Althea-P

The hand with fine-grained sandpaper slides along the edge of the axe. Bracelets clink, dangling from the wrists. In the light of an oil lamp, Clytemnestra's shadow glides across the wall. The smell of metal has soaked into the skin of her hands over the ten years she's waited for her husband to return from the war. The insolent man who sacrificed his own daughter.

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. The sound bounces off the walls of the chambers — a herald of the vengeance she will surely carry out.

Iphigenia. She remembered that day as if it were yesterday.

Summer heat, the scent of myrrh. Agamemnon promised that his daughter would become Achilles' wife. He lured her to the altar by deceit and plunged a silver dagger into her heart. The last thing Clytemnestra remembered was her daughter's scream, a flash of light, and Artemis carrying Iphigenia's soul away.

She remembered her daughter's slender legs, like the hooves of a newborn fawn. Awkward at times, but so dear.

Her hand grips the sandpaper tighter.

She remembered Iphigenia's smile, the first time Clytemnestra held her daughter in her arms.

Tears welled in her eyes, but she held them back — merely wiped them away carelessly with her sleeve.

Her stream of thoughts was interrupted by the creak of the door. Electra entered the room.

"Enough," her daughter said. Quietly, but so that the bracelets on her mother's wrists trembled at the sound.

Clytemnestra didn't turn around. The axe's edge faced the wall, and she continued running the sandpaper along it. Scrape. Scrape.

"You've been sharpening it for the third night, Mother." Electra came closer. Her shadow on the wall covered Clytemnestra's. "For the third night you've been here alone. With that cursed axe."

"Electra, leave."

"I won't go, Mother."

Electra's voice wavered but didn't break. She knelt across from her mother. Looked into her eyes — red, dry, unfamiliar. She reached out and covered Clytemnestra's fingers with her hands. The sandpaper stopped.

"You're going to kill Father?" Electra said. The question was clearly rhetorical.

"Yes."

"And you'll become just like him."

Clytemnestra flinched, but her daughter held on tight. The bracelets clashed and rang — hers and her daughter's — intertwining like shackles.

"Don't you dare compare," Clytemnestra hissed. "He killed a child. My child. I will avenge her."

"He killed his daughter. And you will kill her father. How will you be any better?" Electra squeezed her mother's fingers until they cracked. "Because you cried for ten years? Iphigenia is dead, Mother. But I am here. Alive. Do you see me?"

Clytemnestra looked at her daughter. Alive and stubborn. The one who didn't cry because she had forgotten how.

"I can't forget her," Clytemnestra exhaled.

"You don't have to forget." Electra touched her cheek. Her fingers were cold, thin. "Just stop killing her all over again. Every time you pick up this axe, you're not sacrificing him. You're sacrificing yourself. And me. Chrysothemis. Orestes. Everyone who's left."

The sandpaper slipped from Clytemnestra's fingers. Fell to the stone floor with a dry clatter.

Clytemnestra closed her eyes.

"Go," she said quietly. "Go while I can still listen to you."

"I'm not going anywhere."

Electra sat down beside her. Shoulder to shoulder. The shadow on the wall became one — both large and small at once. The axe lay between them, polished to a mirror shine.

Clytemnestra lasted until midnight.

She sat by the window, staring at the stars without seeing them. In her ears, she still heard a child's laughter — not Iphigenia's, but Electra's. From when she was little and still knew how to laugh. When sparkles still danced in her blue eyes, when she giggled.

Then the heavy front door creaked. A herald's rough voice announced: "King Agamemnon has returned victorious!"

Clytemnestra stood. Her bracelets clinked — softly. She looked at the axe. It lay where Electra had left it. Sharp and ready to fulfill its purpose.

"You'll become just like him," memory whispered in her daughter's voice.

Clytemnestra took the axe and hid it in the folds of her robes.

Agamemnon entered, proud, covered in road dust, smelling of sea and sweat. He saw his wife — but did not embrace her. Threw his armor on the floor.

"Water," he said. "And wine. Tomorrow, offerings to the gods. Enough grieving already, Clytemnestra. The gods do not ask mortals for their opinions."

He turned away. Began untying his belt.

She remembered how Electra had looked at her, kneeling. Alive. Stubborn. Believing that her mother could be stopped.

"Forgive me," Clytemnestra thought.

And she raised the axe.

The axe sank into Agamemnon's neck as easily as if the ten years of sharpening had not been for vengeance, but for love.

He fell face-first into the water — the water he had asked for his bath — and the water turned red, like Artemis's cloak on the day of the sacrifice.

Clytemnestra exhaled — for the first time in ten years, deeply, freely — and only then realized that all that time she hadn't been breathing.

Her bracelets rang as she raised her hand to strike, and fell silent the moment the blade touched bone.

