A Spartan's Sorrow (The Grecian Women Trilogy, #2)

by Hannah M. Lynn

“We are standing outside the temple of a goddess,” Tisiphone continued, still in human form. “It was not to a god that mighty Apollo came, for a solution to this problem, just as it would not have been to his father that Orestes would have gone with his troubles as a child. The goddesses, the mothers, they are the ones we turn to. And yet it is a god’s word that we have to obey, one that tells us that a man must be avenged, but not a woman.”

“One is not worth more than the other. Men are not more worthy. Fathers are not more worthy. Do you think a god would be here defending a girl who had killed her father? Of course not. She would be hanged, or worse.

“We have come here today for justice. Murder, matricide—these are bleak words and true ones. But there are other truths, too, such as the loyalty that a man would show to a god. The suffering he would endure for him. For eight years, Orestes ignored the will of the gods, to try and protect his mother from a fate that he had not decided, that he did not want. “In our darkest moments, we should recognise not just what has been lost, but who continues to stand beside us. Orestes arrived here in the company of a god, a sister and a friend, and their devotion is unquestionable. Love like that does not come from fear or coercion. He is not an evil man. His deeds were not entirely of his own volition. And, despite everything, I believe his love for his mother remained true to the end. Which is why, in my final ruling on the matter, I find him … not guilty.”