned the sky, the rooftops, the faces ahead of me. The sun above burned too bright … like a god’s eye fixed on us from the heavens, watching with silent condemnation.
A gust of wind stirred the dust, lifting it into lazy spirals that danced across the path. It stung my eyes and clung to the sweat drying on my skin. I blinked hard, trying to focus as we rounded the bend and the agora opened before us like a wound, raw and pale beneath the sun.
At its center stood what remained of a statue once done in Zeus’s likeness, broken clean at the waist, a jagged stump of marble jutting toward the sky.
Once, the tile around it had shimmered with gold, cobalt, and deep green. Amyklai’s pride, captured in glass. Now, all that remained was red … and the faded echo of a god’s face where the symbol of our strength had once glared out.
A platform had been raised in front of the broken statue, and on it stood Amyklai’s ephor, Nikandros.
Even from a distance, the sight of him turned my stomach.
His armor was too clean, his cloak too fine for a man who claimed to serve a dying city. He stood as though the ruin around him existed only to frame his importance. Like decay itself bowed to him.
Nikandros had ruled over Amyklai almost as long as the king had ruled over Sparta, a serpent disguised as a servant. He’d been the king’s tax collector at first, a man who could wring coin from a corpse and gratitude from the widow left behind.
Menelaus had eventually put him into power … probably because Nikandros was as cruel as he.
Nikandros’s reputation came from whispers, all of them sour and firmly ensconcing him as the worst of Sparta. But what I knew of him was simpler. Beneath the greed and cruelty, his eyes had always lingered on me too long. Especially after I’d been chosen to represent Amyklai. It was as though the king’s claim on me had only whetted his appetite, turning his lust into something even fouler.
He lifted a hand as though the crowd wasn’t already perfectly quiet. His voice carried easily through the thick, dry air. “I have gathered you today because this is a fortuitous day for our village—one that will be remembered in Amyklai’s history. Today, our devotion will be seen and our loyalty rewarded.” He let the words settle, his gaze sweeping across the crowd before finding me. “Today, our own champion departs to earn the heart of the king and bring prosperity and wealth to us all.”
Nikandros smiled, an indulgent curl of his lips. “Our champion,” he proclaimed, the words dripping from his tongue. “Helena of Amyklai.”
He gestured grandly, and the Hippeus shifted in unison, their bronze masks expressionless as they turned toward me, spears lifting in perfect, silent threat.
Disgust clawed up my throat before I could swallow it down. The sight of them, the king’s most elite enforcers, was almost worse than the man in our village who commanded them.
Almostworse.
Because I’d just realized he’d compelled us all with the Aetherthorn not to warn us, not to protect us, but to summon the people forthis.
A ceremony.
One he could have called with a single word, had there been any respect left in him at all.
The thought curdled in my chest. It shouldn’t have surprised me though. Such a thing should have been expected from Nikandros. If he was going to have to honor me, he would make sure that I, and all of the village, knew who was still in control. He’d have me appear half-dressed, dirt whipping against the very beauty I needed most for the Trials … just so I’d remember that even when chosen by the king, I still answered tohim.
Nikandros’s gaze swept over me. “Come, Champion. Let your people see what devotion looks like.”
As I stepped forward, their heads turned and their faces lifted. Their gazes were silent and greedy and wide, searching for a sign that I could win and save them all. I forced a confident smile, as if I could press hope into them with nothing more than the curve of my mouth.
The wind suddenly turned violent, a lash of it sweeping through the gathered bodies.
