Chapter 29
Light spilled through the glass windows in slanted beams, gilding my room in molten red. Outside, voices called across courtyards and horses snorted. Somewhere, an aulos fluted a winding tune. It sounded almost like joy.
It was the first day of the wedding festivities.
I sat upright, my spine straight despite the weight pressing into my chest. My fingers gripped the bedding for a breath, then released. Today would not be met hunched.
Footsteps padded outside. I half expected Anysa’s quick knock, her head poking in, her mouth already running with gossip. She was staying until after the wedding, and it would be good to start the day with her antics.
Another knock sounded, firmer, and my mood dropped.
That was definitely not Anysa.
I lifted my chin. “Enter.” The word left my mouth clearer than expected. Stronger … almost queenlike.
The door creaked open and three women entered, silent as ghosts, robed in bone-white linen. Their heads were wrapped in cloth, leaving only their faces exposed, painted pale, with thin crimson slashes across cheek and lip, like ceremonial wounds.
These must be the lower priestesses that Nomiki had spoken of.
The one in front bowed low, her spine a line of perfect discipline. “We are here to prepare you, my lady,” she said softly. Her voice was soft and calm, and without a smile.
“Proceed,” I told her, thinking that also sounded like what a queen would say.
One stepped forward and reached for my hand. Her fingers were warm, calloused at the tips, but careful, almost reverent in the way they curled around mine.
I rose.
Steam curled in slow spirals from the marble tub in my bathroom as water spilled in from a spout in the wall that was shaped like a lion’s maw, its bronze jaws gaping. I stood at the edge, watching it fill. The scent hit me first, crushed laurel, softened with rose petals.
I remembered my first bath in this palace and how I’d been unable to enjoy it. There had been blood on my skin and red dust in my hair. Fear had curled like a fist in my gut.
Now …
Now the fear wasn’t gone … but it wasn’t everything.
Amyklai would eat today. And tomorrow too.
The wagons had rolled down the road and the image of them, wooden wheels turning red earth, stacked high with sacks of grain and oil jars lashed down with rope, still rose in my mind like a balm.
I breathed it in. Whatever the next days would bring, I could get through by thinking of them.
The women waited in silence. Their faces were still unreadable, but they didn’t rush me. One held a folded linen sheet. Another knelt beside the tub, stirring the water with a copper ladle as if testing the warmth.
I stepped into the bath.
The heat bit at first, then melted into comfort.
I sank slowly, letting the water cradle my body, the perfume of herbs opening my chest with every breath.
Fingers moved through my hair, unfastening the night plaits, loosening every twist. A comb slid through the strands with care, tugging just enough to remind me I was still real, still flesh.
When the water cooled, one of the women touched my shoulder lightly.
I stepped out of the bath, water sliding down my skin in rivulets.
A soft linen towel was draped around me, its edges embroidered in red thread.
They dried me gently, like they might a sacred statue, patting, never rubbing.
The towel was taken, and I stood bare before them.
One of the women stepped forward with the first layer.
She held up the chiton made of fine, sheer white silk that was nearly translucent. As she wrapped it around me, her voice finally broke the silence.
“This marks the lineage you join,” she murmured. “White, so you are seen without question. So your soul may walk unshadowed into union.”
The fabric fell around me like mist.
Another woman stepped forward with a red sash. “And this,” she said, winding it three times around my waist, “carries the knot of Gamelion. Woven for marriage, fertility, and protection.” Her fingers tightened the knot just above my navel. “Only your husband may undo it.”
My heart sputtered at the reminder that I would be lying with Menelaus. This night wasn’t just a ceremony … it was a tether to the nights ahead.
The last woman brought pins shaped like laurel leaves, gleaming gold.
She twisted my hair into braids, anchoring them against my scalp, then let the rest fall in soft curls down my back.
The pins glinted as she tucked them in place.
“For wisdom,” she whispered, “and for victory. Laurel crowns the worthy.”
The door opened without warning and I inwardly groaned when I looked in the mirror and saw the High Priestess entering the room behind me.
She swept toward me, her robes trailing behind her, gold cuffs flashing at her wrists. Her face was as composed and unreadable as ever, but her eyes tightened with something that looked very much like alarm as she looked upon me.
She hadn’t wanted me in the Trials. She’d tried to banish me before they even began. Now I was to be queen, and still she regarded me like I would destroy Sparta.
“I’d like us to work together,” I said, breaking the silence. The priestess’s brows rose. “I know this may not be what you wanted,” I went on, forcing calm into my voice, “but I believe Sparta can be more than what it has been. I would like us to be helpmates in that. In healing it.”
Her expression didn’t shift, but her eyes narrowed as she assessed me. “That,” she said carefully, “would please me.”
Surprise unfurled in my chest, but before I could speak she went on, her voice distant. “I only wonder if fate will allow it.” Her gaze continued to hold mine in the mirror. Not cruelly, just … full of the weight of whatever terrible future she seemed to see dancing behind my eyes.
