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She blinked her eyes and shook away his mawkish words. She wouldn’t succumb to meekness, not after everything she’d endured. “Is this how all men speak in Cappadocia? With honeyed whispers and not a bit of sense?”

He cocked his head, and his dark curls kissed his lashes. “In Comana, we speak as we see. How do men address you here that it shocks you to hear praise?”

“They address me with due respect. And fewer cloying compliments.”

“Would you rather I insult you, then?”

A step erased the space between them. He towered over her; for once, Berenice felt so very small. Unnerved, she looked down, but he cupped her chin and brought her eyes to meet his. She could feel his heart beating through his chest. Its pounding matched the hammering of her own.

“Tell you that you are nothing, no one? Underestimate you as every other creature has done—man, woman, and eunuch?”

He kissed her, long and soft and sweet. She didn’t slip away.

“No.” The sun glinted in his eyes. “I’ll not betray your worth.”

What does that mean?
her reason begged. But her thoughtless heart silenced her objections. For that moment, she bathed, fluttering, in his warmth.

Younger

S
tiff linen scratched her skin. Unworn, the garment rubbed and stuck in places, just as she’d told Myrrine it would when her nurse pinned the new robe beneath her arms and wrapped it about her frame. At least she couldn’t get too cozy in it. The temple’s heady incense made her sleepy, and the prickle of discomfort kept her alert. Squinting against the sun, she twisted to watch the procession of nobles shuffle onto the benches. Deep reds and purples had returned to fashion, and it seemed that every highborn Alexandrian worth his salt had draped himself as richly as a rose bloom. Beyond the adornments, the faces were familiar. Thais and Nereus, Dryton and Laomedon. Arsinoe even caught sight of Hypatia’s father, his auburn beard kissing his comrade’s ear as he whispered some amusing secret.

And then came Berenice, all white and gold and glowing. Arsinoe tried to snare her sister’s gaze, but the bride didn’t even glance in her direction. No, the queen had eyes only for Archelaus. Arsinoe squirmed and shifted against stone to inspect this second bridegroom. He was tall—taller than Seleucus, for certain. Taller even than her Achilles had been before Berenice’s men had struck him down.

At the high altar, the royal pair met before the stone-faced god. The priest joined their hands. Arsinoe’s knee jangled against the bench. It helped to banish her anxieties to one part of her body; she liked to watch it spring to life.

“I accept you.” Archelaus’s voice rang no different than Seleucus’s once had. Would her sister murder this one too? She’d no reason to think this Archelaus would betray Berenice. But she hadn’t suspected Seleucus either, not at first, not until she’d overheard his man plotting with Nereus. She liked this plan: wed men, murder them, and steal their soldiers. That would be her course, when she ruled.
How would you come to rule, Arsinoe?
the serpent’s voice teased.
How many are you prepared to kill?

“Stop twitching.” Ganymedes’s hand stilled her leg. “And pay attention.”

She
was
paying attention. It wasn’t her fault that the ceremony was so like the last that she could mouth along with every word.

“Before the great god Serapis, I join these two humble suppliants in body, in spirit, and in mind.” The high priest’s voice echoed shrilly, which somewhat ruined the effect. He sounded comical rather than solemn, at least to Arsinoe. “Their union shall be blessed by sons, sons who will rule Egypt until the day Serapis rises from the dead.”

Myrrh filled her nostrils and her lungs, along with the salt and a trace of some other scent. Her eyelids drooped. She soared as a vulture over blinding sands. The stench of death lulled her circles lower, lower, lower…and then she saw the carcass unattended. Young and fresh with blood. Her lids snapped open. All around her men were rising, only to sink to their knees in deference to the queen and her consort. This time Arsinoe didn’t try to catch Berenice’s eye.

“What did you note?” the eunuch asked as his firm grip led her from the temple. Outside, a mob of commoners had gathered along the street, swarming the columned porticoes of the nearby houses to catch a glimpse of her sister and her second match.

“My sister likes this husband better than the first.”

“How could you tell?”

“I could see it in her eyes, the way she looked at him,” Arsinoe answered brightly, though she found the questions wearisome. There was little to learn from second ceremonies, second weddings—seconds in general.

“You’ll have to do better than looks and glances,” the eunuch told her as they turned onto the vast Canopic Way. The crowd grew rowdier here, often spilling into the avenue, as though their distance from Serapis’s temple spared them any thought of decorum. A drunken man lurched toward them, casting off the warning hands of his wiser friends. Quickly, a guard emerged and knocked him back, striking him with the flat of his sword. Arsinoe winced at the blow, and Ganymedes steered them closer to the street’s center after that. At times, they passed so close to the pools that dotted the median that she could dip her fingers in their depths.

“Keep your dirty hands out,” Ganymedes scolded her. “Common folk draw their drinking water from there. Now pay attention. Tell me: what else did you see?”

That wasn’t fair. Her hands had been scrubbed clean that morning. But she didn’t bother to object. The eunuch didn’t seem to be in the mood to listen.

“The ceremony was much like the first.” Arsinoe shrugged. “The stalls were more crowded, though, and I saw Hypatia’s father in attendance.”

“Indeed,” Ganymedes said thoughtfully. “And why do you think the noblemen of Alexandria were eager to see the queen wed a second time?”

“A good wedding means good wine,” she quipped. She’d heard that somewhere—from Myrrine, perhaps? The entrance to the palace loomed at the avenue’s end, the gold-plated gates thrown open to admit the line of emptied wagons that lurched ahead. When they’d left that morning, each cart had overflowed with wine and grain, coins and sweetmeats. Wedding gifts for the subjects from their queen.

