Chapter 15
A knock yanked me out of sleep.
I jerked upright, limbs tangled in the blanket, heart thudding like I’d been caught doing something I shouldn’t.
The door creaked open just as I rubbed the blur from my eyes.
Only the faintest thread of light slipped through the high window.
The torch had sputtered out sometime in the night, leaving the room in a soup of shadows.
A woman peeked her head in. I stifled a yawn and didn’t bother hiding the scowl that followed.
So Nomiki hadn’t been bluffing about dawn. Shame. I really could’ve used another hour of sleep … or five.
My fingers flew to my collarbone. Empty.
Roz was gone.
I exhaled grudgingly. I guessed it was better this way. If someone had walked in and seen that strange little creature curled against me like a sentinel, like I was something worth guarding … gods only knew what they’d have done.
Still, the absence felt colder than I expected.
“Traitor,” I muttered under my breath, dragging the blanket off and swinging my legs to the floor.
The servant who strode in was tall and angular, her robe the bruised hue of overripe strawberries, cinched tight at the waist with a bronze clasp. Her eyes flickered over me, cool and quick, but not as stern as Nomiki’s. She didn’t smile, but there was less bite in her silence.
“Up,” she said. “You’re expected.”
Not friendly, exactly. But not looking to draw blood either.
The servant didn’t wait for me to undress. She simply turned to the wall beside the stone tub and, without ceremony, lifted a small bronze lever embedded in the wall.
I flinched as a low groan echoed through the chamber—and then gasped.
Water surged from a narrow hole in the wall, clear and steaming, pouring directly into the bath with a force I hadn’t expected. It filled quickly, rising higher and higher, a small mist climbing up and licking at the cool air.
I stared, stunned. No hauling buckets. No heating over a fire. No rationing. Just a lever. Just endless water, like the gods had been bribed to bring their magic back to the palace.
Hot and plentiful. Wasteful.
It should’ve felt like a blessing. Instead, I thought of the manor.
No one there would be able to use water for a bath for weeks. Not after all they’d wasted on me.
The water kept rising, inch by inch.
“That’s high enough,” I said quickly, guilt pricking beneath my skin. “My village barely has enough to drink. This is already too much.”
The servant hesitated, bowing her head. “Nomiki instructed—”
“I said that’s enough.” The words came out harsher than I intended, born from shame more than anger.
She flinched and murmured an apology before stepping back.
Steam swirled as I slipped in, knees folding, the heat enveloping me like silk. I should’ve felt better. And I did. My skin loosened, the ache in my muscles easing as the filth of the forest began to dissolve.
But guilt lapped at the edges of my comfort, sour and clinging.
She scrubbed me clean with fast, impersonal hands, dragging the cloth over my arms and legs like she meant to strip away more than dirt. My scalp smarted under the coarse pull of the comb as she wrenched through knot after knot. I bit down on my lip until the taste of copper filled my mouth.
She and Calismae must have both been trained in the same place … a place where beauty suffers quietly was the mantra.
Once I was dried and dressed in a clean white dress, she pinned a bronze brooch at my shoulder, the symbol of the king snarling in exquisite detail, as if warning the world to stay away.
“Follow, and bring your veil. You don’t have to put it on quite yet.”
That was it. No more words.
The corridors were quiet, wrapped in the hush of dawn.
I glanced around, seeing what I hadn’t noticed in the dark.
Murals and friezes lined the walls that had clearly once been devoted to the old gods.
Like the other statues I’d seen though their faces were no longer theirs.
The artists had scraped and painted until only Menelaus remained, his features laid over Apollo’s calm, Zeus’s wrath, Athena’s wisdom. Every divinity now wore his face.
I studied one of them as I passed, tracing the familiar curve of his mouth, the proud line of his brow.
What was his power, truly? The rumors twisted in my mind.
Some said he’d stolen Zeus’s lightning and used it against him.
Others swore he’d devoured a lesser god’s heart and taken its strength for himself.
No two stories matched, but they all ended the same way.
Menelaus victorious. Menelaus divine.
I moved on, passing another frieze—this one a battle of myth, the old gods hurling their lightning from the clouds. Only now, every face was his. Menelaus wielded the thunder. Menelaus struck the world to ash.
