Prologue
Alexandra
Alexandra hurled herself through the storeroom door and slammed it shut behind her. There was no lock, nothing to keep it closed, but she pressed the length of her body against the wood and prayed that it would be enough. There was a brass skewer in her hand, snatched from the hearthside as she’d hurtled past it and still flecked with grease and scraps of charred meat. Alexandra clutched it like a sword. Her feet were bare and filthy, the flesh of her arm torn wide open and sticky with blood. Every breath she drew was a gasp—ragged and painful. And loud. Too loud. She would be heard. She would be found.
No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than there was a sound in the room beyond, a dull, regular thudding. And beneath that, the patter of bare feet on stone. Closer and closer they came, until she could have sworn they were right beside her. Alexandra clasped both hands to her mouth so that the cold of the skewer pressed against her lips. Her throat was raw from screaming; if there was anyone left in the house, she knew by now that they would not be coming to her aid. There was nothing left to do but stay quiet and hope.
She drew in a long, slow breath, cringing as the air whistled in her throat, and strained to listen for movement on the other side of the door. Silence. Alexandra exhaled as quietly as she could and counted from one to twelve, her lips shaping the names of the gods atop Olympus. Nothing. She counted back from twelve to one, ending on Aphrodite. There was no sound now; whatever lay beyond the door was waiting. Or, perhaps, it was gone? Alexandra allowed herself the smallest glimmer of hope.
Without lowering her shaking hands from her mouth she turned her head, slowly, slowly, to face the door.
Ah. Not gone. The realization hit her like a blow and she froze, staring. On the other side of the door, through the gaps in the worn wood, a bloodshot golden eye stared back at her. A sob escaped the tight cage of Alexandra’s fingers, and the eye narrowed, crinkling at the corners. Alexandra caught a fleeting glimpse of pale bloodless lips—pulled apart and baring teeth. Then they were gone. The eye, the lips, the teeth, all gone.
But where had they gone? Where?
Alexandra was not left wondering for long. With an awful rending sound, the door was ripped from its hinges and slammed into her. The skewer clattered uselessly from her fingers as she went flying back into the storeroom, crashing into the sacks that lined the wall. Her head smacked hard against the stone. The sacks were kept atop a low wooden bench to keep them from the damp of the floor and the sand that covered it in a fine layer, but they toppled readily as Alexandra hit them, following her to the ground. She lay there like a discarded doll, dizzy and panting, surrounded by lentils and seeds and grain and the first spill of blood. The door rested atop her. A dull, distant ache radiated from the wrist she’d fallen on.
She turned her head painfully to the side. Her vision spun. Beneath the bulk of the door, she could see nothing but a patch of hazy seed-scattered floor. For a moment, everything was still, then a shadow rippled across the ground, followed by the dancing glimmer of a reflection. A glint of metal like the shine of firelight off a blade. Alexandra turned her head away. What use was watching? It would only make her more afraid. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited, her pulse thrumming frantically in her ears, her throat, her belly, and the tips of her bloodied fingers.
When the door was lifted from her, it was with something like gentleness. A gasp rushed past her lips as the pressure on her chest released and she felt something warm dribbling from the corner of her mouth. Blood. The taste was overwhelming as it began to carve a path across her cheek to drip from her jaw. The dull pain of her wrist flared and hardened. Broken, she was almost sure of it.
There was a sharp ringing thud, something solid making contact with the floor so close to her face that she felt the disturbance in the soft short curls that framed her face. Alexandra whimpered.
“Shhh.” A rustling of fabric as the monster knelt. A careful hand caressed Alexandra’s face, wiping the blood away. Then the soothing shushing gave way to a foul wet sucking. Alexandra squeezed her eyes shut tighter. Her lips shaped the words of a prayer to Persephone, lady of flowers, goddess of a spring Alexandra would not live to see through.
The hand returned to her jaw and Alexandra leaned wearily into the cool press of fingers. Another hand cupped her opposite cheek so that her face was cradled, tenderly, between two palms. “Please,” croaked Alexandra.
She was not sure what she was asking for. But the grip of fingers on her flesh tightened in response—they held her head in a sudden vise, then jerked it sideways.
Alexandra thought she felt it when her neck broke.
