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“I don’t think that being unafraid is the same as being brave.” He spoke with slow precision, as Ganymedes did when he wanted her to take note of a particular point. “I think bravery is when you go on even though you are frightened.”

“What’ve you to be frightened of?” she asked. The boy winced. The question had come off crueler than she had intended. “I didn’t—”

“It…there are…you don’t know everything, Arsinoe.” His voice had turned cold.

“I know one thing that frightens you.” The words did not come properly; her tongue turned clumsy, thick, desperate. She didn’t want to lose him—not now.

“What’s that?”

“You’re frightened that you won’t be able to catch me.”

She sprang to her feet and raced across the burnt grass, arms spread—a vulture took to the sky.
Don’t fly so close, Arsinoe
. Only her own beating feet pierced the silence. No echoing footfalls called back. The emptiness stretched on, endless. She fought the urge to turn, to check. Like Orpheus rising from the dead, she knew better than to risk even a single glance. She could hear Alexander scramble up—the welcome sound of chase. Joy, mad and senseless, flooded her body, and she ran faster still. The speed of the pursued. But the footfalls behind her slopped and skidded. She cast a look back. Hands snatched her wrists away. She was caught.

“The very girl I seek.” Ganymedes eyed her sullied tunic with disapproval. “Your sister, the Shining Queen, requires your presence.”

Rebellion drained from Arsinoe’s limbs. Her stomach lurched, and she winced at a memory, the pitiful child who’d wet herself in fear of looming death. No Ptolemy was she.

“The time for play is over. I’ll return you to your chambers, and perhaps we might find something more suitable for you to wear before the queen.”

All thoughts of games and birthdays faded from Arsinoe’s mind. It didn’t matter if she had changed; her position hadn’t. She still lived at her sister’s pleasure. And in a moment, she could die at it. The eunuch’s face was grim. This new summoning didn’t bode well for either of them.

As Ganymedes led her indoors, Arsinoe stole a glance at Alexander, his face pale, shoulders slouched, clothes caked with dirt. She wondered if she would ever see him again. If anyone would ever tell her that she was brave.

Unfriendly eyes followed her, the kind of eyes that darted when they were caught. Perhaps their owners heard whispers that she had not. Ganymedes remained silent, and Arsinoe knew enough to follow his example. Somehow his hand found hers. His tenderness made her more nervous still. As he delivered her to Myrrine, he squeezed her fingertips for luck.

“Fortes fortuna adiuuat,”
he murmured in her ear.

Slippery words, even after she had worked them into Greek from the wretched Roman tongue: “Fortune favors the bold.” Once in her chambers, Myrrine slipped the tunic over her head and led her toward her bath. Naked and shivering, she stood icy over the tub, trying to riddle out the meaning until her nurse urged her down into its depths.

Fortes fortuna adiuuat. Fortes fortuna adiuuat.
The foreign syllables paced into an incantation.
Fortes fortuna adiuuat
. Comb in hand, deft Myrrine slipped and yanked at her scalp, but Arsinoe held her tongue. The slightest cry, or word of protest, might crumble her resolve and collapse her into childish tears.

As much as she hated baths, she dreaded this one’s end. Rather than leap from the basin, she wallowed until the waters cooled and goose pimples sprouted on her arms. Quaking, she hunched over her knees and stared at her pruning toes.

Myrrine kissed her brow. “It will turn out all right in the end.”

Dressed in her finest chiton, a bright sapphire one that made her skin glow like gold, Arsinoe was escorted into the public halls. She’d been a fool—she saw that now—to imagine that she’d been forgotten merely because the queen had been busy in the Upper Lands. She should have paid more heed to Ganymedes. He’d tried to warn her, with his readings of Polybius, that she should not forget that her life still hung in the balance. “You’ll soon show what you are, worth your breeding, Ismene, or a coward—for all your royal blood.”
^*
Antigone’s taunts turned against her.

