Chapter 17
The room we stepped into was a sanctum of decadence, a space built not for worship or war, but for want.
Plush rugs layered the floor in hues of ebony and blood-wine, so thick my feet sank into them as I walked.
Sheer fabrics hung from the ceiling like clouds of mist, swaying gently as if stirred by breath alone.
Lounges and divans spilled over with women draped in silks, their skin glowing under soft golden light.
One reclined on a chaise, her spine curved like calligraphy, while another fed her slices of ripe pear from cinnamon-dusted fingers.
On a low couch strewn with cushions, two women were twined together like ivy, giggling as they whispered into each other’s mouths.
There were pearls everywhere, on necks, on thighs, in navels, and painted lips shaped in promises they had no intention of keeping.
I gaped at them.
Not just at the opulence and the lazy sprawl of limbs and oil-slicked skin, but at the way they turned toward us … watched us.
Some with idle curiosity. Others with knowing amusement.
One woman, older than the rest, with silver streaks shimmering through her midnight hair, shifted from where she lounged and tipped her head toward the High Priestess, a quiet challenge in the gesture.
She was the first to rise, unfolding with slow elegance, each step unhurried as she walked barefoot toward us.
Her eyes, dark and glossy as moonlit wine, drifted over the group.
“You’ve brought us eager little roses,” she purred, trailing a single finger down the High Priestess’s arm.
The priestess tensed but didn’t pull away, and a hint of color rose in her cheeks. “They are here to learn,” she said tightly. “The first Trial begins in two days.” Gasps fluttered through the group like startled birds, a few girls shifting on their feet, their veils trembling ever so slightly.
I, however, stood straighter, trying to ignore the nerves thrumming through me.
If sensuality without my face was the Trial … then I would have to find a way to win it.
The High Priestess turned toward us, her lips pursed at our reaction … and the whispers died. She continued as if nothing had interrupted her.
“The Trial will test your power of sensuality. The king does not want a queen who wilts beneath his gaze. He wants one who can command a room, ensnare a breath, enchant the will of everyone around them. When a queen can seduce her king … then we don’t simply have a pleased god. We have a satisfied kingdom.”
An image flashed unbidden behind my eyes, of being draped across the king’s lap, smiling coyly while he pawed at me with rings that clinked like shackles. My stomach turned.
This isn’t about you, I reminded myself. This is for Amyklai.
The silver-streaked concubine’s eyes glittered with interest. “You’ve brought them to the right place.” Her gaze swept over us before turning back to the priestess and raising a brow. “Although I’m not sure any of them have what it takes.”
My jaw tightened beneath the veil.
“Then they are not fit to wear a crown, Hetairis,” the High Priestess said simply.
Awfully pious of her, I thought, preaching about sensual power like she knew anything about it. She was a priestess for gods’ sake.
The older woman, Hetairis, smiled then, wickedly. “Let us see, then, what these women are made of.” She stepped forward, her silk-clad form a study in grace and danger.
Her gaze raked over us all before settling, strangely … on me. My face was hidden like everyone else’s, the veil concealing every line, every flicker of thought.
Her mouth curved slightly, not in amusement but with something colder, more cutting. Disdain. It flashed across her face for only a moment before her expression returned to smooth, effortless control.
“Before we begin,” she said, “you must understand what you are being asked to master.” She let the words hang in the air, stepping past us like we were statues in a garden.
“Sensuality is not beauty. It is touch. It is perception. It is power. It is the art of making others feel what you want them to feel—longing, desire, obsession.”
She paused beside a woman whose hands trembled as she clutched the edge of her veil.
With a single lifted finger, the concubine tilted the woman’s chin, her movements intent, as if weighing her worth.
“To wield this, you must first know yourself. You must know what it is to ache. To be adored. To be consumed.”
Her bare feet whispered over the silken floor as she returned to her perch.
“You are not here to please,” she said, her voice hardening slightly. “You are here to rule. From the shadows, with a glance. With a whisper. With the drag of a fingertip down a bared spine.”
There was a glint in her eye as she spoke, not dreamy or wistful, but crystal clear. Like she believed every word with the certainty of someone who had done it. Who had ruled, unseen, with nothing but a smile and a silken touch. And gods, the conviction in her voice made me believe it too.