Prologue

The marble of the throne room, which had until recently breathed a pleasant coolness and freshness, now gave off the aromas of fear, blood, and iron. The armor of the doryphoroi surrounding the Empress's throne cast ragged shadows in the torchlight. Their every step drowned out the last lamentations of the courtiers, some of whom had been led away, while the rest were pressed against the walls.

‎

‎– "Lycurgus, explain yourself!" – Cerydra, Empress of Amphoreus, raised her gaze to the Praetor of the Senate, who loomed over her like a shadow. Her hands clenched the fasces of the throne until her knuckles turned white. A wave of tension and fear passed through her body, yet despite this, Cerydra held herself with regal composure.

‎

‎Lycurgus did not answer. His shadow swallowed her whole. A rough, gauntleted hand seized her by the wrist and yanked her toward him – off the throne, off the dais, down onto the cold marble floor. The torches danced before her eyes.

‎

‎In the young Empress's ears rang the sound of tearing purple chlamys and the clatter of the golden diadem falling to the marble floor.

‎

‎Cerydra stopped struggling. She froze, staring up at the painted vault of the ceiling, where a fresco depicted the images of the titan-patrons of Amphoreus. She began to mentally recite their names. "One. Two. Three." The voice in her head sounded clear and steady, drowning out everything else. Her body seemed to detach, becoming a foreign object upon which some strange, distant manipulations were being performed.

‎

‎An eternity passed, or perhaps only a moment. The crushing weight lifted. Somewhere nearby came the rustle of fabrics, rising. His figure loomed over her again, blocking the light. He was adjusting his vambraces, his breathing heavy, his face a stone mask of satisfied cruelty.

‎

‎He looked at her, at his creation: a broken doll in the tatters of an imperial mantle at the foot of her own throne.

‎

‎And then Cerydra slowly, laboriously, shifted her gaze from the ceiling to him. Lycurgus was squeezing her neck, like a bird whose song he wished to silence. There were no tears in her eyes, no fear. Only emptiness, deep and cold as the cosmos. And in the very depths of that emptiness – the first, as yet unformed spark was born. Not pain, not humiliation. Something else.

‎

‎For a moment, Lycurgus met that gaze and felt an inexplicable chill at the base of his skull. He shook his hands fastidiously, the very hands that had just been gripping the girl's slender neck.

‎

‎"Dispose of 'this'," – the Praetor's face expressed only aversion.

‎

‎The guards carried the body out of the hall.

‎

‎No honors were given. The body, dressed in a simple but neat white chiton, was carried out under the cover of night to the family crypt, the entrance to which would be walled up that very same night, and the maiden's name erased from the marble slabs. There were no mourners, no grieving; no torches burned to see the deceased Empress on her way. On her head, a laurel wreath, tilted to the side, as if worn by the young and carefree, the "pure." On her neck, a scarf concealing a bruise.

‎

‎Her licwave – Helectra – also sleeps, cast into the sea's abyss, as befits a siren.

‎

‎Yet from the sea, a wind blows, singing over the imperial family's crypt:

‎

‎"Cerydra"

‎

‎"Ce-ry-dra"

‎

‎Three syllables. Three strikes of the tongue against the palate. Three waves

Somewhere outside, the people rejoiced. The roar of the crowd came muffled, as though through water. The city laughed. But she could smell damp wood and iron - and she knew that inside the horse there was no gift from the gods, only death breathing at Troy's neck.

Cassandra wanted to scream again, to collapse into another fit of hysteria, but she had lost her voice long ago. Who would care for the prophecies of a mad priestess? Apollo had turned away from her the moment she refused to belong to him - neither body nor soul. And gods do not forgive rejected gifts.

Now she paid the price, watching her family perish, watching her people walk willingly toward ruin.

Her thoughts tangled into a storm.

Don't do it. Fools, all of you. You will pay for your disbelief. Oh, you will pay…

The lament echoed only inside her skull; her ruined voice could no longer carry sound against the walls. Apollo was surely pleased with her weakness now - pleased to watch her thrash like a fox caught in a trap, trying to gnaw off its own leg.

After a while, her feet carried her forward on their own.

She walked.

Her legs trembled beneath her, knees threatening to give way as though every bone had become heavier than stone. Cassandra wandered across marble slabs still slick from the recent rain, and everything around her seemed counterfeit: the jubilant sky, the wreaths upon the heads of passersby, even her own hands stretched before her to keep from falling.

I am already dead, she thought. Dead, only forgotten by the grave.

The city breathed sacrificial smoke and myrtle.

Ahead of her rose the temple of Apollo - her temple. The very place where, as a child, she had first heard the voice that froze blood in her veins. Back then, it had felt as though a beam of sunlight touched her tongue.

Now she understood.

It had never been mercy.

It had been a trap.

Steps. There were twelve of them. Cassandra counted because otherwise she would begin to suffocate.

On the second, she stumbled and tore her palm against the sharp edge of stone, though she felt no pain. On the fifth, she remembered his face.

