Chapter 2

I don't know how long I've been bleeding on this cellar floor.

The blood keeps coming. My gown is soaked through. The stone beneath me is warm and sticky.

My vision starts to slip — gray at the edges, then black.

That's when the door creaks open.

It isn't Calista. It isn't the guard.

It's Theia — the old priestess of Asklepios who has served this family for forty years. The woman who pulled Castor screaming into the world. The woman who pressed an oil-blessed hand to my belly the day I was first married into this house and whispered, strong child, my lady. A blessing.

She sees me on the floor. The blood. Her face goes white as bone.

" Lyra. Why in all the gods' names are you down here?"

"Alexios told me you were resting in the upper chamber —"

I try to speak. Nothing comes out.

I just point at my belly. The tears won't stop.

She drops to her knees beside me, faster than a woman of her age should be able to. Her hands are trembling. She lifts the hem of my gown only enough to see what she needs to see, then drops it again, and the breath she sucks in is sharp and ugly.

" Mother of the gods — the child is crowning. Your waters broke hours ago."

"You need the birthing altar. Now."

She tries to lift me. The moment I move, something hot rushes out between my legs.

Blood. So much blood.

Her hands shake. She turns to the doorway and shouts in a voice that cracks like old timber —

" Help! A woman is dying! Anyone — anyone —"

The corridor is empty. Dead silent.

This temple belongs to House Heliades. They built every column of it with their gold. And tonight, for Selene's birth, they cleared everyone out. Every priestess, every midwife, every acolyte — all upstairs, on the third tier, waiting on her.

Theia grabs the bronze warding-bell from the wall. She rings it. Once. Twice. The sound dies in the cold stone and goes nowhere.

"I'll carry you up myself, child. Stay with me. "

She is sixty years old. She gathers me into her thin arms anyway. I am dying. I know I'm dying.

I can feel the baby pressing down. Trying to come. But she can't. The draught is still in my blood, weakening but holding, and the contractions come and stop and come and stop.

This is the worst kind of labor. The kind that kills both of us.

"Theia —" I claw at her robe. My voice is barely a thread. "Save the baby. Please. Save her."

"Don't speak like that. You're both going to live. Both of you. I have not lost a mother in this house in forty years and I am not losing one tonight."

She stumbles up the stone stairs. Her old knees give twice. She catches herself against the wall and keeps going. She bursts onto the main floor. Runs toward the altar room.

We reach the doors.

We both stop dead.

The altar room is wide open.

It's empty.

The birthing stone — gone. The sacred basins — gone. The bronze instruments, the linens, the herbs, the priestesses' tools, the incense braziers, every vial of every healing draught — gone.

Just an empty room. Bare flagstones. Four walls.

Theia doesn't move. She stands there holding me, and a sound comes out of her throat — a thin, choking noise, like someone has her by the neck.

"This — this can't be —"

"I blessed these tools at sundown. They were here."

Footsteps echo down the corridor.

Calista walks toward us, two terrified servant girls trailing behind her. She sees us. Her eyebrow lifts.

"Theia. What are you doing down here?"

"Selene is on the third tier. Why aren't you with her?"

Theia points at the empty altar room. Her voice cracks.

" Where are the tools? Where are the herbs? Where is everything?"

Calista shrugs like a child caught stealing figs.

"They're upstairs."

"Selene is having a hard birth. She needs the best of everything. What if something went wrong? You think a common altar would be enough for the heir of this house?"

Her eyes drift to me. She smiles.

"Oh — Lyra. Are you having yours now?"

"You'll have to wait. Selene isn't finished yet."

"Be patient."

I look at her painted face. The careful curls. The gold pinned in her hair.

And I remember.

Six months ago. Walking through the agora arm in arm with her, laughing, while she leaned against my shoulder and said —

"You're better to me than any blood sister, Lyra. I love you more than my own."

I bought her a Phoenician necklace that day. Real lapis. The kind a princess would wear.

Now I'm on a temple floor, bleeding to death, and she's smiling down at me like I'm an animal at slaughter.

What a joke.