INo Earthly Creature
Eirene
Eirene regarded the basket of plums with the same distaste she would have shown the rotting corpse of a rabbit.
The individual fruits were perfect—plump, richly pigmented, unmarked, and identical. They could not have been on the doorstep for long; the morning dew was only just beginning to collect on their shining skins, and Eirene couldn’t help but watch a droplet mark a slow, inviting trail downward. Despite herself, she inhaled, and the air was thick with their fragrance.
“Gods, again?” Phoebe materialized at her shoulder without warning, a slender, serious wraith in her ivory chiton.
Eirene started, snatching her hands back from the basket of plums. She had barely registered herself reaching for them. “I wasn’t . . . ,” she began guiltily.
Phoebe hardly seemed to hear her. Her brow was furrowed, and her teeth worried at her lower lip as she leaned past Eirene for a closer look. “The third basket in as many days,” she observed flatly. “And they’re from him, aren’t they?”
Eirene nodded reluctantly, unable to meet her twin sister’s eyes. “Who but Leandros could find plums at this time of year?” And it was not just plums. Yesterday it had been figs and the day before that pears and a cluster of golden grapes—all perfectly ripe, all impossible to find in these late spring days on Zakynthos.
Eirene had not allowed a single one over the threshold.
Perhaps she was cautious to the point of ridiculousness, but everything about Leandros frightened her. His rumored beauty, unnatural and captivating; the grand house he owned in the hills with its single looming tower; his claims that the blood of gods—of Eros and his divine mother, Aphrodite—flowed in his veins. Then there were the bottled Desires he sold to the wealthiest islanders. He claimed he had inherited the power of love itself, that he could thaw even the iciest of hearts.
Eirene had seen enough to believe it, and she wouldn’t be allowing Leandros anywhere near Phoebe, or her heart. What business did Leandros have sending gifts—ones that seemed a lot like courting gifts if you asked Eirene—when he already had a wife at home? Round-hipped, wide-eyed Alexandra with her clever tongue and bright laugh had been admired for years and for miles and golden Leandros had won her within weeks of arriving on the island. He had his prize and he’d taken enough from Eirene. Neither she nor Phoebe had seen their old friend since her marriage.
“Are we going to tell Stavros?” Phoebe crouched down and picked up a single plum. She straightened, turning it over in her palms. Eirene watched her sister with a knot in her throat.
Phoebe had been plagued by a recurrent fever throughout their childhood—the same fever that had claimed their parents—and it had always been up to Eirene to nurse her sister through each terrifying bout. Over the years, she’d learned which herbs would cool Phoebe’s brow or coax her into a heavy dreamless sleep. She’d mastered the art of swapping the sweat-drenched blankets out around her sister’s prone form, and she’d even perfected a bone-broth stew that Phoebe could keep down when everything else made her retch.
Still, despite Eirene’s best efforts, Phoebe seemed to grow slighter with each passing winter. Shadows gathered beneath the jut of her collarbones. Over time, the warm brown of her skin had become sallow; her dark curls had lost their luster.
“Eat it,” said Eirene reluctantly, nodding at the plum in Phoebe’s hands. Though she wouldn’t touch a single one herself, she would not—could not—stop Phoebe. They were just plums. They couldn’t do her any harm. “As many as you want. But I’m throwing them in the river when you’re finished. I don’t want Stavros knowing about this.”
“He’ll find out eventually,” said Phoebe reasonably. She pulled apart her plum with her fingers, plucking the stone from the shining yellow flesh
with a practiced ease. She tucked one half into each cheek and spoke with her mouth full. “He might be drunk half the time, but he isn’t stupid.”
“I have to disagree,” said Eirene.
“And,” said Phoebe, “the window in his bedchamber overlooks the path—one day, he’ll sleep off the wine a little earlier and catch sight of whoever’s delivering the fruit.” She swallowed. Her next words were clear. “Or Leandros will just tell him. Whatever it is he has to tell.”
“Perhaps Leandros prefers to keep his business his own.”
Phoebe shrugged and ducked down for another plum. Eirene got the sense she was hiding her face. Her voice quavered on her next words. “If you say so.”
