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She dragged her feet at the door. “Why did you bring me here?”

“Go to the window. Look.”

She crossed the hunted stag mosaic on her toes. Indoors, she preferred to walk this way, drinking in her silent steps. Below the window stretched the Sisters’ Courtyard. There, two different girls, one dark and one fair, whispered beneath a laurel. Their gold-hemmed tunics glinted in the sun. Their faces were familiar, players from Arsinoe’s other life—the life before her father had fled. The dark girl held a doll; the fair one reached for it.

“Let me brush her hair awhile, Aspasia.”

“She’s mine. I’ll let you when I choose.” Their voices carried on the wind.

Arsinoe turned from the scene. “I’m too old to play with dolls.”

“I thought you’d be pleased. Your friends have returned.”

“You brought them here,” she replied dully.

“I did indeed. And Berenice was kind enough to agree. It seems your antics have won you some favors on that front.” The eunuch clucked at her frown. “I thought it would make you smile, little one. You longed for girls who shared your age and birth.”

“No one shares my birth.”
No one except Cleopatra.
The longing for her sister washed over her in heady waves. For weeks, even, she wouldn’t pine for Cleopatra, and then the feeling would strike Arsinoe so hard that it knocked her wind away, and she was left gulping, hungry for her sister, for the blood and whispers that they shared. But Cleopatra was in Ephesus, she reminded herself harshly; she might already be a novice before the goddess Artemis. She wouldn’t return, and Arsinoe wouldn’t embrace these paltry substitutes.

“Of course they don’t, my princess.” Ganymedes smiled.

Arsinoe chafed at his mockery. What did it mean, to be a princess now? Was she Berenice’s heir because she’d told her of Nereus’s plot? Did her sister even care about that? Nereus, as far as she could tell, was alive and well and favored.

“But they’re noble girls of noble blood, Arsinoe. Proper companions for a Ptolemy.”

“Alexander is of noble blood.” She should know. She’d feasted on it in her dreams.

“He is. On his father’s side, at least.”

“That’s the only side that matters.” She didn’t like to think of her own mother. She refused to consider his.

“In your case, yes. But not in Alexander’s—”

“I won’t listen to you cast aspersions on his blood.” Fury clawed at Arsinoe’s cheeks.

“Noble-blooded or not, my dear, Alexander isn’t speaking to you.”

She winced at the words. It hurt more that they were true.

“Or perhaps it’s you who aren’t speaking to him.” Her tutor sighed. “I don’t know, my dear, but I do know it isn’t healthful for a girl your age to spend so much time alone, to lose herself in scrolls.”

That wasn’t fair. She shouldn’t be chided for reading. “I read Aeschylus, the oldest of Athens’s tragedians,” she protested. “You can’t object to that.” Nothing she did was good enough. Not now, not ever.

“You need companionship,” Ganymedes said quietly. “The sort of companionship I can’t provide. But these girls—they can.”

“I’d rather be alone.” That wasn’t fully true, but it was true enough.

The eunuch’s voice hardened. “You don’t have that luxury. I’ve worked hard to return these girls to you. I begged their fathers. I told them that their daughters were your particular favorites. ‘Arsinoe asks for Hypatia and Aspasia every night,’ I told them. ‘She yearns for these, her dearest friends.’ They’ve taken a great risk in returning their children to you. With your future so uncertain.”

“My
blood
is not uncertain.” She hated how everyone forgot that: blood didn’t change. Even separated from Cleopatra, from her father, it wouldn’t atrophy. Would it?

“No, it’s not. That’s why these men send their daughters despite their better judgment. Because your blood is divine. And they hope that might buy favors in good time. When the winds turn, even the most stubborn reed will bend. Surely you who are too old for dolls and childish playthings don’t need me to explain the intricacies of court, what matters and what doesn’t.”

Her tutor was right. Arsinoe’s tenth birthday had come and gone, and no one had mentioned it. She hadn’t even minded: she knew what mattered in the court. She forced herself to look out the window again. Below, Aspasia had surrendered the toy to her fair-haired friend—Hypatia. Arsinoe forced the name to her lips. With delicate fingers, the girl braided the doll’s delicate hair. It looked as though it had been cut from a girl, not a beast—the strands were that fine.

