Chapter 2
The third call vibrated up through the stone and into my spine. My body locked. The ground seemed to tense beneath me, like the creature behind the sound was curled somewhere deep below.
The compulsion pressed down on my shoulders, dragging me forward step by step. I tried to resist it … I always did. When I was younger, I thought if I clenched my jaw hard enough, if I braced my legs, if I just wanted it badly enough, I could hold on to my will.
The Aetherthorn compelled with magic though. And I definitely wasn’t strong enough to resist that.
My toes cut shallow prints into the red dust as we stepped through the manor gates and into the light.
I squinted against it, the morning sun already high, pressing down on my face like the flat of a hot hand after the manor’s dim corridors.
I lifted one hand to shield my brow, breath still tight in my throat, heart pounding …
not from exertion, but from the unbearable stillness pressing down over the city.
Everything was wrong.
The road ahead was full of bodies. Silent. Shuffling.
People spilled from every gate and doorway, men still pulling on robes, women with half-braided hair, children gripping their mothers’ skirts. All of them walking the same direction, heads low, mouths clamped shut. Not out of choice though.
That was the Aetherthorn’s other cruelty.
Once it made its final call, it demanded silence.
I took another step, then another, the pull steady now, threaded through my veins like it had always lived there. My eyes flicked to the side, searching the crowd without meaning to. Looking for a sign. A face. A reason.
They were looking too.
At me.
Even in fear, even under a spell, their eyes followed me like a body caught in orbit.
A woman in a soot-streaked apron stumbled mid-step as I passed. A boy gawked so hard his mother tugged him forward by the wrist. An old man moving in the shadow of a shuttered stall turned his head to follow me, his mouth slightly open, eyes wide with something that looked like awe.
They couldn’t speak. But their stares screamed loud enough.
I felt their awe crawling across my skin. I’d never get used to it.
The weight of it. The way their silence made it worse … no whispered comments, no feigned indifference. Just that bare, hungry look. Like I wasn’t one of them. Like I was something other, moving among mere mortals.
I pulled the robe tighter around myself, though I knew it was useless. The fabric clung to the curve of my waist, to the line of my neck.
The Aetherthorn’s call echoed again and my skin prickled.
Calismae shot me a look, her face drawn tight with irritation and judgment. She couldn’t speak, but her lips moved anyway, muttering her fury in silence. Likely about waste.
Of water. Of time. Of hope. She had plenty to choose from.
I looked down at my feet.
The red dust was already clinging to my freshly scrubbed skin, streaking my ankles, packing into the lines of my soles. The grit rasped with every step, grinding against the tender spots still pink from the bath.
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, they looked.
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 so silent.
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.
Almost worse.
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 for this.
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 to him.
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.
Red dust whipped into the crowd like thrown daggers. A few gasps and cries broke the unnatural silence as people shielded their faces, their cloaks flapping like torn sails.
My eyes caught on the base of the platform, where something massive shifted in the shadows. I followed the shape upward. Slowly. Reluctantly … to the cage.
It was a rusted mass of bars, bolted directly into the platform’s spine. Metal scabbed over with old blood and blackened prayer runes. And inside—
It.
The Aetherthorn.
My gaze crawled up its coiled form: the heave of ribs, the sick twitch of muscle fighting itself. Its gray hide flexed with every breath, puckered with old wounds, the red light slicking across it like oil on stone.
My heart stumbled and my feet almost stumbled with it as I ascended the steps of the platform.
I couldn’t look away.
The Aetherthorn didn’t look majestic—or even monstrous. It looked broken.
Thick limbs ended in yellowed claws that scraped the cage floor in uneven rhythm, a sound like teeth grinding on rust. Its black wings were bound tight with copper chains, completely useless. There was nothing more tragic than the way they moved, not quite limp, not quite still.
Hopeful.