Chapter 1 The Life They Stole

• The first time I died, I did it quietly.
• No thunder split Olympus. No goddess came to gather her daughter. I swallowed a cup of dreamless poison in a rented room below the mortal city, three years after I had awakened from a cursed sleep and discovered that everyone I loved had learned to live better without me.
• At twenty, I had stepped between Orion and an assassin's knife. The blade carried a sleep curse. I heard Apollo's son screaming my name as darkness closed over me, and I believed that love would be waiting when I opened my eyes.
• Three years later, Orion was wearing the gold crown of the Sun Court. My closest friend, Melantha, was wearing my owl pendant. Athena, the goddess who had shaped me from a spark of her own mind and called me daughter, had given Melantha my rooms, my place at her table, and the soft look she had never learned to give me.
• Orion married me because he owed me a life. He touched me like a sentence and spoke Melantha's name in his sleep. When Melantha supposedly drowned after Olympus learned she had claimed my good deeds as her own, Orion looked at me as if I had pushed her beneath the water.
• During a fire at the Sun Palace, he carried me through the smoke. A burning beam fell. He shoved me to safety and let it crush him, but even as he died, he clutched my stolen owl pendant.
• "The debt is paid, Callista," he whispered. "In the next life, I choose her."
• Athena blamed me for both deaths. Olympus called me jealous, cruel, ungrateful. Eventually, I believed them.
• Then the poison burned down my throat, and everything ended.
• I opened my eyes to the smell of laurel and rain.
• "Callista?" a young healer gasped.
• Thessa stood beside my bed with a bowl of water trembling in her hands. She had been an apprentice when I fell asleep. Now silver healer's cords circled her wrists.
• Beyond her, Athena rose from a chair. My mother looked exactly as she always did: gray eyes sharp enough to cut armor, dark hair bound beneath a bronze crown, no sign that three years had passed except the exhaustion around her mouth.
• "You are awake," she said.
• Not thank the gods. Not my daughter.
• Behind Athena stood Melantha.
• My owl pendant rested against her white dress.
• For one terrible second, two lives pressed together. I remembered tearing it from her neck. I remembered her tears, Orion's anger, Athena's disappointment. I remembered spending years fighting for things that should never have needed to be won.
• This time, I only smiled.
• Melantha touched the pendant. "Callista, I can explain. Lady Athena gave it to me so I would feel less alone while we waited for you. I meant to return it."
• "Keep it."
• The room went still.
• Athena studied me. "That pendant marked your promise to Orion. It is not a trinket."
• "Then he can decide who should wear it."
• Thessa lowered her eyes, but not before I caught her startled sympathy. Athena's expression tightened. Melantha's sweetness faltered, revealing a flash of triumph.
• There it was. The girl beneath the tears.
• "Orion came every day during your first year," Athena said. "Melantha comforted him when hope became difficult. You must not punish them for surviving."
• The old me would have begged to know why surviving required taking my name, my bedchamber, and my future husband. The woman who had died knew the answer did not matter.
• "I don't blame them," I said. "I release them."
• Melantha sucked in a breath. Athena stepped closer. "You have just awakened. Do not make foolish declarations."
• My body was weak, but anger gave me enough strength to sit. "Was waking foolish too?"
• Pain crossed Athena's face. It vanished so quickly I might have imagined it.
• Thessa adjusted my pillows after the goddess turned away. In a whisper, she told me she had kept one lamp burning beside my bed every night, even after the others stopped coming. The kindness of a near stranger hurt more than Athena's distance. I squeezed her hand and promised that, this time, I would remember the people who stayed instead of chasing those who left.
• Thessa helped me drink. While Athena questioned her about my health, I reached beneath the blanket and found the small bronze mirror that had always hung at my waist. Its face was dark. One name had been carved into the back when I was seventeen.
• Lysander.
• The son of Hades and Persephone had once waited with me at the edge of the Underworld while our parents argued over a treaty. He had offered me half a pomegranate and, with the solemnity of a boy pretending not to be afraid, promised that if I ever called, he would cross every border to reach me.
• In my first life, I never called.
• After my death, I learned that Lysander refused every bride chosen for him. He built a small garden beside the River Styx and filled it with white flowers that carried my name.
• Athena turned toward the door. "I will tell Orion. He should be here when the healers examine you again."
• "No."
• She looked back.
• "Tell him to bring Melantha," I said. "I have a gift for them both."
• Melantha's fingers curled around my pendant. She thought I meant a blessing. In the life before, everyone had mistaken my devotion for weakness.
• When they left, Thessa whispered, "My lady, what are you going to do?"
• I turned the bronze mirror toward the moonlight. My thumb traced Lysander's name, and the glass filled with darkness.
• "Choose someone who chose me first."
• I pressed my bleeding fingertip to the mirror.
• "Lysander," I said, my voice steady at last. "You once asked me to become your queen. If that promise still lives, come and claim it."
• For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
• Then a man's voice rose from the black glass, rough with disbelief and something dangerously close to joy.
• "Callista," he breathed. "Lock your door. I am already on my way."