Chapter 4 #2
I blinked, and we were beyond it, the Dread and the Silent Way fading behind us, but their presence latched like resin on skin, sticky and stubborn, a mark you couldn’t quite scrub free.
Red dust surged up from beneath the wheels as the jergins hauled us forward, their clawed feet dragging long, sinuous trenches through the earth. The road wore the memory of others, deep gouges, clawprints stamped into the dirt like a warning: Remember what came before.
Overhead, the sky stretched, pretending innocence.
But I saw the truth in the distance, past the jagged ridge of hills—the storm I’d been watching all day was crouched like a beast with a belly full of lightning.
It hadn’t broken yet. It was waiting. Watching.
The wind whipped harder now, slamming against the okhèma window like it wanted in.
Once, I would’ve taken that as a sign. Storms on the edge of the horizon had meant rain was coming. Life, even. Now all I saw was the hush before the scream.
My mother stared out the window across from me, rigid and unblinking. Her stillness made my spine itch. Shifting, I yanked the handkerchief from my mouth, the linen raking against my lip as it came free, and then I cleared my throat.
She didn’t so much as blink.
“So,” I said, breaking the silence like a bone. “Do you think they’ll start with blood or fire tonight?”
It was like I was talking to someone I’d never met.
I used to climb into her lap and braid her hair, sticky fingers tangling through soft black strands while she hummed lullabies I can’t remember.
But grief had stripped us bare. Whatever warmth we’d shared died with my father.
Now we were two strangers sharing an okhèma.
She didn’t answer at first. Just kept staring through the glass, veil drawn, her face locked in that same cold marble expression she’d worn since the day we’d placed him on the pyre.
Still, I pressed. “Do you think they let us scream? Or is silence part of it?”
She turned. Slowly. One hand reached up to draw back her veil until her face was revealed. Her eyes hit me like a lash. Not because of what was in them, but because of what wasn’t.
They used to burn. Emerald wildfire, untamed and impossible to ignore. Now they were faded, washed out like sea glass left too long in the tide. A dull sheen had replaced the brightness, and behind them … nothing. A haunted stillness. A silence where her soul should’ve been.
I was afraid suddenly, terrified, in fact, that if she kept looking at me like that, whatever had hollowed her out might decide I was next. That it would crawl under my skin and feast until I too forgot how to feel.
I moved my eyes so they were fixed just above her head. Cowardice, maybe—but I couldn’t bear to meet her gaze when she looked like that.
When she spoke, her voice cut like a chisel. “Don’t make light of the Trials, Helena.”
I opened my mouth, because I wasn’t, I was trying to get her attention, but she didn’t give me the chance to respond.
“Every family—every child still breathing in our cursed village—is depending on you to win.” She looked through me like I wasn’t her daughter or even a girl. Just a vessel shaped for survival. “So ask better questions.”
“I know,” I said, exasperated. “Do you think the king’s already met some of the women before and chosen his favorites, or will this be a fair game?
” My voice carried a bite, tight with the sting of being lectured by someone who’d spent the last five years mourning behind closed doors while I trained to survive. I knew what was at stake. I’d lived it.
King Menelaus didn’t hide his preferences.
His favorites came from the inner villages—those gleaming, well-fed territories that kissed his sandals and sang hymns in his name.
They got more of everything: grain, goats, fresh water hauled in by the barrel.
Soldiers posted at their borders not to torture them but to protect them.
Real roads, not trenches of red mud like ours.
The last queen had been an anomaly. She was chosen from Pitane, a village barely bigger than ours, and not one that usually produced royalty. Everything changed for those villagers overnight.
The fields were irrigated within the month.
Their children stopped dying of fever because they had medicine.
A proper wall went up, tall and polished with new stone.
Wagons of barley arrived weekly, followed by herds of livestock—fat, clean, and too healthy to have come from anywhere nearby.
They became untouchable—because their champion was wearing the crown.
That was the point of all this. That was the goal.
Not just survival. Victory meant transformation.
A single girl’s body for the salvation of hundreds.
I’d known that from the moment Amyklai had chosen me.
If I won, our village would eat through the foreseeable future.
If I didn’t … we’d keep bleeding into the dirt until there was no one left to grieve us.
Her assessing gaze flicked over my features. “That face of yours will get you noticed. I imagine it’ll do most of the work for you.”
My jaw tensed. That was all she saw now …
a face. Not the hours I’d bled in the sand, not the bruises, or the sleepless nights spent memorizing names and histories and how to kneel just enough to survive.
I wondered if she even saw the daughter she’d once loved, or just a polished shell wearing her eyes.
She sagged back into her seat like speaking had drained the last drop of life from her.
Fine. She could vanish into her grief.
I didn’t need her.
Let the gods watch. Let the king play his games. I’d survive tonight, and the next, and every one after that.
And when I won, I’d make sure Sparta finally saw me—not just my face. Me.