Chapter Eighty-Two
The smell of smoke was dense in the air, and twenty bodies lay on the ground.
I myself had struck at least eight, for once my hand began the action of firing the bow, it could not stop.
One after another, arrows had streamed through the air, leaving nowhere for the men to escape.
And now they were no more. Of the bodies that lay on the ground, not one wore so much as a scrap of white.
“Thank you.” Leander approached us. “There are no words for what you have done for us—”
A burning sense of pride rose within me. This was what I had hoped for all along, to bring an end to suffering. But to continue to do such things would come at a price.
“We did not come here for free.” I spoke over him, sounding more like Thalassa than myself. “Metals. Bronze, gold. Bring us what you have. And we will need satchels too. To carry it all.”
He nodded, gesturing to the women beside him. As they scurried back into the buildings, Thalassa coughed behind me and pointed to a barn at the far side of the farm. It had not gone up in smoke the way many of the buildings had, for its roof was not thatched.
“Fine,” I muttered to myself before calling back to Leander. “And before we go, we need to see your kiln. That way, we can make our own damn tiles.”
* * *
Laughter filled the air as we journeyed back to Themiscyra.
“This is more gold than I have ever seen.” Boryana held a necklace in her hand, pressing it against her chest, though she had not the courage to wear it. “I feel like a king.”
“A king? In a land of only women? Surely a queen.”
“A queen then. I feel as though we are queens.”
Laughter deepened. Two younger women were riding backward on their horses so they could chatter and giggle with their friends behind them.
“It cannot work that way,” Safak said. “There can only be one queen. And it is certainly not you, Boryana. It is Otrera.”
I had thought the comment was nothing more than a simple jest, yet quiet descended on the group as their attention turned to me with gazes so narrow it was as if I were the only thing they could see.
In the silence, the tension widened and weaved its tendrils around me.
I forced a laugh from my throat, tight and false.
“I cannot be a queen,” I said.
“Why not? You rule a kingdom,” Safak replied.
“A land,” Boryana corrected. “There is no king, remember? It cannot be a kingdom if there is no king.”
Relief ebbed within me as I assumed the bickering would see an end to their ridiculous conversation, but it did not.
“You rule a land, Otrera,” Safak insisted. “You protect the women. You have seen that we win battles and gold and have all we need to survive. That is what a queen does.”
“That was not a battle,” I protested. “It was a group of renegade farmers. Thugs. That is all.”
“And you slaughtered them. We are an army, Otrera. That is how the world sees us now. We are an army, and an army follows its queen.”
I needed someone to put an end to this.
“Thalassa. Sotiria. Someone, please.” I twisted around on Erebus, trying to make my voice more clearly heard. “Stop them from talking such nonsense. I am not a queen. I am one of you.”
But they did not. Instead, they viewed me with the same pinched expression as everyone else.
“You are not one of us, Otrera,” Damaris said, breaking the silence. “You were never one of us. You are the one who saved us. It is time you claimed that honor.”
I could not understand. So many had died because of me. Bewilderment rendered me silent, and in that moment, every woman dropped her head.
“Queen Otrera.”
“Queen Otrera.”
The name rolled around the hillsides, around and around me, shaking the grass we walked upon as the horses whinnied their response. Every voice echoed the same words. Queen Otrera.
I had gone to battle broken. A failed mother. A barren woman. A shattered heart. None of those things had changed, except now they called me a queen.
I searched my mind, unsure how to respond, when a shadow flew overhead.
Tilting my head upward, I saw an owl in the daytime, as clear as if it were a swallow or a gull.
I could not imagine what would cause the animal to be out at such a time unless it was an act of the gods.
Athena. The wise one was sending me a sign, and I heard it.
With tears in my throat, I took my bow from across my back and thrust it into the air.
“Otrera. queen of the Amazons!”