The Temple of Athena stood on the highest point of the citadel, its columns of pale stone visible from every corner of the city. It was older than the palace, older than the walls, older than the dynasty that now ruled Troy. The wooden statue of the goddess within—the Palladion—was said to have fallen from the sky in the age of the first kings, a gift from the divine, a guarantee of the city's inviolability. As long as the Palladion stood, Troy would stand.
Lysander had never entered the temple.
He had walked past it a hundred times—on his way to the tower, on his way to the war room, on his way to the supply office. He had seen the priests in their white robes moving through the courtyard, the supplicants kneeling before the altar, the smoke of incense rising into the winter sky. But he had never gone inside. He was a man from another world, another time, and the gods of this age were not his gods.
But Hecuba had asked him to come. And when the queen asked, it was not a request.
