Chapter 34
The moment was nearly upon me.
That was all I could think as the nobles surged down the palace steps ahead of me, their laughter ringing sharp as cymbals. Women waited with baskets of dried fruit and nuts, tokens of fertility, of abundance … of the body I would give the king.
My gaze lifted again despite myself, skimming the edges of the courtyard, the clusters of faces, the places a familiar presence might have been allowed to stand.
Just once more. But there was still nothing.
The realization settled quietly, final as a door closing, and I let my eyes fall away. I wouldn’t look for my mother again.
The chariot crouched in the courtyard, gleaming as its wheels caught the blood-tinged light of dusk. Two white horses stamped the earth, their manes woven with olive branches, bridles strung with ribbons that trailed like veins.
I climbed in without help as the king stood at the entrance of the palace doors and watched with those otherworldly eyes, his fingers still twitching at his sides like he was trying to hold whatever was in him back.
The hymēnaios began, soft at first, and then it rose. A marriage hymn. A farewell song. A chorus for the woman I once was and the queen I was about to become.
My fingers tightened around the reins. My gaze stayed forward as the chariot wheels turned slowly beneath me, creaking under the weight of ritual. The music shifted again, deeper, falling to a near chant as the torches burned lower.
At the top of the palace steps, the High Priestess lifted her hand, the golden beads at her wrist catching the dying light. The crowd hushed at once, the hymn falling into silence, as if all of Sparta held its breath as she signaled the start of the final rite.
The Triad.
Three full revolutions around the palace, each one a sacred symbol: birth, life, death. A bride’s passage through time before she crossed the threshold into a new name. A new fate.
The horses snorted and pawed at the stones, their breath steaming like ghosts in the cooling dusk. It said much about the situation that I couldn’t even admire them. The bite of the reins bit into my palms, the sting pulling me back to the words Calismae had left me. We are saved.
I forced those words into my chest, tasting iron where I had split my lip. Even with Anysa’s blood still staining my thoughts, even with the memory of what flickered behind Menelaus’s eyes … I had to keep moving.
If this crown was poison, then I would drink it. If this throne was a cage, then I would sit in it. If lying with Menelaus was the price, then I would pay it. I had sworn, long before today, that I would save Sparta. And a vow like that had to be heavier than any fear.
Someday I wanted all of Sparta to say … We are saved.
The wheels groaned as the chariot began its first circle around the castle, and the crowd parted in devoted silence as the torchbearers lit my path.
The first turn was for birth.
Women threw handfuls of almonds and dried pomegranate seeds. They struck the sides of the chariot, caught in the folds of my gown, and dusted my shoulders like offerings flung at a shrine.
A shrine that bled. A shrine that burned.
Somewhere in the crowd, a lyre plucked a single aching note that cut clean through the dusk. My body locked around it. Eyes fixed, lungs tight, I held myself rigid, already more monument than woman, as if I’d been changed into stone to bear witness.
I hoped as they stared at me … as they admired the red paint slashed across my skin, the black sigils spiraling down my arms … that they saw a queen. That they saw Helena the Beauty—Sparta’s daughter, Sparta’s promise. That they didn’t see the fear clamped tight across my ribs.
The second turn was for life.
The procession closed in on the chariot. The nobles’ faces blurred as we passed. The sky darkened overhead, and torchlight caught in my veil, bathing me in its glow.
And then, the final turn.
Death.
By now the air was thick with silence. Even the offerings had stopped. The palace towered, vast and light-starved in the dark, and I realized how much it resembled a tomb.
As I came to the end of the third circle, the chariot lurched to its final halt, wheels grinding against stone, and my stomach turned with it. I stared up at the high arched doors of the private wing … the anaktoron. The king’s chamber.
The horses stamped and snorted, each strike of their hooves echoing in my chest.
“The rite is complete. May your union be fruitful. May your womb bear the strength of Sparta,” called the High Priestess, her voice cutting clear across the courtyard.
The words had barely left her mouth before the crowd erupted.
Cheers suddenly rose like a breaking wave, their voices colliding in a thunderous swell.
Fists punched the air and women resumed tossing handfuls of dried fruit, figs pelting the ground like offerings and rattling against the wheels of the chariot.
My body stayed rigid from my growing anxiousness, while their joy poured over me.