“I do,” said Eirene, with more confidence than she felt. “Are you done? The light’s good—if you finish off that chlamys you’re making I can take it with me to the market. And I can get rid of these before Stavros sees.” She bent down and swung the basket of plums into her arms. Their scent hit her again, harder, and her mouth filled with saliva. She must have been hungrier than she realized.
“Let me have one more.” Phoebe stretched out her hand. Her calloused fingers were sticky with juice and there were crescents of dark plum skin caught beneath the bitten-down nails. Eirene couldn’t stifle the shiver of guilt that ran down her spine; weaving was a fiercely physical task and it cost Phoebe more than angry new blisters and dozens of little cuts where the rough twists of wool had been drawn across her flesh. She would work from dawn till dusk, until she physically could not go on and the relentless overwork pushed her into another spell of sickness. She needed rest—they both knew it—but no one had talent like Phoebe. They could not afford for her to stop, and Phoebe would say as much whenever Eirene begged her to take even a day of respite.
Eirene pushed two more plums into her sister’s dye-stained palm. “Go on,” she said gruffly. “I need to leave soon.”
“Don’t forget to pick the rosemary,” said Phoebe. “The physician always needs more and he pays well for it.”
“I know,” said Eirene, who had forgotten to pick the rosemary. “Mind your own business. Is the chlamys ready?”
Phoebe rolled her eyes. “Don’t harass me. You can’t hurry art.” Before Eirene could reply—to say that she’d better hurry if she didn’t want to starve—Phoebe had whirled on one bare foot, the plums clutched to her chest, and scurried into the house. Her footsteps were light on the tiled floor. They were all but silent on the stairs.
It was an unspoken rule between the two of them, staying quiet until they knew that Stavros had awoken. Even then, they kept their voices low—their cousin was invariably in a foul temper after a night of heavy drinking and losses at the gambling tables. Last night had been one of Leandros’s grand symposia, where all his
guests drank for free, so Stavros would be twice as unpleasant this morning.
Eirene scowled at the thought of the symposium. If Stavros ever knew of Leandros’s gifts, he’d certainly make the same assumption that Eirene had—that Leandros grew bored of his wife. That he sought a new addition to his bed. Stavros would be overjoyed at the prospect of having such a powerful ally; no matter that Phoebe would be little more than a mistress, easily discarded—Stavros would march her to Leandros’s gilded bedchamber himself.
It could not be allowed to happen. Eirene squared her shoulders, propped the basket on her hip, and set off down the path toward the river. She cursed Leandros with every step.
The house that Eirene and Phoebe shared with their cousin stood alone atop a low hill outside the village. It was an unremarkable building, indistinguishable from every other in the village below: two stories of mud and wood, a handful of windows, and a wide straw-thatched roof in dire need of repair. Stavros’s father had been a shepherd, and the house’s position gave it a fine prospect over the now empty pastures and the river that wound around them. It also meant that its occupants had to tramp up and down the hill every time they went out, which only served to add to Eirene’s foul temper as she stalked back up the path.
The remaining plums had not sunk when she’d tossed them into the river; they’d bobbed on the water’s surface, mocking her even as they were swept downstream. She’d kept the basket to use for herbs—she always needed more baskets—but she’d smacked it against every tree she’d passed on her way back, swept it through the dust outside the house, and made sure to tuck it beneath the stack of others she kept by the door. Now battered and dusty, it blended in seamlessly. Phoebe was right—as much as he drank, Stavros remained surprisingly sharp-witted. He could spot any new purchase in an instant and would spend weeks hounding Eirene over it. Once, she’d finally bought herself new sandals, two years after the old ones had first started falling apart, and he’d been so enraged he’d threatened to turn her out onto the street for wasting his money. His money, as if he’d earned a single coin. Even the memory of it made Eirene’s cheeks hot with anger. She scowled and gave the pile of baskets another kick for good measure.
Inside, she stoked the hearth that burned low in the center of the single downstairs room before padding up the only staircase, placing her feet carefully as to make only the smallest sounds. When she reached the chamber she shared with Phoebe, for sleeping and working alike, she gave the door a gentle push. It gave way beneath her touch.
Eirene slipped inside. “Phoebe?”