“You were born of flame, Helena,” she said, more to the mirror than to me. “And flame doesn’t know the difference between warmth and blazing ruin.”
I had no answer for that. Evidently, I would need time to prove I wasn’t to be the end of Sparta.
“Now for the final step,” the High Priestess said. She nodded once, and one of the women moved in silence, lifting a bowl from the table and passing it into the priestess’s waiting hands.
I turned toward the mirror, frowning. I was already dressed, already rouged, crowned in red poppies, and perfumed. What more was there?
The High Priestess stepped in front of me with the bowl, and I glanced into it and frowned. Inside swirled a thick, red substance, nearly opaque, streaked with the faintest glimmer, like crushed garnets melted down. An earthy scent rose from it, stinging my nostrils.
“What is that?” I asked, wrinkling my nose at the smell.
“Your body is to be marked,” the High Priestess murmured, lifting the bowl higher so that the light caught the surface. “To ensure none may touch what now belongs to the king.”
The words struck and my heartbeat stuttered, then quickened, thudding too loud in my ears.
Her eyes lifted, finding mine. “Should someone try to touch you, it will show. And they will be punished.”
My mouth felt dry. “How?”
“By death.”
A beat of silence stretched. My throat tightened. My thoughts, traitorous things, leapt back to that night—a calloused hand on my cheek, warm breath against my skin, Achilles’s mouth.
I shoved the memory down, but my body betrayed me. Heat scorched my chest, and I prayed the High Priestess couldn’t see the guilt painting itself across my face.
“Proceed,” I finally murmured, even though she had already dipped the brush and brought it to my skin.
The first stroke landed cold just beneath my neck, a shock of red that glittered faintly in the light. Not blood. But it felt like it. Like it knew it should’ve been.
The bristles scratched across my chest, leaving behind a stripe of color that shimmered like fire trapped under glass.
Another stroke, this time over my shoulder, then down my arm and my legs.
The High Priestess said nothing as she worked. Her hands remained steady, but her gaze was not. It flicked once to the mirror. Once to my face. Then away, like the sight of me unsettled her every time she looked.
Red swept over the hollow of my throat. It clung to me like a memory I hadn’t lived, like hands I hadn’t invited. Every place it touched ceased to be mine.
I wanted to wipe it off and scrub myself clean, but I stayed still.
This was everything I’d wanted, everything I’d worked for … even if each stroke of the brush felt like it was changing me into someone new.
The High Priestess drew the final stripe of red across my shoulder, then turned and passed the bowl to one of the veiled attendants. The second stepped forward with something smaller, an ivory-colored jar sealed with wax.
Without a word, the High Priestess took it and peeled the wax away. The scent struck first again, and I briefly wondered if her true intention was to keep everyone at a distance from me with smell alone.
From her robes, she withdrew a long brush with a handle that looked to be made from bone. She dipped it into the jar, the thick, black pigment swallowing all light as it slicked up the bristles.
“The red marks your body as his,” she said. “The black … marks your soul.”
I bit down on my lip. If only the High Priestess could make that true. Make me not able to think of any other man but him ever again.
It would certainly be easier.
I stared past her shoulder, forcing my gaze to a crack in the stone wall. Small, harmless. Something I could focus on while she worked Menelaus’s meaning into me with paint.
“These glyphs are not decoration. They are wards. They are chains. They are memory.”
She pressed the first stroke to my skin.
A cold bite lanced down my left arm, shoulder to wrist. I hissed but didn’t move.
The High Priestess’s brush dragged through the red, the black sinking over it in dark strokes.
From her careful, unhurried lines, the symbols took shape: coils, harsh slashes, forms I didn’t recognize but felt all the same.
“This is the Binding of Silence,” she said as the brush swept across my upper chest. “To hold your tongue when the truth would undo him.”
Another symbol at my throat. “The Sigil of Obedience. That you may follow, even into fire.”
A final flourish was made above my heart, tight and knotted in a way that made my skin prickle.
“This is Sacrifice. That you may give all to Sparta without breaking.”
Her voice softened, almost to a whisper. “Some queens wear these in gold. Others in ink. But you”—her gaze met mine—“you wear what’s meant to echo blood.”
A chill ran over my skin. Blood. As if I were being dressed in the memory of wounds I hadn’t taken yet.
She dipped the brush again and drew a spiral just below my collarbone.
“These glyphs are old,” she murmured. “Older than Sparta.” The last mark trailed down the inside of my arm. “They will stay with you every day. Even in death.”
I swallowed hard, my throat burning as she stepped back and stared at the work, not like a woman admiring her craft, but like someone bracing to watch a pyre take flame.
“You are ready,” she said, the words edged with a tension she didn’t bother to hide. She turned toward the door, then paused.
Her eyes found mine once more.
“You carry the fate of a kingdom, Helena. Be careful what you let stain your skin next.”
With those cheerful parting words, she slipped away.
Her warning lingered long after the door shut behind her though, like a prophecy I wasn’t entirely sure I was prepared to claim.