CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Atalanta

Each time I bathe, the dust of the racetrack gets harder to wash away. I’m not bothered by it. I like the reminder of the dust carving its way into my soles. I like the reminder that I am better than these men, my opponents. Finally. Undeniably.

I lean my head back, tilt my chin up, and stare at the ceiling. A few dull mosaics of Dionysus are built into the floor, but the ceilings and walls are bare. Bathing is not a necessity Arkadia can afford to be generous with. The bathing room adjoins my father’s room and isn’t used much—not with rivers and lakes within a few miles of Arkadia. But I can no longer go that far without suitors on me at every turn. I’ve avoided Zosimos relentlessly, but he’s the one who taught me all my tracking skills. I can’t forget that. I shut my eyes, and as soon as I do, I hear footsteps.

My eyes fly open and my hand reflexively reaches for my knife, just next to the bath. I raise myself into a sitting position, careful to move smoothly and not make any splashes. My knees tense, aching to stand and fight. I raise myself slowly, slowly, until I stand, knife in hand. Water drips from my body, and I cringe as it splashes onto the tile.

Her figure passes by the doorway fast, but it’s enough. I squint. “Kahina?”

She startles, her head whipping in my direction. Just as fast, she lets out a strangled yelp and jerks her head away. “What are you doing?”

The adrenaline of the almost-danger vanishes. Heat flushes up my neck, my face, everywhere, and I leap out of the bath, grabbing the nearest shawl. I wrap it around myself, and clear my throat. “Sorry.” Slowly, she turns around, her face still twisted in shock. Her eyes flick down my body once, confused and—is she actually horrified? I roll my eyes. “I could ask the same of you.”

I grab the torch from the bathing room and walk past her, lighting my father’s expansive room. It’s too big for the light to completely fill the space, but at least I can clearly see Kahina. She doesn’t seem happy to see me. Her jaw still hangs slightly open, her dark eyes furrowed. Finally, she shakes her head once and meets my eyes.

“I’m looking for the list.”

I tilt my head in question.

“Of the suitors who were invited.”

Her voice is steady, even if she still looks unhinged. It’s a simple but urgent request, so I walk through my father’s room. He’ll be up talking and bragging with the suitors for at least another hour or two. Or three. I hold the fire in front of me, inspecting the low sofas and his carved-oak wardrobe and dressers.

Kahina stays where she’s at. I feel her gaze follow me across the room. My other hand is still locked tight across my chest, holding the robe in place. I’m sure my hair is dripping all across his stone floor. A scroll lays atop the small table beside his bed. With some careful maneuvering, I’m able to hold my robe and torch in one hand and grab the list with the other.

I hand it out to her and she snatches it from me. Her eyes tear across the names. I stare down at my bare feet, at those thin and persistent lines of dust, and wish I knew how to read. Just as fast, Kahina rolls it up again with a relieved sigh.

“Oh, thank the gods,” she mutters. She tosses the scroll onto my father’s bed. I fight the urge to put it back as I found it. Kahina puts her hands on her hips and heaves another sigh. “Well. I’ll see you for tomorrow’s race?”

She moves to leave and since my hands are preoccupied, I call her name. Kahina glances over her shoulder at me.

“Care to explain any of that?” I ask, half a laugh escaping from my throat. Doubt creeps into her features. She looks like she did those first few weeks I’d known her, and it stings. “Please?”

She hesitates, but turns around and walks past me, sitting on the bed. She braces her elbows against her knees. “My cousin,” she says softly. As if it’s an entire explanation.

My eyebrows raise. She never told me much of her family; I know she’s from Corinth, a sea-trading city on the Peloponnese. She’d told me her father is a successful merchant who’d seen every corner of our world. He’d met her mother while trading in northern Africa. There was never a mention of any siblings, let alone a cousin. I glance at the doorway one last time to make sure my father isn’t near, then sink myself into the bed beside her. She hasn’t exhaled, and her eyes still roam across the ground—all signs I’ve realized she makes while bearing the weight of words unsaid.

“See, Atalanta—” She pauses again, looking to me nervously. My heart picks up. Her face is rather close. “You know him well.”

I blink, wrapping the robe around me tighter. I wrack my brain quickly, trying to think. I don’t know many people. Many fewer well. She turns her head sideways, so I can see her face fully—but I know every line and curve of it already.

