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pride. If Zeus had not loved Leda so well, Sparta itself would have fallen. Leda’s rape by a swan was less than your parents deserved in punishment. Zeus showed h er mercy.”
    “And does Zeus punish me for the sins of my parents now?” I looked back at the priestess where she sat on a low st one bench.
    Her auburn hair hung loose down her back, myrtle flowers floating in the soft curls like gulls on the sea. A scallop-shell pendant rested at the hollow of her throat, and sparrows and doves darted around her feet, picking at the crumbs of past offerings. Strange that I had never met her before, but I wished that she had not dedicated herself to the gods. Perhaps Menelaus might have fallen in love with her , instead.
    “Do you feel so ill-used? The most beautiful woman alive, with a brother who loves you well—Pollux will never forsake you. And a man who would offer you the same, though you spurn him.” She seemed to look right through me, pinning me to the earth. “Is there someone else you would prefer over Menelaus? You have only to name him and he will be d elivered.”
    “No.” I rose to my feet. I did not like the way she spoke of Menelaus, as if he were nothing more than a convenience. “I ask nothing of these gods. Let Menelaus love me for his own reasons, or better yet, no t at all.”
    The priestess smiled, but there was little kindness in her expression. “To hear such a thing from your lips is absurd. Have you no idea of the power you hold over men? Menelaus will continue as he has begun. I could not stop it if I wished. Nor co uld Zeus.”
    Her words sent a prickle of unease down my spine, though I did not know why. I had never heard a priestess speak as she did. By all rights, the gods should have taken great exception to her arrogance, prieste ss or not.
    I did not want to worship gods as cruel as this—gods cruel enough to rape my mother after she objected to being deceived, or willing to waste the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands of men in a useless war. I did not want to believe we could no t be free.
    “Menelaus has the right to make his own choices,” I sai d at last.
    “And yet . . . ,” she said.
    My stomach twisted at the weight of those two words, and at the thoughts that followed in my own mind. And yet , I kept from him his fate. I kept from him the truth of what I saw coming. But this priestess could not have known what I had done.
    I shook my head, trying to clear it. The dreams had come to me as a warning, I was certain, for I had dreamed of smaller moments in the past and seen them brought to life through my inaction, and avoided when I interfered. Once I dreamed that Pollux would be thrown from his horse and break his arm while riding with Castor, and I begged him not to go. He had come back with a sprained wrist and claimed if it had not been for my warning, he would have suffe red worse.
    The dreams did not tie me to the future, but they gave me the opportunity to alter it. I saw it even in the small details that changed from nightmare to nightmare. One night, Ajax the Lesser would find me in the temple; the next, I cowered in a bedroom, listening to a warrior break down my door. It was as if the future itself were still in motion, unset until the moments c laimed us.
    The priests would not see it that way; nor would Menelaus, I was certain. He would see my dreams as proof that we were meant to marry, and he would use it to win me.
    But if I did not marry Menelaus, no stranger could steal me away. Everything rested upon th at choice.
    “Good day, Princess,” the pries tess said.
    When I looked up, she was gone.

    I did not spend the morning on my knees as Leda had ordered me, but I sat where the priestess had been, trusting that as angry as my mother was, she would not come to check. The only other person who came to the shrine that morning was Pollux, and I made room for him on the bench.
    “I’m sorry, little sister,” he said. “I heard Nestra speaking of it