Her twin was perched on her stool in a patch of dappled light by the window, the finished chlamys—woven in strands of cream and wine—clutched in her slender arms. She did not turn to face Eirene right away; it was only after another, quieter, “Phoebe?” that she did.
“Eirene,” said Phoebe. She smiled and, looking like that—even with dark circles under her eyes and hollows in her cheeks and an anxious
twitch in her fingers—it was easy to see why Leandros wanted her. She was not just lovely; she was thoughtful and deliberate and kinder than Eirene ever was. Eirene was quick to temper, but Phoebe always knew how to soothe her rage with a few careful words.
Phoebe cleared her throat. She shook out the chlamys: a long rectangle of pale wool, a pattern picked out on its edges in crimson. “Here.”
Eirene took it. She had a sickening thought that this might be the last thing Phoebe made before she was snatched away by Leandros. No. No. That would not happen. Eirene would not allow it. She cleared her throat. “It’s pretty.”
“And?”
Eirene winced. Was she truly that easy to read? “Nothing.” She scrambled for an excuse. “Well, just that the cold weather is coming to an end. Not so many people needing new cloaks.”
Phoebe frowned. “You’ll manage. You always do.”
“Yes,” Eirene agreed too hastily.
There was a long silence as the two of them gazed at one another. Phoebe chewed on her lower lip and clasped her hands together. There was blood on her teeth.
Eirene broke the quiet first. “I suppose I should get going.” She turned back toward the door.
“Eirene?” Phoebe’s voice was suddenly very small.
“Yes, Phoebe?”
“You’ll make sure you get a good price for it, won’t you? You never know how long the money might have to last.”
Eirene tightened her grip on the cloak, her fingers digging into the soft wool. They wouldn’t make it to the end of the summer without Phoebe. Not with Stavros gambling away every coin he could get his hands on, buying more wine than he could ever afford, and forcing Eirene to slink shamefaced into the brothel in the morning to pay off his bills. And that was just money. How long could Eirene bear to be parted from Phoebe? They had come into the world entwined already, born knowing one another better than anyone else ever could. Eirene wasn’t sure she knew how to exist on her own. “Phoebe—” she began.
A peculiar look passed across Phoebe’s face. “Don’t forget the rosemary,” she said.
There might have been more, but they both froze at movement in the neighboring room. There was a rustle of blankets, then the thud of unsteady feet on floorboards. Stavros had awoken. Phoebe’s expression hardened. Eirene felt her own face twist. Together, they listened to Stavros lurch toward his window and throw open the shutters. A pause, then there came the distinct sound of urination, followed by an indecently loud grunt of relief. Another time, they might have grinned at each other, smothered their sniggers, but today—
“Eirene,” Phoebe began, “do you ever think maybe I should—”
“No,” said Eirene. The word was hard and brittle, like a broken jar in her mouth.
“You know what Leandros is. You know what he can do. Could you really stop me if I was determined to go? If I loved him?”
“You don’t love him,” snapped Eirene.
“I’m afraid,” said Phoebe.
Eirene had swallowed the broken pieces of the jar; now they were tearing their way through her insides. “Afraid of what?”
“That I will.” Phoebe spoke quietly, but each word was painfully clear. “Love him. That he’ll make me, and you won’t be able to stop him.”
IIThe First Arrow
Eirene
It was midmorning by the time Eirene arrived at the market square, laden down with baskets of fresh herbs—five bundles of that damned rosemary alongside the parsley and the fennel and the mint and the rest. Beside the herbs was a careful selection of tinctures she’d brewed and decanted into little clay jars and, finally—kept meticulously separate from the rest so as not to dirty it—Phoebe’s cloak. Which she intended to sell for more than all the rest combined. She still felt sick to her stomach, Phoebe’s words echoing through her ears. I’m afraid.
He’ll make me, and you won’t be able to stop him.
Eirene set the baskets down clumsily. The blanket she used as her storefront was strapped to her back. She pulled it free and knelt to spread it over the ground in her usual spot—easily identifiable by the neat row of rocks left there. She placed one at each corner of the blanket, then sat back on her heels, staring out at the square with dismay.
The market had once seemed to Eirene to be the beating heart of the village: a bustling, buzzing hive of activity full of carts and stalls and rickety tables and dozens of people shoving their way between them. Now, with half the sellers gone and fewer buyers with each passing day, it was like a graveyard.
