The Breaking — Chapter 2

Winter comes to Athens, and with it, plague.

I see funeral pyres burning across the city. I see the empty streets below your palace. I see your soldiers accompanied by slaves, distributing wagonloads of food to the people trapped in their homes.

But the plague is not an army defeated by soldiers, or a spirit warded away with offerings of grain. Against it, your palace walls are as effective as a sieve. It attacks your guards. It sweeps through your attendants.

And then it crawls into me.

The creak of the cage door wakes me. "Out," you say, your voice impatient. Dealing with this plague in your city has clipped your temper even shorter, and you've been using me hard the last few days.

But this morning, I don't have the energy to move. Not a matter of want, but can't.

The toe of your boot nudges me in the ribs. "Hurry up." I don't respond. The nudge becomes a kick, and I grunt in pain but remain motionless.

You crouch and drag me out through the door, but my muscles have turned to water and I spill forward into your arms. Your hand grabs my chin, your eyes bright with rage as they search my face, but they widen the moment you realize that this isn't defiance. I'm sick.

You carry me somewhere, through rooms and halls and stairways I don't recognize. Soaring colonnades, white marble, elegant statues. I've been in this vast and glorious palace a year, and your chambers are all I've seen of it.

I'm too weak to lift my head when the air fills with the scent of herbs and sickness, but I catch glimpses of beds and know that we've arrived at an infirmary.