Menelaus’s hands found my waist, lowering me from the chariot with a softness that surprised me.
I glanced up at him, lips parted. He gave me a gentle smile, making something in me relax the tiniest bit.
“You did well, my bride,” he murmured, and my eyes widened.
The cheering ebbed, giving way to a marriage hymn, and my chest cinched tighter with every note.
My legs dragged and the red paint streaked across my skin burned and itched like chains as he pulled me forward toward his rooms. No one but a royal was permitted to cross into them.
And once I stepped over the threshold, I would not step out the same.
And still I walked. My sandals struck the marble, each step reverberating among the cheers.
We are saved, I whispered to myself as the anaktoron doors sealed shut behind us.
The cheers outside faded to a muffled roar, leaving only the sound of Mene laus’s breaths.
And I knew then that while my village had been saved … my own journey was just beginning.
I stood in the chamber, the air clinging close with the faint sweetness of wine. My pulse fluttered, nerves and a fragile thread of hope tangling in my chest as I forced myself to keep my eyes forward—not to the bed, not to the walls that had swallowed countless secrets before me.
I kept my eyes on him.
Menelaus was standing in front of me and for a moment, his gaze was simply his own. Dark, sharp … and utterly mortal.
But then it shifted again. In the space of a blink, something else looked out at me, hollow and watchful, as if another pair of eyes pressed against the inside of his. The change was so quick I would’ve doubted myself … if it hadn’t happened again.
Normal. Then not.
Human. Then something far older wearing the shape of a man.
The two impressions flickered back and forth, not smoothly, but like they were wrestling for dominance, neither willing to release its hold on him.
A cold tremor feathered through my spine. Still, I met his gaze. I refused to look away.
His mouth curved in a knowing twist that made my skin tighten. “Good,” Menelaus said, his gaze sliding over me possessively. “A queen with fire. I’ve always wondered how long fire lasts when held in a god’s hand.”
A god’s hand.
The implication hit like a blow. Was that what had happened to his last queen? Had he tried to shape her into something no mortal could survive? Was that what he saw in me—something to test, to bend, to scorch until nothing recognizable remained?
Fear churned in my stomach … but I locked my jaw refusing to let him see me shrink.
He lifted a hand, and his ringed fingers slid into the roses braided through my hair. One by one, he plucked them loose. Petals drifted down like red ash. “I’ve never handled something this beautiful before,” he murmured, almost wonderingly. “Let’s see how well you endure.”
The word struck me harder than his touch ever could. Endure. As if he were another Trial. A test of strength. A shiver shot through me, and I prayed he hadn’t felt it.
But of course he did. His smile deepened and my unease grew.
He tugged the gold pins loose until my hair tumbled down my back.
His hands were relentless, dragging at my dress in rough jerks and tugs, baring me one inch at a time.
The silk fell like it meant nothing. Like I meant nothing.
It pooled at my feet in a soft sigh, the last boundary between him and my building terror.
Menelaus stilled, his greedy hands gone slack at his sides.
His eyes drank me in, consuming but also arrested, as though even he was not immune to the sight he had uncovered.
His chest rose once, hard and fast. “Truly,” he murmured roughly, “there is no woman in all the lands as beautiful as my queen.”
Terror still raced like fire through my veins, but his words struck something else within me. A reminder. My beauty was the weapon I’d been born with, the only blade I could still wield. He might think to break me, but so long as he desired me, I held power.
I forced my lips to curve seductively, to make my voice a sensual purr that masked the quiver in my throat. I remembered Hetairis’s lessons. “And here I thought Sparta’s king bowed to no one. Yet look at you—already undone.”
For a breath, silence reigned. Then his laugh broke free in a harsh, splintering burst, the echo of stone cracking in a sculptor’s hands.
“Undone,” he repeated, stepping closer as his eyes raked over every inch of me. “Yes. I am.” His voice dropped to something almost reverent, almost lethal. “If having you meant falling to my knees, I would beg. Every day. For the rest of my life.”
His breath brushed my cheek in a slow exhale, warm enough to raise a tremor under my skin.
“But understand something, my beauty …” His fingers lifted, hovering near my throat before closing with a sudden, bruising certainty.
“If I’m on my knees”—his grip tightened, dragging me closer—“you’re on your knees with me. ”