Chapter 17 #3
Her tone may have been silk, but her eyes betrayed her. There was no softness there … only the glint of teeth behind a smile, the satisfaction of a wolf dressing its hunger in gentility. She was lying, trying to knock down my confidence before the Trial.
I aimed for nonchalance, pretending to pick an errant thread off my dress. “Yet somehow I caught the eye of the king.”
“Oh, petal,” she said, resting her chin on her knuckles, studying me like she felt sorry for me. “It was only because he could see your face. If you had been veiled, that awkward gait, those twitchy hands … he never would have looked even once.”
The words slithered under my skin before I could stop them.
Part of me knew she was only trying to wound … but another, quieter part twisted in doubt. I remembered the weight of the veil over my face, the High Priestess’s horror, the snap of rejection that had cut through the hall.
What if Hetairis was right? What if beauty was all I had, and without it, I was nothing worth seeing at all? What if I’d been wrong about the king recognizing me even with a veil? What if I got lost in the crowd of chosen because I had nothing else to offer?
Her grin widened as she realized she’d struck a nerve, delight flickering across her face like a cat toying with a dying bird. “There it is. That doubt. Keep it close, petal—it’s the only honest thing about you.”
I straightened, forcing the tremor from my voice.
“If what you’ve said is true,” I said tightly, “then isn’t it your job to teach me more than that?
” I leaned forward. “I know what it is to be desired,” I murmured.
“I’ve had men follow me home. Sneak onto my family’s land just to catch a glimpse.
I’ve woken up to footsteps outside my window.
I’ve had to twist away from hands I never invited, to shut down stares that never asked permission. ”
Something cold flickered in her gaze, but I didn’t let it stop me.
“I want to learn how to shape that want, how to frame it for what I need … how to control it.”
She leaned back, that lazy smile gone now. Her gaze sharpened with something I didn’t yet have a name for … interest, maybe. Or the faintest echo of respect.
“That,” she said, her voice like a hum, “is something I can work with.”
Hetairis sighed theatrically, before rising with the grace of someone who’d never stumbled a day in her life. She circled me slowly, as though deciding where best to strike.
Her hands came down on my arms, firm, not cruel, but enough to still the air in my lungs.
“We’ll have to break you open, I think,” she murmured, her face inches from mine, gaze locked and unblinking as though she could see through my veil. “Find the heat hiding beneath all that rigidity.”
I braced myself, but her grip only tightened slightly, anchoring me there.
“Because believe me, Helena of … wherever”—her mouth curved, mocking now—“you’re going to need it.”
Everyone was busy, on their knees, crawling, practicing the art of allure with trailing fingers and arched backs. Their veils fluttered as they swayed, bodies moving to rhythms that throbbed languidly like heartbeats in heat. No one was looking at me.
But it felt like they were.
Like every gaze in the room slid sideways when I shifted. Like every sigh, every sultry command from teacher to student was layered with judgment meant for me.
I was supposed to be dancing. Enticing. Drawing eyes like honey draws flies. Instead, I stood there like a statue someone forgot to carve properly, burning from the inside out.
Hetairis settled back in the settee, reclining like a queen returning to her throne. She waved a lazy hand through the air. “Again. Begin.”
My pulse drummed loud enough to drown thought.
I took a breath and tried to ground myself as I awkwardly shifted my hips, trying to mimic what she’d shown me …
grace, elegance, a kind of liquid seduction in motion.
I let my hands trail down my sides, tracing silk as if it could disguise the flesh and nerves beneath it.
I tried to remember how I’d felt walking through the hall, how I’d swayed my hips and made him look.
Or had that just been because of my face?
Hetairis let out a snort, loud and unkind. “Are you dancing or warding off evil spirits?”
I blinked, faltered, then tried again, one stilted step forward, then another, my hips swaying in a motion that felt more like I was dodging something than seducing anyone.
I dropped my voice, tried to hum something under my breath, but it came out too breathy, too fast. My hand went up—why was it going up?
—and I realized, too late, I had no idea what I was doing with it.
I let it drift down in a strange, fluttering motion that looked like I was brushing away a fly.
A few girls nearby paused their own movements, heads tilting just slightly, and mocking laughter rang out from their cluster.
Gods. I wanted the floor to open and devour me whole. Why was this so much harder with a veil on?
Hetairis’s laugh flayed the room. “Stop. Just … stop. That was the most painful thing I’ve ever seen, and I once watched a senator try to fuck a marble statue.”
I froze. Mortified didn’t even begin to cover it.
She rolled her eyes and sat up, resting her elbows on her knees.
“You’re trying too hard. You think it’s about stroking your arms and pouting like a confused nymph.
It’s not.” She leaned in slightly, her tone cooling.
“It’s a knowing, petal. That you are the prize.
That they should be the ones aching, burning, groveling just to taste you. ”
I knew this language. The pulse beneath the skin, the seduction in the eyes. I’d felt it before, that power that made men forget to breathe.
So why couldn’t I make it show?
Hetairis stood again and walked toward me, lifting my veil slightly so she could peek at my face. “Make them yearn to lift this veil and look upon you. Lure them in with your movements.”
She dropped my veil and looked away, her eyes suddenly distant.
“I’ve served this court for twenty-five years,” she said in a voice edged in exhaustion.
“Twenty-five years of strangers’ beds and eager hands, of smiling while the fruit grew riper around me, and each year sweet new flesh arriving to remind me of the youth … of the beauty that I lose every day.”
She coughed out a humorless, dry laugh.
“And still, I held their gaze. Because I knew how.”
Her voice dipped then, the bitterness flowering like bruises beneath her words. “But now I see you. So young. So unsure. And yet the gods gave you that face, those eyes, like the world should fall at your feet just because you breathe. It’s unfair.”
She sniffed. “It’s cruel,” she said, even quieter now.
“All that beauty … and not an ounce of understanding of how to wield it. If I’d had that beauty …
” She exhaled, and for a moment the weight of grief showed plainly on her face.
“I would have ruled kings. Not warmed them. Not been passed from chamber to chamber, whispering moans into ears that forgot me by morning.”
Hetairis’s mouth twisted, her gaze turning inward.
“The silver in my hair is growing bolder, and I know what’s coming.
The forgetting. The day no one calls for me.
No more jewels. No more favors. Just another relic in a palace full of them.
” Her eyes flicked back to mine, harsh again, her tone scornful.
“And it will come for you too, petal. When the shine fades, when no one turns to look … how will you keep the king’s eye then?
How will you rule when the only crown you ever had was your face? ”
A breath passed through her lips. Then her spine straightened and her chin lifted. The weariness vanished as the crack sealed. She snapped her fingers. “Again,” she said. “And this time, try not to embarrass us both.”
I nodded, my cheeks blazing.
And I began again.