Hades’ Daughter. Book One of the Troy Game by Sara Douglass

Brutus usually ate alone with me in the evenings in my chamber (I could not yet think of it as our chamber), but sometimes he caused me to sit with him and his fellows in the megaron for the evening meal. That was true torture, to be forced to sit among his companions, and listen to their laughter and jests, and to feel their eyes slide over me, considering, perhaps enjoying my humiliation.

Deimas, who my father had treated so well, who had been given so many privileges, was generally among Brutus’ companions, as was Assaracus, the ill-bred renegade. I considered the both of them traitors. They’d been dealt with well, they’d had good lives—why then betray my father and myself to this

degree?

Of Brutus’ own warrior companions, Hicetaon and Idaeus were always present, as was Membricus.

Hicetaon and Idaeus were pleasant enough to me, but Membricus always looked at me with eyes dark with hatred and, I eventually realized, jealousy. He was a vile man, a snake in man’s skin and a man who lusted for Brutus. I had not realized that until that wretched morning when he had touched me as Brutus lay beside me in my bed. I had not realized before then that Membricus resented me, but I saw it clearly that morning—as I also saw that Membricus was one of those men who preferred a man’s touch before a woman’s.

If I could have given him Brutus, I would have done so, but if there had ever been anything between Brutus and Membricus, Brutus showed so sign of wanting to resume it now.

Not when he had me to torment.

For weeks all I heard was Trojan laughter, all I saw were Trojan faces, all I had was my own despair and fright and pain. Tavia did her best for me, but her efforts did not, could not, counter the weight of sheer “difference” in my life. Everything I had known had been swept away in the most brutal fashion possible; everything that had been familiar and which I had loved had been replaced with Brutus.

All I wanted to do was destroy him as repayment for the destruction he had wrought in my life.

I ceased to fight him in bed after his first horrific assault on my body. There seemed to be no point in hurting myself and, besides, after that first night, I’d decided that my revenge would be the easier if he thought he’d completely cowed me. So I lay there, night after night, my eyes closed, my head turned aside, and let him do what he wanted.

Eventually, and perhaps naturally, this merely gave me one more reason to loathe him. The first time had been painful, frightening beyond belief, humiliating. It was never so again. Having conquered me, Brutus had become much gentler. He took care, he took his time, he tried to make me respond in the way that he wanted. Infuriatingly, he sometimes succeeded. It was all very well for me to decide not to resist, and to merely turn aside my head, but once my fear of his lovemaking had gone it was difficult to completely ignore what his teeth and tongue and hands were doing to my body.

I hated him for that. I lay there and tried to remember Melanthus’ face, tried to remember the feel of his hands on me, but all I could feel was Brutus. One night, one terrible night, he made me moan involuntarily and arc my body hard against his. He paused, and stared at me, his eyes laughing, and said,

“So Cornelia is a woman, after all!” and then resumed tormenting my flesh into a state of arousal I did not want it to experience. Not with him .

I swore silently that I would see him dead. This was the ultimate degradat jon: that he should have so destroyed my life, that I should hate him so greatly, and that even so my traitor body should respond so eagerly to his touch.

Worse was the day I realized I was pregnant. He put that child in me, I think, that first horrible night.

Now I was going to swell with the child of Melanthus’ murderer. I begged Tavia to find me the means by which to abort the child—I was sure she would know the herbs to use—but she refused. She said it would be too dangerous to anger Brutus that much; he was around me day and night, he would hardly be likely to overlook a miscarriage and would certainly suspect the reason for it. I argued vehemently with her: Brutus had not noticed the absence of my monthly courses… and surely I could pass off a miscarriage as merely a heavier than normal flow.

But no, she would not do it. It is your child , she said, how could you want to murder it ?

I loved Tavia, she was the mother I had never known, but when she said that to me I could cheerfully have slapped her. This was not my child withinme __I could not even conceptualize the fact that it was as much my flesh and blood as Brutus’—it was an alien creature that fed off my body in order to grow, a horrible hateful thing that with the changes it increasingly wrought in my body reminded me every waking moment of Brutus’ power over me and my father and of his murder of Melanthus.

It was a daily reminder of Brutus’ virulent success as measured against Melanthus’ pitiful failure in the battlefields of war and sex.

Hate Brutus I might, but I think I disguised the depth of that hatred reasonably well. I was compliant, I did not hiss and spit, and while I was not the most pleasant of companions (that would have surely roused his suspicions), I did enough to make Brutus think my spirit was truly vanquished. I certainly did a good enough impression of the compliant wife for Brutus to allow me, after a few weeks, to move freely about the palace and to visit my father once or twice a week.

I was sure that eventually that would prove his fatal mistake. Once I could move freely and widely, then the possibilities for revenge increased exponentially.

Especially after the vision that came to me the night after the repulsive Membricus had revealed my pregnancy.

Brutus had made love to me, as usual, and had then fallen into a deep stupor. As usual. I lay awake for some time, unable to get comfortable—partly because Brutus had fallen asleep across my body and his muscular frame was an uncomfortable weight to bear, and partly because his child was making me feel a little nauseous. I moved slightly, trying to ease Brutus’ weight away from me, but he grunted in his sleep and moved even more heavily across my body. Frustrated, irritable, exhausted, sick to my stomach, close to tears, I was just about to put my hands on his shoulders and give him an almighty heave—I cared not if I disturbed his sleep—when a voice spoke.

‘Cornelia.”

It was barely a whisper, but I was so surprised I jumped as if I’d been slapped.

‘Shush, Cornelia, do not wake your husband. This is not for his ears.”

I looked about the room, and finally saw a figure silhouetted against the open windows.

‘Hera?” I whispered.

The figure walked forward, and I saw by its movement and form that it was indeed a woman.

‘Hera?” I said again, although now that she was closer I saw that she did not look much like the goddess who had come to me on the blasted rock to warn me of the impending catastrophe in my life, but someone slightly younger and of a more rounded build. I thought for a brief moment it might be that smaller, darker woman I’d seen with Hera in the great stone hall, but, no, this woman was far taller than she had been.

‘Shush, Cornelia, and listen. Tell me, do you want a revenge on that man who lies beside you?”

‘Yes!”

‘Then listen closely to what I say,” the visionary woman said, “and you shall have what you want.”

She stepped yet closer, and now I saw that she had glorious black hair with a curious russet streak through it.

I wondered if she was the distant sister Hera had talked of, but in truth, I did not care who she was. If she could give me the means to destroy Brutus, then she was all that I wanted.

‘Listen, Cornelia,” the goddess said, and bending gracefully beside the bed, began to whisper in my ear.

CbAPGGR GbRATER THAT MORNING CORNELIA WALKED THE corridors of the palace to her father’s closely guarded **•*’ chamber.

She walked gracefully, unhurriedly, her head high and her shoulders back, as if she still ruled this place as the beloved only heir of its king. Her dress was meticulous: the heavy, flounced embroidered skirts that flowed to either side of her as she walked; the wide tight girdle that flattered her still narrow waist; the tightly fitted emerald jacket with its stiffened high neck and lapels that flared to either side of her breasts.