I tried to picture that version of him, the God-Slayer, beside the man I’d seen last night … the one with wine on his fingers and hunger in his eyes. I couldn’t make them fit.
One commanded heaven. The other had simply looked at me and bent to my will.
I supposed I would find out which one was real soon enough. For now, I needed to survive the Trials. Which led me to my next question …
What was going to happen today?
The question stirred in my gut as I stepped forward, squaring my shoulders, trying to build a spine out of motion. What would they demand of us? Blood? Oaths? Would we be judged by how long we could endure … or how quickly we could bow?
Or would we simply be paraded before the king so he could pluck us apart with his gaze like a butcher choosing cuts of meat?
By the time we reached the wing’s dining room, my stomach was a twisted knot.
The room was washed in morning light, bright and golden, almost cruel in its cheer. Frescoes covered the walls, fields of grain rippling in the breeze, constellations stitched into red night skies, lions forever caught mid-roar.
Every head turned as I stepped inside.
The silence hit like a sudden drop in wind, and I felt the weight of it press against my skin as I stepped farther into the room.
The girls were scattered in loose clusters across the floor, some lounging on cushions with their ankles tucked beneath them, others perched upright like they’d been waiting for just this moment.
Their faces were scrubbed and gleaming, and I caught the scent of blossoms in the air, mingling with something else …
like anticipation and fear wrapped in perfume.
One girl in the center had lips painted the color of crushed cherries and hair coiled into a crown of thick braids, each twist gleaming with oil.
Her gaze swept over me with the cool indifference of someone used to being the most important person in the room.
Beside her, another girl, tall and pale, her jaw angular and proud, wore gold rings on every finger and chewed a fig idly.
A third, younger, with a round face and ice-blonde curls that caught the light, looked startled by the silence she was suddenly part of, her cup trembling slightly in her hands.
Near the window, a narrow-eyed girl with a perfect nose and a single long braid down her back didn’t even try to mask her disdain. She glared openly, jaw clenched, crushing her half-eaten maza in one hand as if imagining it was me.
They all stared.
I crossed the room with deliberate slowness, pretending I didn’t notice their whispers.
“Psst! Helena!”
I glanced around for the familiar voice.
“Over here,” the whisper came again, louder this time, and coaxing.
At last I found her, a girl with hair the color of burnished copper, waving at me from a table up ahead.
Her braid slung neatly over one shoulder, and a jeweled belt wrapped snug at her waist. As her hand lowered and her eyes met mine, she smiled, an easy, real thing that settled something anxious in my chest.
I moved toward her.
She patted the cushion beside her. “It’s me, Anysa. Pie destroyer. Terrible singer. Maybe future queen … assuming I don’t trip and knock over an altar.”
The laugh that slipped from me was small, barely a breath, but it was real.
“Just ignore me if I talk too much. It’s a compulsive thing that’s going to continue with how nervous I am. I’ll talk until someone shoves a lemon in my mouth.”
I blinked. “That’s oddly specific.”
She winked. “So are wounds.”
A servant appeared beside us and poured watered wine into our cups. I barely noticed. My eyes were fixed on the table, on the grapes, the roasted lamb glistening with fat, the olives heaped in silver bowls like they grew in abundance, and the soft, white cheese speckled with herbs.
A feast.
My jaw locked.
Back home, they would’ve stared at this like it was a myth. A dream. Grain was never guaranteed these days, and here they were serving enough to feed a village twice over. Two days in a row. My hands curled into fists beneath the table.
It wasn’t right.
The palace dripped in excess, every corner of it whispering waste, while the rest of Sparta bled and begged and buried their dead in soil too dry to grow anything.
I took the cup anyway, lifted it to my lips. Let it taste sour. Let it sting. If I was going to survive this place, I needed to stop flinching at its cruelty and start learning how to use it.
Even though I was starving, I had to force the food past my lips, but Anysa didn’t have that problem, enjoying figs and olives, boiled eggs laced with herbs I couldn’t name, all while talking almost continuously.
Just like last night, the effect of her continuous chatter was soothing, helping me control the tension in my shoulders.
“What do you think they’ll have us do today?” I asked when I could finally get a word in.