Ganymedes spoke sharply, shattering her reverie. “When I ask you a question, you’ll take a moment to consider, so you stand a chance of answering it wisely.”

Arsinoe bit her lip, hard. But not hard enough for blood. She did that sometimes, when she was alone. She liked the jolt of pain, the iron taste on her tongue. “They don’t believe my father will return.”

“You can be very wise, Arsinoe.” Her tutor smiled widely, and she could see the blackened gums along his upper teeth. “Now tell me: have you learned to use that present I gave you?”

She practiced—she did. Each night when she was alone, Arsinoe gouged the blade into her writing desk and hurled the knife against the wall. But in truth she couldn’t say she’d made much progress: the dagger wouldn’t stick when she threw it, and she wasn’t sure whether her skill at skewering a slab of wood would help much if she should have to skewer a man. Besides, Myrrine had discovered the scratch marks on her furnishing, so she had to be doubly careful not to be discovered.

“I have learned,” she lied. She’d find someone to teach her.

“Good, very good indeed.” The eunuch pursed his lips.

As they entered the palace, Ganymedes pulled her aside, ducking into the small rotunda—Alexander’s shrine. Within, a marble figure of the great man, naked and large as life, clutched a sword in one hand and a scepter in the other. The curved walls were covered with frescoes from the Conqueror’s life: his birth, his blessing at Ammon, his defeat of the Persians. Arsinoe wondered how her own altar might look, how she would feel if her likeness should live forever surrounded by her memories, living them over and over again. That was foolishness. There would never be a shrine to her.

She felt Ganymedes kneel beside her. His knees creaked beneath his weight. “I’ve been sent word that your father has left Ephesus,” the eunuch whispered so near to her she could taste his breath. “He shall return to Alexandria. And soon. With many men.”

Her mind jolted at the news. Her father would return—with soldiers. A thousand pressing questions sprang to her tongue. What would happen to Berenice? Would her sister flee the palace—or stay and fight? And would her father welcome her? Or was she tainted now—a traitor?

“Ganymedes,” she began, “what will—”

“Hush, Arsinoe. Now is not the time.” Ganymedes put a hand to her lips. “Go find your friends, and bring them to the library. It’s a feast day, but that doesn’t excuse you from lessons.”

She hated that sort of answer. Hated how grown-ups still treated her as a little girl, as though she hadn’t aged a thousand years since she’d been abandoned in the palace. But she held her tongue—that, too, she’d learned. And so she merely nodded. But she didn’t do as she was told. Aspasia and Hypatia would only sully her mind with petty concerns. She didn’t want to recount each moment of the wedding, every stitch of her sister’s robes. The eunuch would tell her nothing with the others lurking about anyway, and she needed time to think on her own.

Arsinoe shunned the great courtyard, where the servants busied themselves in preparation for the evening’s feast, and wandered up through the gardens, looping back in circles to make sure no man followed her. The news of her father’s rise troubled her. More bloodstained stones to wash away with rain. She didn’t want Berenice to die.

The Alexandrian sun beat hard upon her shoulders; her skin burned to summer’s bronze. Myrrine always scolded her for spending so much time basking in it—“a princess shouldn’t be as brown as a farmer’s daughter.” Arsinoe liked how she assumed a new color each season. She pictured herself as one of winter’s dull birds that brightened when the temperature warmed.

She approached Aphrodite’s fountain, the site where her vision had come true. She slipped off her sandals and stepped in. The water rose first to her ankles and then, with another step, to her knees as she squeezed behind the statue. Squatting, back flush against the shell, she waited. The gods would send new images to cloud her eyes, ones that would reveal the outcome of the war, and teach her how she should act and feel and how to wield a knife. But she saw nothing—only the statue’s stone back and the sky beyond. The trees reflected in the pool, and her own hands, brown against the water.

In time, she stood, a fool.

“Arsinoe.”

Hypatia’s voice. She ignored it.

“Arsinoe.”

Again.

“Arsinoe. What’re you doing there?” Hypatia snickered at the fountain’s lip. Dark-haired Aspasia stood silent at her friend’s side. At least she didn’t laugh.

“What do you care?” Arsinoe glared at the girls. She hated them, their lighthearted giggles and easy smiles. How could Ganymedes think them suitable companions for her? What could they teach her of the world?

“Ganymedes asked us to fetch you.”

“You do the eunuch’s bidding now?”

Nervous, Hypatia shifted under Arsinoe’s gaze. Arsinoe knew she should be kinder. The girl wasn’t to blame for her father’s homecoming, or for the poison images that corroded her thoughts.

“Come. Linger awhile. It’s a feast day, after all.” Arsinoe grinned. “The eunuch can’t expect us to hurry to our courses.”

The fair-haired child hesitated, but Aspasia tossed off her sandals and skipped into the pool, splashing wildly about the stones. Arsinoe kicked up water too, and soon they were both collapsed, soaked in water and laughter. Only when the slopping subsided did Hypatia approach.

“What was the wedding like?” she asked shyly from the fountain’s edge.

“Archelaus
is
rather handsome,” Arsinoe teased. “You might like him after all.”

“My father said the same.” Hypatia sighed. “I wish he’d taken me too.” She eyed Arsinoe’s ruined silks. The girl’s fingers twitched at her side. “I’d never hear the end of it if I played in clothes like those.”

“I’ll give some to you, if you’d like,” Arsinoe offered. Glancing back to Aspasia, she added, “To both of you.”

“Will you? Will you truly?” Hypatia squealed. Arsinoe shied away from the sound of the girl’s delight. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have so few worries that clothes could soothe her wounds.