Chapter 3
I stood before the mirror, my breath held, my spine straight. My heart was a storm, but I didn’t let it bleed onto my face.
Anger roiled beneath my skin, untempered and clawing …
but my reflection was flawless. Calismae had somehow managed to scour the red dust and sweat from my body.
My hair had been twisted into glossy submission, gold curls tumbling over my shoulders like silk, laced with braids so precise they could’ve been spun by a goddess who’d grown tired of war and turned her hands to beauty instead.
And I wore white.
Not just white—pure, searing white. The dress fell in clean lines, fabric gathered and fastened high at one shoulder, the rest flowing in heavy folds that seemed to shimmer like water when I moved.
Across it, a single crimson sash cut from shoulder to hip, a slash of defiance vivid as blood on snow. The only rebellion I let them see.
It made my olive-toned skin glow like gold struck by lightning.
Let the king look. Let him try to ignore me.
He wouldn’t.
I would give him no room to see anyone else.
I stared into the mirror, into emerald-green eyes that had been outlined with kohl and calculation. My lips were tinted the shade I imagined the king’s roses must be—the only flowers left in Sparta. A silent challenge painted across my mouth.
Every line of me had been born to hold his gaze. Every curl, every fold of cloth, every shadow and shimmer was a trap disguised.
The priests had called my beauty a gift when I was still small enough to be cradled. Said Aphrodite herself had marked me with favor before Menelaus had cast her out. I had been called Helena the Beauty for as long as I remembered.
But I knew better.
Beauty was no gift. It was a tool.
It wasn’t meant to be loved. It was meant to be wielded.
Like the poetry I’d choked down until I bled the verses in my sleep. Like the drills I’d run in red dirt, hour after hour, until my muscles obeyed before thought could form, so that I’d be ready no matter what the Trials threw at me.
Amyklai hadn’t raised a girl.
It had sculpted a siren in a drought-struck land.
And tonight, I’d make them thirst.
Calismae’s voice sliced through the drumbeat of my heart. “Listen to me, child.”
I didn’t turn. I wasn’t sure what she’d see, what she’d call the thing boiling under my skin. The hunger. Not for food or comfort, but for reckoning. For something that burned when it should have bled.
Her hand closed around my chin, fingers firm as a vice as she dragged my face toward hers.
“Nana,” I said, barely a breath. But my voice didn’t waver.
And for one fragile moment, her armor slipped. The harsh lines of her face sagged. The steel in her spine bent. I saw the woman beneath the keeper, the one who’d weathered every year, every offering, every scream. She looked smaller. Frayed.
“You must not show them you’re afraid,” she said urgently. Not a plea exactly. More like a command born from desperation.
Her eyes never landed on mine. They moved over me instead, brow to chin, cheek to lip, as though searching for fractures in a statue.
It felt like inspection. No … like inventory. Like she was counting the parts of me Amyklai had forged into weaponry.
“Since the day I was first brought here,” she murmured in a voice so soft I nearly missed it, “when you were just a babe in your mother’s arms, I’ve wondered whether it was a curse or a blessing.”
My stomach tightened, my breath catching in my throat. “What was?” I asked.
Her fingers trembled but didn’t fall away. “That face, child.”
I froze.
Her hand was still on my skin, but her mind had drifted … far past the mirror and the rouge and what was waiting outside this room. She wasn’t thinking of crowns or Amyklai’s ambitions. Not of queens or of victory.
She was thinking of me.
Her gaze held mine, and in it I saw every version of me she’d tried to shape—blade, siren, shadow—and underneath that, the child I’d once been. The one she’d bathed and dressed and disciplined. The one she’d loved.
“I thought if we used it right,” she whispered, “it might keep you alive.”
“It will,” I reassured her. “And when I win, it will be because of you. Because you helped me prepare for this day.”
Like it hurt to let go, she dropped her hand. “I—” Calismae began.
Bang. Bang.
The knock came hard and the door groaned open a heartbeat later without permission. A girl crept inside, eyes wide, shoulders hunched like she expected to be slapped for her intrusion.
“What do you think you’re doing, girl?” Calismae snapped, her sorrow vanishing so fast I almost doubted I’d seen it. Any grief was gone as her mask locked back in place. The sharp voice I’d grown up under cracked through the air, clipped and scolding.
“I—I’m sorry, mistress,” the girl stammered, staring at the floor like it might open up and save her. “My lady is waiting. She says you’re late. You must hasten.”
Calismae let out a sigh through her nose, a sound like wind over crushed stone. The lines on her face, so soft with pain a moment ago, creased into something harder, something that reminded me of the trenches left in dry earth after the rains stopped.
She turned to me with a flick of her hand, quick and dismissive. “Well? What are you waiting for? Move.”
