Chapter 13
The dirty hem of my dress skimmed against the stone as I stepped forward, and I turned my head, locking eyes with my mother, who’d removed her mourning veil with the news. She gave the smallest nod, her green eyes blazing with life.
Relief surged through them as if she too had just been given her life back.
I lifted my chin. I have this.
I turned back toward the king and caught a flicker of movement in the shadows beyond him. The soldier.
He stood behind the dais, his gaze meeting mine through the haze of torchlight. A glint of gold caught the firelight as he lifted his goblet in a small, mocking salute.
Before I could decide what to make of it, he stepped forward and leaned toward the king, murmuring something against Menelaus’s ear. Menelaus listened, the faintest shift crossing his face before he grinned.
I felt the heat crawl up my neck. But I didn’t stop walking.
A servant hurried toward me, her eyes wide, clutching a veil in both hands. “For the chosen,” she whispered, bowing her head.
I took it with steady fingers as the whispers circled like vultures.
“Her dress is torn—”
“Gods, even like that, she’s beautiful.”
I raised the veil, drawing it over my head like a blessing settling on skin, and walked forward, head high, each step steady.
Toward the dais.
Toward the rest of the chosen.
Toward everything I had lost—and now, impossibly, held again.
Menelaus settled back into his throne.
The High Priestess turned on her heel, amber-beaded braids clinking like coins as she swept down the steps. She offered no farewell or bow. Her spine was rigid and a flush of rage was creeping up her neck, straining beneath her polished composure.
She didn’t look back.
I watched out of the corner of my eye as she moved like someone held together by threads, fraying with every breath.
Menelaus’s eyes wandered the room in idle, bored arcs, but always, always they returned to me.
And when they did, they … lingered. It wasn’t affection that gleamed in them.
It was something that slid under the skin.
I’d seen that look many a time, from the moment I grew into a body that made men look twice.
I knew exactly what kind of interest lived behind that gaze.
His pupils flared. His expression turned contemplative, not with thoughts of crowns or Trials, but of what I might look like stripped bare in his bed.
He looked like a king well pleased with his feast.
Even veiled, my form would be recognizable now that he’d seen it. Through every Trial, every room.
Maybe the Fates had always meant for tonight to happen just like this.
The crowd began to stir again, hesitant at first, like dancers unsure if the music had truly resumed.
But Menelaus smiled, a satisfied thing that crept across his face and tightened the air like a drawn bowstring, and that seemed to be signal enough.
Laughter returned. Cups were raised. The gaiety carried on as though fate hadn’t just been reshaped before their eyes.
Around me, the other chosen leaned in, their voices charged with tension beneath the hum of music and clinking goblets.
“She shouldn’t be here,” one hissed.
“The priestess said she was cursed,” another snapped.
“And now the king’s seen her face. It’s not fair.”
Their words were like thorns, their jealousy trying to dig into my skin, but I didn’t react … just like I had been trained. Only the faintest curl of a smile betrayed me, steeped in satisfaction they couldn’t see.
The feast unraveled around us.
Music crashed through the hall in stuttering bursts, lyres straining, drums stumbling to keep up.
Dancers in translucent silk twirled between tables, their bare feet smearing crushed figs into the marble.
They shrieked with laughter, drunk on wine and eyes.
Perfume clung to the air, barely masking the sweat and meat and something rank beneath it—power, maybe, or the hunger for it.
A concubine slithered onto a noble’s lap, pressing a grape to his mouth. He bit into it, juice spilling down his chin. She laughed and then licked it off him.
A crash erupted near the dais. Two men burst apart in a tangle of fists and fury, one already bloodied. The other drove him backward into a brazier, and the fire caught fast, racing up his cloak in a hungry blaze. The man’s scream tore through the hall, high and ragged—but no one moved.
The king tipped his goblet, wine spilling like blood across his hand, and laughed as he watched the flames climb.
For a heartbeat, something cold twisted in my chest, a whisper of foreboding that crawled up my spine. The scent of burning flesh hit and I nearly faltered.
But I forced it down. Now was not the time to be afraid.
A servant emerged from the shadows at our side, her frown etched from decades past and plenty of scorn, judging by the way she was staring at us.
Her tunic was plain but spotless, cinched at the waist with a bronze clasp shaped like a pomegranate.
Her spine was straight despite her age, and her hair, silver as morning frost, was scraped into a bun so tight it looked like it might snap steel.
She wore no veil and no jewelry but the clasp.
One eye squinted more than the other, and a long scar curved up her neck, vanishing beneath the collar of her tunic. But her voice, when she finally spoke, left no room for questions. “Chosen. Follow me.”
She didn’t need to raise her voice to command us. The tone alone was enough, honed by use and all the sharper for it.
Around us, the feast continued to unravel. A concubine shrieked with laughter. A lyre string snapped mid-chord. A noble slapped the thigh of a dancing girl and earned a goblet of wine in his lap for his trouble.
The servant clucked her tongue. “This place stinks of men and spoiled fruit. Move.”
One of the chosen hesitated. The servant turned her head just enough for one narrowed eye to find her.
“You planning to marry that spot on the floor?” she asked dryly. “Or do I need to drag you by your pretty little braids?”
The woman shot forward. We all did. I looked back through the blur of gold until I found my mother. She hadn’t moved from her place at the edge of the hall. She stood like she always did, unsmiling, untouched by the revelry around her.
Her eyes met mine. She mouthed the words. “With it or on it.”
Calismae had said the same before we left the manor. So hearing it from my mother’s mouth, seeing it written in the hard lines of her face … only stoked something already burning inside me.
I took her in one last time. The fine creases beside her eyes. The proud lift of her chin. The way her hands were clasped. She would be returning to the village, back to our broken people and our red dust. Back to the life I was leaving behind. I nodded with a wordless goodbye for a final time.
Maybe if I won, I could heal something inside her too. It wasn’t likely but I had the errant thought all the same.
The laughter around me swelled again. A man shouted something slurred and filthy and someone cheered.
“Keep your skirts out of the wine.” the woman muttered, spinning on her heel. “You’re not concubines—yet.”
My brows lifted beneath the veil, but I bit back the retort that bloomed on my tongue. Not concubines yet? Gods, she had some gall.
We were shepherded between tables where nobles stuffed themselves on roast boar and citrus-drenched grapes, and hands wandered beneath linens while everyone pretended not to notice.
One of the chosen stumbled on a spilled goblet, nearly falling into a soldier’s lap. He caught her by the waist, grinning up at her veil. “Careful, dove,” he said, laughing as she wrenched free. “You won’t make it to the next round with bruises—unless that’s what the king prefers.”
She didn’t respond to him.
We passed beneath the torches, beneath the eyes, beneath the heat and stench of too much … too much noise, too much hunger.
The woman led us through it all without flinching.
Behind us, the feast raged on. But ahead—my fate waited, teeth bared and patient.
The doors groaned shut.