Today, only two other stalls were manned: the shoemaker’s, which she hadn’t seen sell a pair in weeks, run by a craftsman so ancient he probably remembered the Titans’ reign but had forgotten that he wanted to make money; and the baker’s cart, with its mountains of fresh pillowy bread. That one was tended by a tall girl with a drawn pale face. Xenia. It made Eirene’s heart ache to look at her. Xenia had been a living ghost since her little sister, Clyte, had left to check the bakery ovens one morning and never returned. There were rumors they’d tracked her to the house of a merchant three villages over, and that the man had spat in their faces when they’d demanded her safe return. He’d claimed that Clyte was his wife and that her family had no rightful claim to her anymore. Now, standing alone at her cart, Xenia gazed blankly at the steaming piles of flatbread before her. Unable to stand witness to her suffering a moment longer, Eirene looked away, her eyes searching the rest of the square. It was a pitiful sight.
Though most of the unused carts had at least been dragged away, a handful remained—on their sides, with broken wheels, the wood rotting away—as if their owners had vanished into thin air. More likely, they had been recruited into Leandros’s growing staff. It seemed everyone in the village served him these days.
The abandoned stalls were just as depressing. One had belonged to the village physician. He had stopped sending his apprentices out to the market with bottles of tinctures and fragrant poultices. Another had belonged to a young woman who sold bundles of flowers from her garden, baskets of dried petals, and tiny jars of rose oil. After selling a particularly beautiful tapestry of Phoebe’s last summer, Eirene had bought two jars of the oil—one for Phoebe and one for her—and rationed it as if it were ambrosia, putting a single drop behind each of her ears in the morning. She’d heard no story of what had happened to the flower seller. One day, she had simply been gone, her stall deserted, her garden left to go wild.
Behind that was the goat shepherd’s stand. The goat pen stood empty, the stall before it equally barren. This late in spring, with summer a matter of days away, the kidding season was long finished and even the weakest of the newborns would have been put to pasture. This was the time when the shepherd usually sent his daughters to the market with the first of the year’s kids—sturdy, vocal things that would fetch a decent price and provide a great deal of amusement to the rest of the stallholders as they leaped easily from their pens and led muscular Chloe or sweet little Frona on a wild chase. But there were no braying little
goats here and, even more conspicuously, no Chloe or Frona.
Eirene frowned at the abandoned stall as she began to unpack her herbs and spread them out upon the blanket. The word was that a pair of noblemen from the north of Kefalonia had become enamored with the girls on a visit to the village—more likely, on their way to one of Leandros’s famed symposia, since little else drew such attendants—and had spirited them away to become their brides. The shepherd would not have let his daughters go without a fight, if it had not been for both girls declaring themselves utterly and completely in love.
Few people dared to whisper what they all thought—that it was not love at all but Desire. Desire made and offered and sold for an extraordinary sum by Leandros.
Eirene scowled, her fist tightening around the bouquet of parsley she held. It was a welcome relief when a familiar cry split the air. “Rosemary!”
Eirene looked up, already grinning, the tension falling from her limbs like water off a duck’s sleek back. Damon was the physician’s boy, but he was also Eirene’s friend. Perhaps the only real friend she had in the village now, since the rest of them—not just Alexandra and Chloe and Frona and Clyte, but Alcestis and Elene and Ianthe too—had suddenly been plucked up and carried away to marriages in the far-off corners of Zakynthos. Eirene had waited patiently, naively, for word of some kind, an invitation to visit or just the idle gossip from their new homes. Ianthe, the last to disappear, had been married a full season and Eirene was still waiting.
“Rosemary!” Damon declared again, startling her from her thoughts as he snatched up two of the bundles that Eirene had just laid down. Eirene realized she’d been grinding her teeth and forced herself to relax her jaw. She turned her attention to Damon. Strands of his shaggy dusty-brown hair fell into his eye, catching on the leather patch that covered the remnants of the other, the eye the fever had stolen from him. He pushed the loose curls back and grinned at her, folding his skinny torso in a mocking bow. “Eirene, my rosemary queen, you have saved me once again. We’re fresh out, and you know it’ll be my fault if it stays that way.”