“Yes, Nana,” I said, the word catching in my throat, strained and unwelcome as I grabbed my cloak and slipped it over my shoulders.
For half a second, her expression faltered again.
A twitch at the corner of her mouth. A breath that didn’t come.
Then she turned on her heel, robes flaring like a banner unfurling, and swept from the room with the clipped, battle-ready stride of a woman who’d survived too much to let emotion weigh her down.
I followed.
But my steps were slower … heavier. They didn’t echo, they thudded. A dull, dragging rhythm, like the beat of a funeral march muffled by distance. Or maybe just disquiet.
I wouldn’t walk these halls as this version of me ever again.
I would either become a queen, or return a failure.
The air was filled with the scent of oil and old incense, clinging to the walls like breath trapped in stone.
The red limestone beneath my feet had been scrubbed raw this morning—three times, I’d bet, judging by the broom strokes still etched into the dust. Precise little grooves.
As if order could be swept into permanence.
Fine crimson grains puffed up around my ankles as I passed though, reaching for me. Hungry things, desperate to cling to skin and silk, to leave their mark. They tried to catch the hem of my dress, to stain me, claim me … keep me here.
But not today.
I rounded the final column, and there it was—our okhèma waiting at the end of the walkway. Its twin wheels stood still, lacquered wood catching the light. And beside it … her.
My mother.
Straight-backed. Unmoving. A statue created not to honor, but to unnerve. Intimidation shaped in flesh and bone.
Apprehension curled in my gut and bit down hard … with teeth. One look at her silhouette, and I could always count on feeling sick.
A grating growl shattered the stillness, followed by a loud, wheezing snort.
One of the servants flinched as a jergin yanked against its harness. Red dirt exploded up beneath its clawed feet, swallowing the boy in a plume. When it cleared, he looked like he’d been dipped in blood-wine and left to dry … his formerly golden hair now a dull russet crown of grit.
I winced on his behalf, but some small, irreverent part of me noted that if nothing else, he looked like a cautionary tale painted in red.
Calismae didn’t have to speak. Her disapproval rolled off her like a thunderclap no one else seemed to hear, loud and invisible and meant for me alone.
She hated when I let anything slip in front of others, especially in front of the servants.
Emotion was weakness, even if it was mirth. And weakness had no place in a weapon.
At least not in front of anyone but her.
Calismae’s gaze slid to me … and the slight smile on my lips didn’t stand a chance.
It didn’t take much effort to smother it though. This wasn’t a day for amusement. Not with so much on the line … not with what had happened to Thalessa.
The jergins snarled again, their eyes gleaming with something that didn’t belong to animals bred for pulling. I glanced toward them, fighting the familiar wave of revulsion. They’d always unsettled me.
But it wasn’t like we had pegasi grazing in the red fields of Sparta, waiting to be kissed by soft-hearted girls. No. We had these.
Monstrous, giant lizards with foul tempers and gruesome features.
Their forked tongues lolled from gaping maws, tasting the air with lazy menace. Their thick, low-slung bodies were marked in violent yellow and red stripes, a warning painted into their very skin. With every step their claws scraped against the stone like flint.
One turned its head, black eyes glossy and bottomless as it fixed its gaze on me. My spine snapped straight. I held my breath, then forced myself forward, sandals slapping against the step of the okhèma, where my mother had already vanished behind silk-draped shadow.
I was almost inside it when I hesitated, pausing on the threshold as I glanced back. Calismae stood where I’d left her, rigid as a temple pillar left out in the saltwind. But her face … gods.
She looked like she was mourning me.
I couldn’t have that.
“I’ll make you proud,” I called in a steady voice. Not a plea. A promise.
It rang louder than I intended, enough to make the nearest jergin twitch, but I didn’t flinch. I held her gaze like it was a prophecy … and I planned to rewrite it.
She didn’t speak, just watched me. And in that silence, I searched for something—hope, certainty, the smallest tremor of belief.
But there was only sorrow, old sorrow. The kind that seeps past skin and nests in the soul.
Slowly … she lifted a fist and pressed it to her heart.
My breath caught.
That gesture … it wasn’t comfort. It was farewell. What Spartans gave soldiers when they marched off to die.
“With your shield or on it,” she called softly.
The words scored into me. A Spartan ethos, drilled into boys before they could walk and whispered to warriors before battle. Return victorious, carrying your shield … or be carried home upon it.
I wasn’t a soldier. But I was walking into a different kind of war.
“Helena.”
My mother’s voice was as smooth and cold as a knife through curdled cream. And for once, I was grateful for its chill. It anchored me, gave me something solid to grip on the quicksand of what came next.
I lifted my chin and stepped into the okhèma.
And if the gods were watching, I made sure they saw my spine.