Chapter 2
Hanging from her wrists, Kore screamed. Legs flailing, she thrashed wildly. Kicking at nothing…
… until her feet struck at something cold. Wet.
Water.
What had once been the floor was now the ceiling of her dark, tormented little world.
The ship had capsized.
The only screams she could hear were those of the slaves still breathing in the hull. Those few living souls also dangling from the base of the mast where they’d been tethered. Crying with helpless panic as the air grew ever more damp.
The ocean was gushing into the void beneath them. The ship was taking on water faster than she’d thought possible. Already, what had only teased at the tips of her toes had seeped well past her waist. Leaving her simple robe wet as it clung to her chilled flesh.
The Aegean was a temperate sea. Warm, when the sun might kiss away the chill.
But the water suckling at her nipples was frigid as it swallowed her body and took the bulk of her weight off her wrists. A terrifying relief that brought no comfort.
“I—I call to you, b-bright Apollo,” one of the priestesses stammered. Her voice a clear bell in the dark. “S-Son of Zeus. Gentle-natured—” She shrieked, the sound a ragged assault on Kore’s ears in tight quarters, only growing tighter.
It was a prayer she knew well. One for inspiration and grace. Meaningless here, where the son of Zeus could not see them and held no power.
Not after Kore had called on the mercy of another.
Even the air was heavy now. Tight and oppressive as the Aegean pressed in from all sides, forcing a great volume of air through tiny cracks in the ship’s hull.
Kore closed eyes that saw nothing but dark shadows. Pulling rapid, terrified breaths through chapped lips. Quick as she could. Savoring every last one, because—
Crack!
A violent shudder shook Kore’s entire world.
It rippled through her chains, rattled her bones, and made the water splash up over her head for just a moment. Sloshing and gurgling as if ravenous for another sacrifice—just one more—before she surfaced. Gasping foamy seawater into her lungs.
The mast.
It had struck the ocean floor with enough force to shatter wood like brittle clay. She saw the damage in a flash of distant, dim lightning. Splinters of wood longer than her torso embedded in the walls of the hull—and a hole torn clean through three decks.
“Save us!” the priestess beside her screeched. “Great Apollo—”
“Swim down!” Kore snarled, kicking against the weight of her chains as the water gushed into their prison with ever-greater speed. “With me! There’s a hole—a chance! Our only hope of escape!”
She reached, legs burning with the effort to keep her head above the surface. Trying to touch the other priestess. The only one she might save, if there was any hope at all.
But she was gone.
Taken by the waves without a whisper of protest or further complaint.
Chin tilted back, legs tangled in fabric, Kore took three final breaths. One after the other. Enjoying the taste of the putrid air, for it might be the last she ever sipped.
And then she sank.
Hands following her chain back to the mast, she guided the links over smooth wood.
Blind in the dark. Ignoring the many other chains and the bodies attached to them, Kore let the weight drag her down.
Saving her air to preserve what little strength remained in her muscles, she sank as if she were just another body sacrificed to the sea.
It was nothing to slip through the ragged hole between decks. Easy to find where the mast was broken clean in half. Claiming the end of her leash, Kore wrapped the length of her chain around her forearm and let herself sink further still.
Lungs not yet burning enough to force her final, soggy breath, her knees buckled when her feet struck the ceiling of the rowing deck. Blindly sweeping, she found the next gaping maw the mast had chewed through the ship and stepped through.
Her feet touched sand.
Sharp, uneven stone.
The squish of human flesh no longer warm with the fight for life.
A corpse.
Priestess or slaver, she couldn’t guess and couldn’t see. But they were all the same in death.
She pushed the body aside and crouched. Slender enough to slip through the gap between the ship and ocean floor, she kicked and fought. Clawing her way free of the ruined vessel.
The pressure changed around her in an instant.
The ship.
It was shifting.
Rocking with the force of the waves above.
Moving while she was still pinned between a sandy reef and what was left of the hull.
Panic bled through her veins, and with one final, mighty effort, she kicked and clawed. Scratching her way free—
It rolled in the sand. Unmoored. Refusing to let even one survivor escape this watery grave.
Kore was crushed.
Screaming, agony splintered through her legs and belly. The crack of her pelvis echoed in her ears from inside, the sound distorted and too loud beneath the waves. It rumbled through her bones, inside her skull, and drowned even the sounds of her screams.
She was doomed.
Lost, where no one would ever be able to look for her. Lungs empty, body broken, Kore’s lips parted on that final breath at last.
A flash of lightning struck.
Her world was ignited by Zeus’ might for a single, glorious instant. Enough that she saw.
Bodies, everywhere. The men who’d burnt Delphi and desecrated Apollo’s priestesses now floated all around her.
Some caught in the mooring, others torn to bits among the remains of the mast. Still more swept away by a relentless, ravenous current that would scatter their remains across the sea floor.
All of them dead.
The ship that had been her prison for weeks had been obliterated. Torn asunder when she’d struck a reef with fatal force, the Athenian trireme was broken in two uneven halves. Her remains already spread as far as that split second allowed her to see.
Darkness returned in a flood, and despite the agony of her horrific, imminent death, Kore summoned a smile.
Because she was grateful to Zeus for such a gift. To see her enemies brought low before she went to Hades for her final journey through the mists of Eberus to be judged.
Giving herself to the waves, Kore’s eyes fluttered closed, one last time.
The cold no longer chewed at her marrow.
She was warm, as if submerged in a bath. Engulfed in delicious pressure that touched every ache, soothed every wound.
Dying was hard, but…
… death was… peaceful.
Easy.
When Hades came for her, it was with a firm touch. Hands with strength enough to pull her free of the wreckage, his grip wrapped around her waist. Looped beneath ruined legs that were dragged through sand without a whisper of protest.
Cheek pressed close to smooth muscle, she felt it when the Lord of the Dead commanded her to, “Yield.”
So she did.