Eirene laughed, sitting back on her haunches. “There’re three more bunches in there for you. Does your master need anything else?”
“Mint, peony root, parsley, fennel, sideritis,” Damon rattled off. His chiton hung ragged to his pale bony shins and Eirene frowned at it absently as she methodically retrieved the herbs he’d asked for. It said much of the physician that he kept his apprentice so poorly attired. Perhaps it lessened a little of her jealousy that Damon—
her friend truly, but a boy without even a fraction of her skill—had been taken on while she had been turned away.
Her humiliation had been bitter. The physician always bought her herbs, had even taken her advice on the best way to brew them once or twice. But when she had finally mustered up the courage to admit to him what she wanted—to learn from him, to be a true physician herself—he had turned her away without a moment’s thought.
“And saffron if you have it,” added Damon hopefully.
Eirene blinked away the memory of the healer’s rejection and laughed, perhaps with more scorn than her friend deserved. Her hands were full with a neat package of peony root, wrapped in a square of sackcloth. “Saffron?” she scoffed. “And where would I find saffron on Zakynthos at this time of year? They’re an autumn flower. Be sensible, Damon.”
He shrugged, putting his hands out for the peony. “Rumor says there’s crocus patches growing on the cliffs. Special patches, it says.”
Eirene snorted and tossed him the package, then set to work retrieving the fennel and parsley. “Sounds to me like someone’s trying to thin out the competition by sending them on ridiculous expeditions. Those cliffs are treacherous.”
“I’m sure someone will try it.” Damon picked at the edges of the sackcloth. “Not everyone is afraid of heights.”
Eirene scowled. “Do you want to pay double for that?”
He ignored her irritation and leaned in closer. “The whispers came from Leandros’s man.”
Eirene stiffened. “What?”
“Right. Some fool will get it in his head that he can trade a crocus for one of Leandros’s Desires and then—”
“Leandros would hardly part with his Desires for so little.” Eirene could feel the flicker of her heartbeat drumming behind her eyes. She blinked hard and busied herself with bundling sideritis. “It would take a great fool to believe that there are saffron crocuses growing on Zakynthos, let alone to think that a hundred of them could pay for one drop of Desire.” She forced certainty into her voice and thrust the remaining herbs up at Damon. He balanced them atop the others with some difficulty. “Leandros is a liar and he is poisoning our home with his vile enchantments. Soon, everyone else will realize it, and then he’ll depart Zakynthos just as swiftly as he came. Good riddance.”
No matter that Leandros had been there nearly five years now, arriving in the desolation that had followed the fever and swiftly setting up his household to take advantage of whoever was left. Eirene clenched her fists. “How much is all this worth, then?” She changed the subject abruptly, waving her hands at the precarious piles of herbs in Damon’s arms. He was avoiding eye contact, though she couldn’t be sure whether that was because of her tirade or because of the question he must know she was about to ask. “Enough to pay for Phoebe’s medicine?”
Damon winced. “Eirene—”
She interrupted him quickly, before his expression could become too pitying. She had not expected a yes. “It’s fine. How much is left?”
Eirene had an unusual arrangement with the physician. He provided her with a particular tincture for Phoebe, one she had never quite managed
to replicate. He claimed it had magic in it—some enchantment from his long-ago travels on the mainland—and Eirene staunchly disbelieved him. But the truth of the matter was that there was something about it she could never identify. And it helped Phoebe. When she had one of her worst days, shivering and nauseous and dizzy, a splash of the medicine steeped in hot water could soothe the very worst of it. She would still retch at the smell of most food, of course, and it did not eliminate the fever entirely, but it would bring it down enough that it would not be deadly. Sometimes that was all they could hope for. Eirene paid off her debt to the healer with a ready and regular supply of her herbs.
“The end of the month, he told me,” said Damon.
Eirene sighed. She just had to hope the warmer spring weather kept Phoebe strong. “It’ll have to do.”
“I thought you said she needs it less often now.”
“One good year guarantees nothing,” said Eirene stubbornly.
Damon shrugged. “I suppose not.” He scuffed his battered sandals against the dirt. Then his face brightened. “Still, don’t you want to know what I heard about Leandros from my master?”
“I don’t know. ...
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
