More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
People only ever spoke of her dazzling radiance, sometimes moved to poetry or song in praise of it. No one ever mentioned that she was thoughtful or that she was kind.
A breeze rippled across the water, and I felt a yearning all at once for something I couldn’t name. So much was happening – weddings and war – and none of it involved me.
It can be dangerous, though, to let a son grow up with vengeance in his heart.’
Every word I speak is unwelcome.
As a child, I rarely made it through a sentence without being told to start it again and say it more loudly, more clearly. No one ever asks me to repeat myself now.
I knew that the madness within me had not been building to that moment, but rather that the echoes of his devastation had rung back through my years as well as forward. Such was the power of Apollo: he could shatter my existence from beginning to end.
I knew it, and although I knew that a thousand women would wring their hands and scream in bitter grief because of this man in the years to come, this nymph cried now.
I thought he spoke sincerely, but I could see he was a man of romance and idealism. Such a man speaks poetry in place of facts and thinks he tells a higher truth when all he spins is fantasy.
But everyone knew that Aphrodite had no care for peace or harmony, and it was not love between nations that excited her.
But no one heard me; that was my curse. Not my family, and certainly not the gods.
Troy would fall. And for all that everyone might disbelieve me if I said it aloud, somewhere in their bones, I knew they knew it, too.
A massed army of women, facing that perilous passage with no armour to protect us, only our own strength and hope that we would prevail.
They hated her. They hated her because she was so beautiful and because she made them want her so much. Nothing brought them more joy than the fall of a lovely woman. They picked over her reputation like vultures, scavenging for every scrap of flesh they could devour.
I had gone everywhere before her; trodden the paths I sent her down to make sure they were safe before I let her go. How could I let her go now, to where I did not know, without me at her side?
