For a few years, she had known her father better than anyone. He was her captain, her trainer, and her tormentor. He only ever allowed a slight glimpse of emotion after she completed a training session. She’d be bleeding on the floor, and he’d approach, smooth down her hair, and whisper: On your feet, Discordia.

Clo tapped her metallic toes impatiently as the Secretary yielded the floor to the Archon. “What does he want?”

Rhea sighed. “He’s made a difficult decision.”

“How would you know?” Eris pressed.

Rhea gave her a look that said it all.

“Archons aren’t supposed to take courtesans.” Eris’s words were hollow. She thought her father had honored that vow.

If Eris had continued on the path to become the first Archontissa, she would have taken that vow to the God of Death to be His Hand, and in that oath was a promise to forsake all others: family, lovers, friends. Death required impartiality, the knowledge that He would come for everyone at the right time, and it was at His will. Devotion to such a deity meant a ruler must sacrifice worldly pleasures that could lead to a deeper connection; a soul could not share space with the God of Death, for He owned it and in death it would be His.

Resentment tightened in Eris’s chest. She’d accepted that her devotion to their gods was as flawed as a cracked vase. And in the end, her father was just as weak as she was. He was simply better at hiding it.

Rhea’s face stayed smooth as glass. “We were rarely intimate in the way you’re thinking—he had another courtesan for that—but he needed someone to listen. I was considered to be Damocles’s, but the Archon came some nights. Often, I suspect, because he was curious about his Heir’s chosen.” Rhea nodded to the screen. “Out here, he looks calm. He could never hide behind that with me.”

Eris’s breath caught. Rhea had been her brother’s chosen. He, too, disregarded the vow. As much as emotions warred within her, Eris already wondered how they could use this to their advantage. What weakness might her brother have divulged, whispered among satin pillows in the Pleasure Garden? How long had he gone to this woman? And her father? Rhea looked so young.

Eris tried to hide her troubled expression. “You’re what? Nineteen?”

“Twenty-one.”

Show nothing. Eris didn’t want Rhea to assume she held judgment for her or for the other courtesans. No, all her feelings were reserved for her father and brother and what they must have done to make this woman risk death to run.

Still, she had to ask, “How can you sound fond of him?”

If Rhea was offended by that, she didn’t show it. “He is a complicated man. But if I condoned the things he did, I wouldn’t be here.”