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looked down and given me a grudging smile, nearly hidden by his long hair. It had been growing since he’d hurt his leg, wild curls hanging down in messy ringlets, and sometimes when I saw him out of the corner of my eye I thought he was Hippothoe, grown tall and stiff, walking away from me. “You do talk back, sour mouth.”
    That was not a warning, not quite. I’d looked down at my distaff, the mess of wool around the smoothed stalk of bone. “Do you think Acastus will bring her? He’ll have to come back soon. He must marry in a few years, or at least be betrothed.”
    “That’s for Atreus to decide.”
    “Atreus meddles.”
    “He’s king of Mycenae, Alcestis.” There, a flash of manly disapproval.
    “Oh, stop,” I’d said. “That doesn’t make him less of a meddler, making Acastus wait to marry until he gives permission. Acastus isn’t his son. They’re all like old women sometimes, I swear it.”
    “He’s already given his permission for Pisidice to wed,” Pelopia had said, and nodded unperturbedly when I looked up at him. “She won’t be running the household any longer when the new bride comes. You know how well she’ll like that. I wager Pelias knows it too.”
    He’d laughed, and I’d laughed a little then too, at the thought of my imperious sister being displaced. But now, in the women’s quarters, I leaned my hips against the windowsill and watched Pisidice snap at the servant who was trying to work one last ribbon into her heavily decorated hair. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement or fury—hard to tell with Pisidice. Hard to tell if I would miss her. Before Hippothoe had died I’d cared little for her, but since then I had grown so used to her presence, her fine features and graceful movements, stylized like a dance. Living with Pisidice was like living with a cranky painting—she was all temper and bright surface. Losing her would make the women’s quarters quieter, but darker too.
    Before he left the porch that day, Pelopia had stared at me the same way I was staring at Pisidice now, as if I had transformed beneath his gaze. I’d asked him what was wrong, why he looked strange, and he’d said: “Three years, sour mouth. Till it’s your turn. If he even waits that long.” He’d glanced around the courtyard, darted down to kiss the crown of my head, and wiped his mouth surreptitiously as he’d straightened up. I wore my hair in a heavy oiled braid like Pisidice’s, and his lips had come away from my head gleaming. I smiled now, thinking of the look on his face.
    Pisidice, who had been watching me, caught my smile and slowly, hesitantly, smiled back.
    A shout came up the stairs: the wedding party was approaching the palace. The women made a hasty line at the door, splashing their fingers in the bowl of water there. When I got to it, a sheen of oil slicked the water’s surface, a thin gloss of woman. I swirled my fingertips in the water and ran after the others, leaving damp smudges on the stone wall of the stairwell.
    Had Pelias been a young and purely mortal man, the marriage would’ve been celebrated with a great feast held at the house of his father. But Pelias’s Olympian father could not host a gathering in his realm under the sea; his mother was estranged and her mortal husband dead. So Pelias hosted his own wedding. The whole household had to be arrayed to meet the Mycenaean bride. I rushed through the great hall to the porch, stumbling among the servants until I found my sister. Pisidice rolled her eyes and grabbed my arm, pulling me down to stand on the lowest step. “I expect you’ll be late for your own wedding too,” she said. I folded my hands together and tried to look contrite.
    The wedding party came over the edge of the hill, the light of the lowering sun striking their faces, flattening their features into beaten gold masks. Pelias towered ruddy as a god above the others. His new wife’s eyes were obediently lowered. The woman wore no veil and no