Despite Apollo’s assurances, I count down the ten days. I wouldn’t trust Poseidon even if he promised me those storms himself. I climb up to stare at the glistening Aegean Sea on the horizon, searching for the thousand ships that creep closer. They bide their time, picking off our allies on the coast one by one. Each day, Priam receives another letter, another kingdom burned.

Apollo, though absent in body, invades my thoughts day after day. Each morning I wake, fingers reaching for his missing warmth. They curl into a fist. I haven’t slept beside Apollo in a year.

Across the room, Lykou tosses and turns each night. He flings the furs from his bed in his sleep and his pillows shred between clenched fingers. Before I can ever wake him, he hurls himself up with a ragged gasp. If Helen finds our dual nightmares odd, she never says.

As a distraction, he and I throw ourselves into training with the Amazons. Penthesilea is the reserved, watchful opposite of Hippolyta, but she will climb into the arena readily and at a moment’s notice.

I’m sparring with both, twin swords in each hand. Helen watches the Amazon Queen—and myself—with hungry eyes. I raise my blade just in time to block a swing for my neck from Hippolyta as her sister lunges forward. I drop to my back and roll away from her next swing, leaping to my feet just as Hippolyta rams down her sword into the ground where I stood a moment before.

“Even a sparring sword can kill someone, Lyta,” I say through a mouthful of sand. I look around the training arena. Nyx’s shadows seem to crawl from every corner and doorway. I repress a shudder. “Maybe don’t drive a sword into my gut before the Achaeans arrive?”

“You’ll never learn without true fear,” Penthesilea says. She tosses her sword neatly from hand to hand so I cannot pick which arm to defend against. “It is why my warriors have never lost a battle.”

“Yet,” I say. “The Amazons have never gone head-to-head with Sparta.”

“If they all fight anything like you, we have nothing to worry about.” Hippolyta spins away from my next swing.

“Don’t be unkind,” Penthesilea says, hardly sweating as she jabs, again and again, keeping me on my toes. “Daphne is a strong fighter. The Spartans have simply done her the injustice of never training with a battalion as we have.”

“Penthe has a soft spot for you,” Hippolyta says around a grin.

She lunges, and I take the advantage, driving into her unprotected hip with my knee. She turns, swinging wide. I duck beneath her arm and slap the flat of my blade against her thigh. Victory courses through me. Giddy, I bounce from foot to foot, waiting for her sister to continue the attack.

Penthesilea instead looks to the messenger now jogging across the training ring toward us. She is one of the Amazon’s warriors, lean and built for running quickly over short distances. She leaps the fence with a deer’s grace and presses her lips to Penthesilea’s ear.

When the queen looks up again, her face is dark and stormy. She barks something to Hippolyta in a language I don’t recognize before marching away, followed closely by two Amazons. I have no doubt that Penthesilea doesn’t need the bodyguards and could easily defend herself.

“What spirited her away?” Helen asks. She’s resting her chin in her cupped hands, elbows on the fence I’m now leaning against.

“Queenly duties.” Hippolyta spins her sword around. “You know how that goes.”

Helen’s dark brows narrow, but she doesn’t press further. She looks to the arched entrance of the training courtyard, painted green and blue. “Well, I’m quite bored with waiting around for the Achaeans to get their ships in the water. Would you care to explore the city with me?”

And me by proxy, she doesn’t add.

Lykou peels away from the group he trains with to follow as we leave the arena and delve into the colorful streets of Troy. His arm brushes mine, a comforting touch but nothing more.

The sound of clipping sandals follows us. Lykou and I spin around, daggers raised.

Princess Kassandra, dark ringlets spiraling behind her like a black, rumpled sheet, jogs after us. She wears a cerulean veil, open in the front and baring her lovely face, though the coverings are unnecessary here, and stops short just beyond my reach.

“I heard you say you were going to explore Troy,” she says, stuttering slightly. She must have been watching us train. “Would you care for a tour?”

She poses the question to all of us, but her rapt attention is for Lykou. He either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, dismissing her with a single glance and stepping even closer to me—and farther from the princess.

Helen appraises her. The veil no doubt means that Kassandra doesn’t wish to be recognized, which means following us is exactly something the princess should not be doing. Helen gives the young woman a small, confiding smile. “We would love a tour.”

