CHAPTER II

CHAPTER II

Lysia appeared in the doorway of the Athenai temple. It was not what it once was. When the Romans had ransacked their lands and left their buildings to do little more than crumble and become tourist attractions, the sisterhood had been forced to flee. Now they resided in a collection of small huts on the edge of Athena’s estate that were beautifully kept. The main area for the sisters’ gathering was little more than a converted barn but the floors were immaculately swept, the fires lit, the altars adorned with bountiful flowers, fruits, and dried meats in service to their goddess. Even the air around them seemed sweet yet sharp like the citrus trees outside, an apt way to describe those that served Athena.

“Amara?” The high priestess called, her calm authoritative voice echoing off the walls.

A priestess, who had been showing a younger woman how to crush berries with the side of a blade to make a particular tonic, looked up. A spark of recognition in her sharp green eyes had her wiping her blade on her tunic, placing it down, and making her way calmly, yet efficiently, to the doorway.

“Lysia, I did not know we were to be expecting you. Please come in. May I offer you some refreshment? We purified the watertoday.”

Lysia let out a chuckle as she acquiesced and walked to the seating area by the main circular altar. “Still using those herbal tricks Circe taught you I see.”

“My Lady holds no complaint, does she?” Amara asked, a small smile on her face. But her voice held a thread of worry. Ah, but Amara made a good priestess because she cared what her liege thought of her.

Lysia smiled. “She does not. In fact she has a task for you.”

Before she could reveal anymore, two other women approached them.

“Amara, we were smoking the wood as you showed us but the flame licked too high and now these meats are ruined. What shall we do? Athena hates burnt meat and it is too charred for the sisters to eat,” the younger of the twoasked.

“Excuse me,” Amara said to Lysia before cupping the younger, more hysterical, woman’s face in her hands. “We shall fixit.”

“How?” the other asked.

Amara took the meat from their hands. “Go and fetch me a bowl from thekitchens.”

When they returned, Amara placed the meat in the bowl and poured over the water she meant to drink with Lysia.

“Cut some of the citrus fruits from outside and get some of the freshly crushed berries your sister is working on in the kitchens. Add it to this bowl. Place a lid on it and then sit it on the smoking wood away from the flames. It should soften and thicken into a nice broth for ustonight.”

“Thank you, Amara,” the older and taller of the twosaid.

“You’re welcome,” she nodded before sending them on their way and returning to her seat with Lysia.

“You would have made an excellent high priestess,” Lysia observed with a keeneye.

“Politics and paperwork are not my forte,” Amara countered with a warm smile.

“Yet leadership is, for the others come to you for guidance.”

“I think they are so used to strategy sometimes that they forgetsimplicity.”

“You are being modest,” Lysia chided. “What you do is no simple parlour trick. It isalchemy.”

“That was cooking,” Amara replied dryly.

“Cooking is a basic form of alchemy,” Lysia countered.

Amara was silent for a moment, contemplating her answer.

“Sometimes I wonder, if Hestia were to take her seat amongst the twelve gods, perhaps I would have only served her instead and then all they would say of me was that I ran a goodhousehold.”

“Is that what you want? To run a goodhousehold?”

“Yes,” said Amara, but that wistful tone in her voice gave her away once again.

“Yet here you are in Athena’s lands. Why?”

“I wished to learncourage.”

“For whatpurpose?”

“The quiet courage it takes to be a woman who loves simply at home is just as important as the courage on the battlefield,” Amara replied quietly, for that was not a popular opinion amongst the Athenai who went about their daily rituals around them. Most longed to be more like their goddess, to counter their sweet temperament that had not always served them well. There was nowhere else for a woman to learn courage such as Athenataught.

“Ah. And so the stint with Aphrodite was to teach you the love you wished tocultivate?”

Amaranodded.

“And Artemis beforethat?”

“She taught me how to be at one withnature.”

Lysia smiled, understanding dawning in her mind at the young priestess’ moira, her destiny. She would run much more than just a household, a sisterhood, the Fates whispered. These skills were destined for somethinggreater.

Amara looked at Lysia, trepidation pacing behind her eyes at the woman’s silence.

“You won’t tell Her, will you?”

To be in service to multiple goddesses for your own gain was taboo and Amara had nowhere else to go, no family. She’d been the unfortunate offspring of her mother’s rape, abandoned in the fields of Artemis as a babe. Priestesshood, servitude, was all she had ever known.

“I have no need to. Athena summons you for a task. It would appear your skills are about to serve you as they were always intendedto.”