Apollo.

Golden-haired. Beautiful. Mocking.

He had expected submission. Expected her to fall to her knees for the sake of his gift. But she had dared refuse him.

"I wish to be a priestess," she had said, "not a toy."

Gods do not forgive.

The gift remained with her - twisted into a curse. She sees everything, yet no one believes her. Like a bell tolling in an empty tower while the city sleeps.

No one hears.

Father, she thought as she crossed the threshold, you look upon that wooden monstrosity and believe the gods have granted victory. Fool. You are leading death into the city wrapped in ribbons.

Inside, the temple smelled of incense and copper.

Oil lamps flickered in the half-darkness. Apollo's statue towered in the depths of the sanctuary - merciless features, delicate and cold, empty eyes catching the firelight.

Cassandra fell to her knees.

A dried myrtle branch cracked beneath her weight.

"Oh, Phoebus…" she whispered through split lips. No voice remained. Her face burned from voiceless screams. "Why? I was only a girl. I was afraid. You know I loved you with the only love a priestess can offer. But you… you wanted something else."

No answer came.

Only smoke creeping across the floor, curling around the altar like serpents.

"So be it," she breathed, clenching her fists until her nails bit into her palms. "I will keep seeing. Curse me further if you wish. But just once… just once let someone—"

She never finished.

From the side chamber - where the priests left offerings - came the sound of rustling.

Cassandra froze.

A familiar cold crawled down her spine. She knew this feeling well: the moment when the future did not arrive in dreams or visions, but slithered into the world awake.

A head emerged from beneath the altar stone.

Small. Scaled. Golden-eyed.

Then another.

Then a third.

Serpents.

They moved slowly, solemnly, like priests in procession. Thick muscular bodies shimmered copper-green beneath the lamplight. One - larger than the others, with a dark crest along its spine - lifted its head toward the ceiling, tasting the air with a split tongue.

Cassandra could not move.

She knew.

Knew that what she saw now was not meant for this temple.

The world blurred.

Another altar. Another temple. Not hers.

By the sea.

Laocoön.

His face calm and priestly, deep lines carved beside his eyes. He lifted a knife above the neck of a sacrificial bull. Beside him stood two young men - his sons. Laughing. Unaware.

Then the elder son suddenly turned.

He screamed.

But there was no sound. Only the silent shape of his mouth.

The first serpent coiled around his legs.

Cassandra watched them fall. Watched Laocoön claw at the slick coils with his bare hands, his beard whipping wildly as he fought. The second serpent seized the younger son by the throat. The third - the largest - slowly wound itself around the priest, crushing his chest, breaking ribs with a crack that darkened Cassandra's vision.

She writhed on Apollo's temple floor, tearing her lips bloody against her teeth.

Because she felt every rib that shattered inside Laocoön.

Every convulsion of his sons.

"Enough!" she screamed soundlessly. "Enough, I understand! I am unworthy, I am cursed - but why them?! Why the children?!"

Apollo's statue remained silent.

Only the marble lips of the god seemed slightly curved in a smile.

The vision died.

Cassandra lay face-down upon the cold floor, cheek pressed into a puddle of her own tears and crushed myrtle leaves. The serpents had returned to the sea and vanished, as though they had never existed at all.

"I knew," she whispered with bloodless lips. "I knew everything. And no one… no one…"

The boy had fallen asleep. She sat beside the cradle, softly humming a lullaby under her breath while her gentle hands adjusted the blanket. She barely heard Hector approach from behind, yet she felt his presence instantly. Everything about him was so familiar and dear to her: the warm scent of his skin, his weary footsteps, his hands that seemed heavy with strain. His face, usually calm, now held something deep and troubled.

“He’s asleep,” she said quietly. Andromache’s voice was soft, as though she feared disturbing the fragile silence of their tiny world. She did not turn around, but she knew he was there. Hector did not answer immediately. He stood just behind her, resting a hand on her shoulder — firm, yet so full of care that her heart trembled. He was her strength, but in that moment she understood that she would not be able to save him from what awaited them. She could not stop him, no matter how desperately she wished to.

“You know tomorrow will be hard,” he said at last, his voice rough with exhaustion. He said nothing more. He could have tried to comfort her, to assure her that everything would be alright, but deep down he knew that was not what she wanted to hear now. They both knew that tomorrow might be their last day.

Andromache let out a quiet breath and looked again at their son, sleeping peacefully with the innocence of infancy, unaware of what the world would bring them tomorrow.

Her words were barely above a whisper, yet there was so much pain in them that Hector felt his heart tighten. He pressed his lips to her forehead, as if offering even the smallest fragment of hope.

“He will be safe,” he said, his voice gentler now as he took her hand into his and intertwined their fingers. Silently, he drew her closer and, needing no words, buried his fingers and his face in her hair, breathing in its scent.