Because Kassandra, a princess hidden away in a palace, is someone that Helen once was, too.

Shyly, Kassandra steps in front of us and begins leading the way down the city’s winding streets. Her voice becomes more jubilant, unbounded, the farther from her father’s palace we get. She points out various buildings, the public baths, the assembly, and many blacksmith stalls, their owners from all the reaches of the world. I keenly remember the last time my curiosity led me to a blacksmith stall, in Crete—Lykou started a brawl. I glare at him as we pass one, and he has the good grace to flush.

Something nameless passes through me the longer we traverse Troy. Spartans spend their every waking moment preparing for war, so unlike Trojans. Spartans live to fight, and Trojans fight to live, relishing in the joys of life. The sights fill me with warmth, not like the power of Apollo, but something akin to happiness. The feeling is so strong my fear of the shadows seems to, albeit temporarily, fade away.

Kassandra’s voice is high-pitched and sweet, reminding me of a spring wine. Her arms point here and there, making sure we don’t miss a single detail of her lovely city. We stop at the market, collecting food enough for an entire army just for the five of us. I’m handed a flatbread stuffed with onions, cheese, and spices I cannot name, so hot it scalds the roof of my mouth as I inhale it.

Rows of screech owls look down from the rooftops, watching us with too keen eyes. I can’t remember what god they answer to. I should have paid more attention to Ligeia’s stories. The wind sweeps through Troy, the Anemoi swaying the branches of olive trees on every corner and filling the streets with nature’s song. Today, the sound is merry, almost high-pitched like birdsong. It tickles my neck as I cock my head to listen.

Kassandra notices my interest. “A design in all the buildings of Troy. There are cornices on every corner. Normally, this song, an easterly breeze, would mean many traders on the Hellespont, as they usually arrive when the weather is fair. When a storm is coming, the wind howls like wolves.”

“Amazing.” Helen peers at the corner of the wall nearest to us, where holes of varying sizes have been drilled through. “Who designed them?”

“My great grandfather, Tros.” Kassandra glows with pride.

“The founder of Troy.” Lyta continues walking, not caring about the structural wonders of the city.

A flute, clear and lovely, echoes above the wind’s melody. I turn, looking everywhere for the unmistakable owner.

Not from the wind. Hermes.

He watches us, and no doubt doesn’t want to be seen. But this is his way of letting me know that he still lingers in the city. Waiting for my defenses to drop. His pipes remain in our rooms up in the palace, tucked away at the bottom of a chest where I never have to look at them. I should have just tossed them over Troy’s wall.

Kassandra chats excitedly with Helen and Lyta while Lykou and I march behind the trio. I glance over at my friend, but his focus is trained on the darkened doorways all around us. A bead of sweat slides down the back of his neck, and he reaches for the sword hanging from his hip. The food suddenly sours in the pit of my stomach.

I’m about to reach for his hand when Kassandra’s sharp voice turns both of our heads.

“There are four gates to the city,” she says as we pass one painted gold with lions and rays of sunlight. “This is the primary entrance, the one you took when you first arrived.” She points north. “That is the trading gate, where wares from the Hellespont are inspected. To the east is another trader gate, and another agora, maybe half the size of this one?”

“Are they protected as the wall is?” Lykou asks.

“By the gods? Yes.” Kassandra looks around nervously and pulls her veil tight. Her answer is a pinched, single word. “Or so the priests tell us.”

She breezes through the market without stopping again. We follow and she points out more buildings. A library, gardens, the palaces of her siblings, and a field lined with trees, even within the city walls, just for Troy’s famous horses and cattle.

She takes us down another street, lined with colorful doorways and fountains, until we reach a towering fresco. It depicts a place I know all too well—the pantheon. Each of the twelve gods sit around a single figure where the hearth is usually lit. Zeus bears an amiable and yet stern smile, a bolt of lightning clenched in his hand. His brothers sit on either side, Poseidon astride a dolphin and Hades with Cerberus at his hip.