“You will go to them now. And you will play. With dolls or with whatever other toys you devise. Perhaps you’ll braid your hair and whisper secrets. It makes no difference to me. But they are your confidants now. And they will come to our lessons and learn with you and Alexander. Or with you alone, if you prefer. Alexander need not join us.”

Arsinoe’s lips tightened. “No, Alexander should come still.” She wasn’t sure whether her demand had sprung from kindness or cruelty.

As she climbed down the stairs, her heart twisted in her chest. What did these girls know of her now? These children who had been stolen away before the palace fell and had lived for nearly two years feasting in the comfort of their country homes?

“Arsinoe!” Hypatia cried as she stepped outside. The doll fell forgotten at her side.

Aspasia was already on her feet and running toward her. “Arsinoe! How I missed you. I was so worried for you—I prayed for your safety every night.”

She should smile. She should laugh. She should speak. Aspasia threw her arms about her neck. Stilted, unnatural.

“We begged our fathers to return here each day,” Hypatia added. Her arms now tangled with Aspasia’s about Arsinoe’s neck.

“I missed you both terribly.” Arsinoe forced the lie to her lips. “I can’t believe you’re real, that you’re here with me at last.”

Once she’d begun, the false words came easily to her tongue. Lying wasn’t difficult—even lying with her heart. Ganymedes had told her that she must befriend these girls. Though he wasn’t always fair, he tended to be right. Arsinoe folded her legs and sat on the ground.

“Are you quite well?” Aspasia asked, all earnestness. Her eyes searched Arsinoe’s for an answer. “You must tell us everything. All you’ve done, and all the things you’ve seen. How have you been treated? How brave you must have been!”

“The queen has treated me with great kindness.” Unlike her friends, she knew better than to talk freely. Even in the Sisters’ Courtyard, Arsinoe didn’t know what ears were listening. Besides, all told, it was the truth: she had been treated well.

Hypatia’s voice dropped to a whisper. “But—but tell us: what happened when she seized the palace? Were you very frightened?”

What do you care? What difference does it make to you, you two who were curled up cozy and comfortable in your fathers’ villas, far from the city and her woes?
Then she reminded herself:
Ganymedes insisted that we be friends.
So Arsinoe answered, “I presented myself to the queen. And she was merciful. You two are brave to return here to me.”

“Not nearly as brave as you,” Hypatia gushed. “What did you say to the queen? How did you—”

“Aspasia,” Arsinoe interrupted. She could bear no more of this needling, of these guileless questions. She shouldn’t blame them; they were children still. “Might I see your doll?”

The dark-haired girl surrendered the toy at once. Arsinoe had been right: the hair had come from a human head. She imagined what desperation must have driven some woman to sell such tender locks. There were worse things to lose, Arsinoe supposed. Hair could be regrown.

“She’s lovely.”

Her friend beamed. “Do you think so? My father brought her back to me from Petra. Her eyes are from dyed glass. That’s why they look so real.”

A flicker of movement caught Arsinoe’s attention. At the far side of the courtyard, in the shadow of her foremother’s fountain, stood Alexander. He stared at the scene with cold gray-green eyes. And then he turned back toward the colonnade.

Things grew easier in the afternoons that followed. Her exchanges with her former friends became more natural, approaching closeness at times. She laughed with them, at their stories of their time in the country and the odd folks they’d met there.

“There was one man—he called himself a priest, but I couldn’t believe it—who spoke to snakes,” Aspasia explained one day, dipping her toes in Poseidon’s waves. She’d been living far from Alexandria, south even of Thebes, where her father owned some swaths of farmland—“a thousand stades in each direction, as far as the eye can see,” the girl had bragged, although Arsinoe hadn’t quite believed her. But she was jealous of Aspasia’s mastery of the Egyptian language. The ancient tongue of the Upper Lands came easily to her now, while Arsinoe still struggled to make sense of it.