Even when she finally tells me his name, my mind still won’t recognize it; it can’t reconcile that Kahina—brilliant, extraordinary Kahina—could share his blood. My voice stutters out the four syllables that I haven’t spoken aloud in months.

“Hippomenes?”

She nods carefully, as if any movement on her part might hurt me. And it does—only now am I forced to realize that for all their differences, they still have the same firm set to their brow. Their jaws are strong, carved by some divine artist. Despite Hippomenes’s pale skin and poison-colored eyes, the resemblance is there. It’s distant and buried, but the ghost of him suddenly fills the room. I wrap both arms around me.

“I saw the Calydonian Hunt, Atalanta.” Kahina speaks gently, but her words still embed themselves in my core, twisting everything. “I know he—that he—”

“Killed Meleager.” I’ll say it. I’ll say the truth, even if it makes me sick.

Kahina winces. “And not just that. The way he talked to everyone . . . especially you. I volunteered for the mission not knowing he would be on that hunt. If I had—” She pauses, and a thick curtain of silence falls. I don’t want to imagine what would have happened then, if she hadn’t been there. I wouldn’t have lived to find Arkadia, my father and brother, a chance at a new life.

Or her.

None of it would have mattered, because without her, I would have been the boar’s next victim. I try to process what Kahina’s just told me. “Why were you scared of your cousin?”

She gives me a grim smile. “My father offered me his ships. His entire company could be mine, once he retired. I was actually born on a ship, you know,” she says. Her smile turns more real.

“That must have been . . . stressful.”

But then her smile fades again, like clouds shifting over the sun. “Hippomenes believed they should have been his. His father was my father’s brother, and since I was my parents’ only child—a girl . . .”

Both of us understand how that ends. Both of us know how Hippomenes viewed us.

“He decided to take me away so he could claim it,” she says. The matter-of-factness in her voice startles me, especially after how terrified she’d looked as she read the list. “He took me to Delphi. He said it was just for a trading trip—I was hardly fourteen, I didn’t realize—” Her eyes stare into nothing. I find it oddly comforting that she and I both know the City in the Sky. My stomach drops as I wait for her to continue.

Her words come out stilted, but her voice never shakes. I lean forward, elbows on knees, and run my hands through my hair as she tells me how her cousin brought her to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. I don’t know how she doesn’t tear her hair out and sprint all the way to the god himself—I’m certainly about to. She tells me that the god’s priests and priestesses had all been affected by Apollo somehow. He’d given them all part of his gift: foresight, prophecy, some divinely infused glimpse into the cosmos. Kahina hadn’t been exposed to much before Artemis and her huntresses infiltrated the temple.

“But still,” she mutters, her voice low and resigned. “Ask me something I don’t know.”

“Okay.” I pause nervously. This might be cheating, but I ask, “Will I win the race tomorrow?”

Her neck goes slightly rigid—something I only notice because I’m staring right at her. “Yes.” She smirks. “Though I hardly need to be an oracle to tell you that.”

My cheeks flush, and I look away. “But isn’t that kind of . . . nice to have? To know things?”

She stares at me with hollow eyes. I’ve disappointed her. “It only works if someone asks me. It’s not my thoughts. Or my will. It’s invasive, and not fair.”

I hadn’t considered that aspect. The harsh sound of faraway laughter from the suitors drifts into the room. Suddenly, a million questions emerge from within me. I fight the urge to blurt them. When will these races end? How did my father lose me? What happened to Phelix?

The hardest one to keep inside is for her. Are you going to leave?

“I’m so sorry, Kahina,” I say. I’m not sure how else to say it.

She gives me a small shrug. I reach out and touch her shoulder briefly. Her eyes meet mine, and for a second—

“But he’s not on the list. And that’s good, right?”

I blink and refocus. “Uh, definitely.”

“He’s ruined enough for us.”

The memory of Meleager’s easy smile and twinkling eyes flashes before me. I drop my hand from Kahina’s shoulder. “I’ll ruin him if he comes after either of us again. I swear it.”

“You’re making an awful lot of promises, Atalanta.” Kahina stands, peering down at me.

“And I promise I’ll keep them all.”

I mean it. I’ll do whatever it takes for us to reclaim our lives.