I’d always known beauty was power. Mine had opened doors before I knew I wanted them open.
In Amyklai, I’d felt it in the way conversations stilled when I entered a room.
The way women straightened their posture beside me, and men forgot their words.
When our neighbor’s son brought me pomegranates just to see me smile.
When the matrons at the well whispered that I’d been born with Aphrodite’s envy stamped into my face.
Those moments had made me feel powerful, untouchable, chosen.
I examined the concubine in front of me. I could see how such a woman could wield influence even when she was a servant of the court. The way she spoke … there was command in every syllable. Grit beneath the gloss.
She wasn’t just talking about seduction.
She was talking about control. And control was what I wanted.
Not for the first time, I wondered if a woman’s greatest power was the kind no one noticed until it was too late.
Her eyes gleamed. “Do not flinch from your own allure. Do not cower from the power it grants.”
She looked once more at me, and the heat of it made my skin prickle. “Even the fairest face means little if its owner doesn’t know how to wield it.”
It felt like she was aiming those words solely at me.
She turned her gaze back to the rest of the women and said simply, “Now—watch.”
Hetairis draped herself over the couch like a ribbon unspooling in water. Her fingers moved across her own skin as if rediscovering it for the first time … She spoke as she moved, her voice a purr that seemed to reverberate through me.
“The body is a poem, read aloud not with words, but movement. Every breath, a stanza. Every sigh, a song.”
She glided across the cushions, arching her back in a stretch that made the silk of her robe slither down her thigh. She traced the curve of her neck, the dip between her collarbones, with a lithe fingertip.
“When you touch,” she whispered, “you invite. When you dance, you declare. But when you pause—”
She froze, one hand at her throat, chin tilted. “—you command.”
We watched in silence, the heat in the room pressing tighter with every breath.
A woman lounged at the end of the settee, one leg crossed over the other. Her gauzy wrap was the color of crushed lilac and clung to her limbs like a second skin. She toyed absently with a gold earring as she watched Hetairis with a heavy-lidded gaze.
Hetairis turned to her, crawling across the cushions. Her lips grazed her knee, a kiss like a benediction. The woman slid her fingers into Hetairis’s hair languidly, like this was a ritual they’d performed a hundred times before. Her smile was knowing … dangerous.
“You do not beg,” Hetairis continued, her voice thick now, rich with syrupy heat. “You invite. You lead. Then you watch them beg.”
Their mouths met like the slow bloom of twilight. One gasped. One groaned. They moved together like tides, unhurried, inevitable.
The older concubine’s hand drifted down the swell of the other woman’s hip, a featherlight touch that drew a shudder as her lips wandered along the slope of a thigh, pressing kisses with unbearable patience. Fingers curled into hair. Silk slid away from skin until they were both bare to us.
Hetairis’s voice murmured praise and poetry between every press of her mouth, between every coaxing touch. The other woman writhed, caught in a rhythm so intimate it felt like trespassing to watch. Their bodies moved like poetry made flesh.
Hetairis guided her partner with nothing but a brush of lips and the flutter of her breath. A thigh lifted. A back arched. A sigh became a moan. Her hands roamed leisurely, teasing, and beckoning—never rushed.
“Every inch of you,” she whispered against her partner’s skin, “can be worshipped. Can worship in return.”
Her mouth traveled lower, her hand tightening with purpose over the dip of her partner’s hip, possessively. I watched wide-eyed as her tongue parted the woman’s folds. There was no hesitation in her movements.
It was the most intimate thing I had ever seen.
Spartans weren’t prudish, not in the way Athenians liked to whisper. But in a village half turned to ash, where bellies ached with hunger and the sun felt like punishment, there was little thought spared for pleasure. Desire was a luxury.
I’d seen couplings before. Behind clay granaries, among the olive trees, against sun-warmed stone walls after too much wine.
I’d caught the sounds, the stifled gasps, the frenzied movement of limbs.
But it had always looked like something edged in desperation, like they were clawing for warmth in a world that had none to offer.
It had seemed urgent, fleeting. A hunger, not a feast.
This was not that.
They weren’t just reaching for each other … they were savoring. Offering and accepting. Power shifted between them with every glance, every brush of skin. It was still carnal, yes—but threaded with control. A dance, not a scramble.