Chapter 1 The Life They Stole

• “The debt is paid, Callista. In the next life, I choose her.”
• Those were the last words my husband ever said to me.
• Orion had carried me out of the burning Sun Palace. When a beam collapsed above us, he shoved me clear and went down beneath it. Even then, his fist stayed closed around the silver owl pendant he had once given me—the pendant my closest friend had worn in my place.
• I had saved his life. He had saved mine.
• Apparently, that made us even.
• I was twenty when I stepped between Apollo’s son and an assassin’s knife. I remembered Orion screaming my name as the curse pulled me into darkness. I believed that when I opened my eyes, he would be waiting.
• I slept for three years.
• When I woke, Orion wore the gold crown of the Sun Court. Melantha wore my pendant. Athena, the goddess who had shaped me from a spark of her own mind and called me daughter, had given my friend my rooms, my place at the family table, and a tenderness she had rarely shown me.
• Orion married me because he owed me a life. His touch became a duty. In his sleep, he said Melantha’s name.
• When I exposed the truth about the relief work she had claimed as her own, she drowned. At least, that was what everyone told me. Orion looked at me as though I had held her beneath the water myself.
• Then came the fire. The fallen beam. His last choice.
• Athena blamed me for both deaths. Olympus called me jealous, cruel, ungrateful. I heard it so often that, eventually, their voices followed me even into an empty room.
• My first life ended in a rented room in the mortal city. There was poison in the cup beside my bed. No goddess came for her daughter.
• ——
• “Callista?”
• Rain tapped against the shutters. The air smelled of crushed laurel.
• I knew that smell.
• Thessa stood beside my bed with a bowl of water trembling in her hands. When I had last seen her before the curse, she had been an apprentice. Now silver healer’s cords circled her wrists.
• Behind her, Athena rose from a chair.
• My mother’s gray eyes moved over my face. Exhaustion tightened her mouth, but she did not reach for me.
• “You’re awake,” she said.
• For a moment, I could only stare. My throat no longer burned. My husband had not yet died. I was back in the healing house, at the moment everything had begun to go wrong.
• Then I saw Melantha behind Athena, dressed in white.
• My silver owl rested against her throat.
• My fingers curled into the blanket. I remembered tearing that pendant from her neck. Her tears. Orion’s fury. My mother ordering me to apologize for wanting back what was mine.
• I had spent the rest of that life trying to make them choose me.
• Melantha touched the owl. “Callista, I can explain. Lady Athena gave it to me while we waited for you. I meant to return it the moment you woke.”
• “Keep it.”
• Her hand stopped.
• Athena’s gaze sharpened. “That pendant marks your promise to Orion. It isn’t a trinket.”
• “Then you knew what you were giving her.”
• Silence settled over the bed.
• Melantha lowered her eyes. Beneath her fingers, the owl caught the lamplight. I knew how triumph looked on her, even when she tried to hide it.
• Athena stepped closer. “Orion came every day during your first year. Melantha comforted him when hope became difficult. You must not punish them for surviving.”
• There it was again: my absence offered as an excuse for everything they had taken.
• I wanted to ask whether she had missed me. The question hurt enough that I pressed my nails into my palm to keep it there.
• “I’m not punishing anyone,” I said. “If they want each other, they can have each other.”
• Something moved across Athena’s face. It was gone before I could name it.
• She turned to question Thessa about my recovery. Melantha stayed close beside her, wearing my promise as though she had earned it.
• When they stepped away, Thessa adjusted my pillows.
• “I kept a lamp burning beside your bed every night,” she whispered. “Even after the others stopped coming.”
• I caught her hand.
• She looked startled, then squeezed back. That small, unasked kindness nearly broke me. I held on until I could trust myself to let go.
• This time, I would remember who had stayed.
• After Athena and Melantha left, Thessa placed my remaining belongings beside me. Among them lay the little bronze mirror I had carried since I was seventeen. One name was carved into its back.
• Lysander.
• The son of Hades and Persephone had once sat beside me on the bank of the Styx while our families argued over a treaty. He shared a pomegranate with me and promised that, if I called, he would cross every border to reach me.
• Later, he asked me to become his queen one day.
• I chose Orion. In my first life, I never called.
• Yet something of Lysander had reached me after death: white flowers beside a black river, his voice speaking my name. The memory was brief and impossible to place. I could not tell whether I had seen a garden or dreamed one.
• I turned the mirror toward the last moonlight slipping through the shutters.
• I did not know the man that boy had become. Calling him would not make me love him. But I wanted the chance to find out, before I let this life close around the same mistakes.
• I pressed my fingertip to the glass. It took the small offering of blood the spell required, and mist spread beneath my hand.
• “Lysander,” I whispered. “You once asked me to be your queen. If you still want me, come and ask again.”
• Nothing answered.
• Then a man’s voice rose from the dark glass, rough with disbelief.
• “Callista?”
• I closed my eyes at the sound of my name. No accusation. No disappointment.
• “Yes.”
• “Lock your door,” he said. “I’m coming.”