“He could
not
speak to snakes,” Hypatia snapped. Her temper grew testy whenever Aspasia’s tales rose too tall.

“He could,” Aspasia insisted. “I swear it. He had a vase of red clay, the sort that commoners might use for libations, and he’d take out a wooden flute. And when he played, the cobra would slither through the narrow mouth and dance along with the tune. And then his eyes would slowly close beneath their hood, and it would fall asleep again, as tame as anything.”

“Then he didn’t
speak
to snakes. He only played to them,” Hypatia declared, triumphant.

“But that’s not all,” Aspasia protested. “He’d whisper secrets to the creatures, and they would whisper back to him. Just like Asclepius. He knew, at once, that I was a great friend of a princess. And that I was fleeing something.”

“Of course you were fleeing something, Aspasia,” Arsinoe teased. “What else would a noble Macedonian girl be doing in the Upper Lands?”

Her friend laughed. And Hypatia did as well. When Arsinoe laughed with them, part of her wished that she’d been spirited away too, that she’d remained a child and unchanged, not transformed into some not-quite woman with frightful dreams. But games and confidences were easy. It was the lessons with Ganymedes that she dreaded.

“I wonder what man the queen will marry next.” Hypatia sighed as she ran a finger over her copy of Plato’s
Treatise on the Soul.
The eunuch had gone to fetch a second set of scrolls, and his four charges were left to entertain themselves. “I hear she’s ordered a dozen men brought before her so she might pick the one who pleases her.”

“That’s just a rumor, Hypatia,” Arsinoe answered. “Kings won’t send their sons all the way to Alexandria to merely stand before the queen.” She didn’t think they would, in any event. Berenice wasn’t fool enough to pick based on looks. After all, Seleucus had been handsome enough, for what little good that did him.

“Well, I should like to pick among a dozen men, when I marry.” Hypatia tittered at her own mischief.

Arsinoe fought the urge to groan. She found the conversation tiresome—she could only imagine what Alexander thought. “A dozen,” she echoed. “Whatever should you do with them? Race and wrestle them as Atalanta did so you might always remain a maid?”

“I shouldn’t always wish to be a maid,” Hypatia replied, tossing back her bronze hair.

Aspasia giggled madly, but Arsinoe looked away. She stole a glance at Alexander. His eyes squinted at one spot on his scroll, as though he was learning something fascinating by staring at a single phrase.

“So,” Hypatia carried on, emboldened by Aspasia’s laughter. “I wouldn’t challenge my suitors to insurmountable feats. I’d merely line them up and pick the handsomest one. The one with the broadest chest and the sharpest eyes.”

“You can’t then be jealous of the queen,” Aspasia cut in.

“Why not?”

“I don’t imagine any of her suitors will be handsome,” the dark-haired girl said.

“Why shouldn’t they be?” Arsinoe said. Their talk irritated her. It reminded her how little they knew of court, of life. “Her first husband was.”

“What do you three care who the queen marries?” Alexander asked coldly. “Why don’t you just stick to discussing who your husbands will be? That’s the only subject that interests you.”

The words cut deep. In that moment, Arsinoe hated him. She hated him for his distance and for naming her as one of them.

“That’s not true.” Her voice was sharp. He was wrong. “I don’t care who I marry, but I care very much who my sister weds. For the man my sister weds will become the king.”

“And does it matter if the king is handsome?” Sometimes Alexander thought himself so very clever. “Will that change how he rules?”

“Beauty always matters,” Arsinoe snapped. She, too, could be clever. “It matters because it changes your position in the world. The same reason that blood matters. Helen’s beauty sailed a thousand ships—and wrecked the city of Troy.”

“Helen was a
woman.
”

“Helen was a
queen.
And the daughter of all-seeing Zeus. Besides, Paris was a beauty too—the most handsome man in all the world. That’s why the goddesses chose him to pick the loveliest among them. And that’s why Aphrodite gave him Helen, even though she was already wed to Menelaus.” Arsinoe spoke eagerly—she knew that she’d seized on the perfect argument. Alexander wouldn’t stand a chance.