Stone-faced, heartless, the guards led Arsinoe to the royal atrium. Would they brag or mourn when they told of how they delivered the princess Arsinoe to her death? Why else would Berenice call her forward, unless she’d changed her mind?

The handles—two golden griffins guarding the queen—split open. Within, the joys and lightness of her father’s court had been stripped away: no minstrels, no fools, no dancing maids. The mood here shunned laughter.

Nobles clustered in sets of four and five, like grapes on the vine. Some had familiar faces, but their names slipped Arsinoe’s mind. And there, on her father’s throne, sat Berenice. Her sister wore her hair twisted about her head, a pair of snaking braids gathered in a golden clasp at her nape, garnets and emeralds dripping from their tails. With her hair strung back so tightly, Berenice looked even more severe than she usually did. Beside the queen an aging crone reclined on a crimson divan. The old woman’s clothes caught Arsinoe’s eye; they looked finer than even the queen’s. Her violet chiton was embroidered with a thick border of golden lotuses around the hem and neck. Only when Arsinoe’s gaze reached the woman’s face did she recognize the creature glowering at her as Tryphaena.

“Arsinoe, my dear sister.”

Arsinoe knelt in supplication. Head bowed, she felt as though she was offering her neck before an ax. She wasn’t sure whether she should trust this sister who had once spared her life, or whether she should somehow try to cast her lot on her father’s side.

“Blessings on you, noble queen, House of Ptolemy crowned with all your family. Blessings on you always!” The phrase leapt from her tongue with surprising ease. Later, she’d realize that it was some butchered line from Sophocles that had stuck in her head, the words of a messenger hailing Jocasta.

“There’s no need for such formality between sisters.” A slight smile crossed Berenice’s face. “You may stand before me.”

Arsinoe scrambled to her feet.

“You are kind, my dear,” Tryphaena sneered, “to embrace the natural child of your father with open arms, even as her full-blooded brothers plot your demise.”

Berenice answered her mother lightly. “Why shouldn’t I be kind to bastards, when both of my parents were born from the loins of Ptolemy the Savior’s concubines?”

Arsinoe’s own plaited hair weighed heavily on her scalp. The onyx beneath her feet looked inviting; perhaps she should remain there, fall back to the ground, a suppliant, and beg for mercy.
Fortes fortuna adiuuat.
Arsinoe kept her eyes fixed on her sister’s as she approached the throne. She wasn’t Ismene; she was Antigone. As Alexander had said.

“Tell me: do you know where your mother is?” Berenice asked. “Where your two brothers are hiding?”

“I do not.” Her answer was slow, true.

“Do you think she’d answer honestly if she did? She’s not as unnatural in her love as you.” Tryphaena spat her words, first at her daughter and then at Arsinoe. “And do you claim to know nothing of your father’s voyage to Rome?”

“I’ve heard nothing from my father since he sailed from Alexandria.” Her words sounded far away, as though someone else had spoken them.

“I told you she knew nothing, Mother. Have you finished interrogating the child?”

“You believe those lies? You think those wide eyes prove her innocence?” Tryphaena wheezed. Blood spattered the woman’s fingers. “You think she does not know that her father and her sister are in Rome? You think she hasn’t been—” A fit of coughing interrupted Tryphaena’s rage. Little specks of crimson spotted against the stone.

“That’s enough, Mother. Your hacking won’t point her toward the truth.”

The two women spoke over her, around her, as if she didn’t exist at all.

“I’m not lying,” Arsinoe broke in. “My brothers are nothing to me. My father and mother have both abandoned me. I’m at your mercy.”

“I suppose you are, my dear. Although I hope your time hasn’t been so bleak as that. Tell me, my child: what lessons have you learned of late? I wouldn’t want my sister to go untaught.” Berenice smiled again. It softened her appearance, even with her hair drawn back, but did little else to improve it. Kingdoms, like horses, shy from ugly riders, Arsinoe had once heard. She raked her mind for an answer here; what
had
she learned? That Alexander was far bolder than she’d ever dreamt, and that Polybius thought they were all doomed in the face of Rome. But neither seemed the sort of thing she should mention here.