Hera, Athena, and Demeter each have shrewd countenances, with their familiars—a peacock, an owl, and a thin, silvery snake—behind them. The other gods have taken their seats, but none catch my eye so much as Apollo. My gaze is glued to his bright eyes. Despite my resentment of the never-ending secrets broadening that rift between us, I want to reach out and touch the tan skin of his cheek.

“Isn’t it magnificent?” Kassandra asks, misinterpreting our stunned gazes.

Helen gazes up at her father with a mixture of resentment and curiosity, her dark brows pulled together in a twisted frown. Lykou’s frown matches hers as he looks upon Apollo—with not a shred of affection. Hippolyta stares up at her own father in dark silence.

Ares glares down at us, a black vulture perched atop his shoulder with its wings outstretched. The same bird is now emblazoned across his chest in red and black ink. But what happened to each of these animals to have them imprinted upon the gods’ skin? Peneios warned me of the gods with the moving tattoos, like the ones Ares and Hermes have. But Demeter, Athena, and Peneios himself have them as well.

My gaze drifts to the woman standing in the center. At first glance, I thought she was Nyx, with her black hair and short stature, but her skin is a dark tan and her eyes a lovely green. She holds aloft a pyxis, a short, squat jar with a curved lid.

“Her name is Pandora.” Kassandra runs her hands over the woman’s sandaled feet. “I think the gods must have had this piece made to warn us of mortal folly.”

“Or their own hubris,” Lykou mutters.

Frowning, I look down at the flowers scattered across the ground at the base of the fresco, with coins and jewels sprinkled between in equal measure. Gifts to the Olympians.

Kassandra says, “There are temples to each of the gods outside the city, but not a single one within the walls. Every time my forefathers attempted to build one, some mishap or calamity happened. Once, an earthquake tumbled the brand-new columns of a temple dedicated to Aphrodite, and a fire immediately tore through a temple to Hades. My father told me that the earth opened wide right beneath a temple to Hera and swallowed it whole when he was a child.” She waves to the fresco. “So this is how we pay homage here in the city.” She brushes a hand on Apollo’s sandaled feet, then snaps it back as if stung. “Even when we would rather do anything else.”

I open my mouth to ask what she means when Helen exclaims beside me. We turn as she bends, pointing to a broken piece. “That’s a shame. How did that happen?”

“That’s impossible,” Kassandra says, getting down on her knees beside Helen. “This fresco was made by the gods themselves.”

Just like the wall that surrounds this city. That explains the impeccable likenesses.

The piece Helen pointed to is a single square tile, a crack dividing it diagonally. I lean closer as she runs a nail along the break.

“Don’t make it worse!” Kassandra slaps her hand away. “This entire fresco is over a thousand years old. It dates back even further than the wall.”

“Touch my queen again”—Lykou’s lips curl back—“and I will make you regret it.”

Kassandra arches a brow. “You’ll do what to me? Break my arm? Throw me to the ground? I’m not afraid of you in my city.”

A tic forms in Lykou’s jaw. He straightens and looks down at her, a flush rising up his neck.

At least someone can chew Lykou’s ear off for his surly behavior. I leave them to their bickering and look more closely at the fresco. The crack Helen pointed to isn’t the only one. In fact, upon closer examination, hundreds of minuscule hairline fractures run across the painting. I lean close, reaching a hand for the crack.

A scream snaps my hand back.

Hippolyta, Lykou, and I spin as one into defensive positions. A dagger is immediately in my hand. I was a fool to leave the palace without additional weapons.

More screams—pain-wrenching, clay-shattering screams—fill the air.

“We’re defenseless here.” Hippolyta looks to Kassandra and Helen behind us, their backs pressed against the fresco. “We return to the palace. Now.”

Cries for help echo around us, men, women, and children yelling as one. From all directions.

“We don’t know where the attack is coming from, or who it is,” I say through gritted teeth. I bend my knees slightly. “We should stay put.”

Shadows suddenly blanket us, there and gone in an instant. I look around wildly for Nyx, but her scent is nowhere near, and the sun shines once again. Hippolyta’s face is drenched in darkness, then emblazoned with sunlight. A hollow, rhythmic thud fills the air.

We all turn to the sky just as women begin diving across it. The Erinyes, the goddesses of vengeance and fury, swoop overhead. Their cackles rise above the din of Troy’s people.

And they aim directly for us.