Extraits

I’ve heard the stories about my aunt Helen, and have never felt envy. Look at where her beauty led her.

Troy would fall. And for all that everyone might disbelieve me if I said it aloud, somewhere in their bones, I knew they knew it, too.

‘And all for a woman, they will say. A faithless woman who ran away with a foreign prince. Is she worth a thousand of our ships, tens of thousands of our men?’

I feel like a girl again, swimming at Sparta, just my sister and me, kicking through the crystal-clear water. That silent, solitary marine world beneath the waves was like a secret, a place where I could roll and twist, a place where I was free and utterly myself until ly head broke the surface. The sinous shadows of the palace remind me of it, but this time, when I emerge, it will be into another world entirely. One I shape myself.

One where even a king knows justice.

I watched the fire spark into the night sky and wondered where she could be. Making her way down that dank, twisting path to the Underworld alone? I had gone everywhere before her; trodden the paths I sent her down to make sure they were safe before I let her go. How could I let her go now, to where I did not know, without me at her side?

But if I followed her there, how could I avenge her?

I don’t know what my destiny might be, but I know that I was not born to do nothing.

If I could speak the will of the gods and see the very fabric of fate, I could command attention and respect. With all of my heart, that was what I wanted.

He had breathed it into me; a gift I was sure I would not survive. Prophecy, the prize my mother had warned me never to ask for.

I saw him, coming towards Troy with disaster at his heels.

I could not see the shape of it yet, but I knew this man carried the collapse of the world with him.