“Has a cat stolen your tongue?” Berenice teased.

A few of the nobles snickered in appreciation. Arsinoe realized, suddenly, why they looked familiar: these were the same men who had attended her father, men who smiled at his jokes a scant year past, men whose loyalty she’d never questioned, men she’d thought would sooner die than shed their allegiances.

One in particular stood out. Nereus, that gray-bearded man who had known her from the cradle, the dearest of her father’s friends, blinked at her with cold eyes. She hated him with a deep loathing, this man who’d betrayed her father, who’d turned on her. She wanted to taunt him, as he taunted her.
Fortes fortuna adiuuat.

“I’m learning a monologue from Sophocles,” Arsinoe began. It was risky, but hadn’t Ganymedes told her to embrace risk? Snakes and liars surrounded her sister, choking out the truth. This—this was what she could offer Berenice. What none of these men dared: an honest look at the creatures who poisoned the court.

“And whose speech is that?” asked Berenice. “Jocasta’s? Or Deianeira’s, perhaps?”

“It’s the one Antigone gives to explain why she must bury her brother Polynices.” She’d committed to the path now, this path of bravery, of truth. Her heart drummed in her throat.

“And what reason does she have?” Berenice asked, indulgent.

“‘It wasn’t Zeus, not in the least, who made this proclamation—not to me. Nor did that Justice, dwelling with the gods beneath the earth, ordain such laws for men. Nor did I think your edict had such force that you, a mere mortal, could override the gods, the great unwritten, unshakeable traditions.’”
^*

“Those are well-spoken words. But I wonder if you know their meaning.”

Berenice’s voice was stern—and it gave Arsinoe an escape. She could back down from this plan, could lie and concoct some dull excuse. Pretend to be a foolish girl who parroted lines blindly. No, she’d press on.

“Antigone means that there are certain laws, laws of the gods, ‘the great unwritten, unshakeable traditions,’ that no man should flout, not even if he’s commanded to do so by a king.”

Berenice looked at her with interest. “Indeed. And what, little one, do these ‘traditions’ concern? I must admit that I’m not overjoyed to hear that you’d give men leave to flout my laws.”

Again, a forced chuckle of approval echoed across the atrium.

“The customs concerning burial, for one.” Arsinoe threw herself into the performance, remembering how Cleopatra would draw attention to herself when reciting a monologue. She stood straight and let her voice build upward from her gut. “And also, I believe that for Antigone, at least, another aspect plays a role: loyalty.”

The word quieted the murmuring men, all the way to the soldiers who lined the lotus-laced arches that led into the great courtyard.

“And what has Antigone taught you of loyalty?”

She paused and gave a pointed look to Nereus. “That it’s much more prized by Sophocles than by the Alexandrian Court.”

Silence drowned fickle fortune’s favored boldness. Arsinoe’s throat tightened, and her heart raced. Her die was cast.

“Your so-called sister shows little respect, my dear,” Tryphaena hissed in her hoarse whisper.

“No.” The queen chuckled lightly. “The girl offers me something of much greater value than that: a bit of humor and honesty in this bitter palace.”

The knot in Arsinoe’s stomach loosened; her head spun. She’d charmed her sister. She had won.

“My—my queen,” Nereus stammered. “You forget that—”

“Who among us hasn’t wondered at all my father’s friends who have so promptly embraced my rule? I know I have.” With a smile, Berenice surveyed the nobles standing before her. “I’ll impede your studies no further, little sister. Return to your tutor now.”

Arsinoe had no need to be dismissed twice. She quit the chamber with measured and dignified steps. Beneath the forgiving sky, she broke into a run. Panting, she found Alexander in the garden. Frozen in the spot where she had left him. Waiting, even, for her return.

“You were right.” She gasped, breathless, pleased. “I am the bravest person you’ve ever known.”