Chapter Text
At first, there was nothing. A dark sea of silence, heavy and endless, where time did not exist and she floated— weightless, voiceless. It was peaceful, the sort of peace she is not allowed often. But then the sea rippled, and something moved.
A shape. A boy.
He stood on the shore, barefoot, hair dark like the bark of an oak tree, and though Cassandra had never seen him before, she knew him just as much as the boy knew her. "Her brother"— came the thought in a voice like her own. Not Hector. Not Deiphobus. Not Helenus. Someone else. He turned toward her with a smile as radiant as Apollo’s, a shepherd’s crook slung over his shoulder, a lamb nuzzling against his knee.
But when she blinked, the lamb’s eyes turned black, its mouth opened to reveal a second row of teeth, and the boy— her brother —was holding not a crook, but an apple.
Its skin shimmered, perfect and round, but a foul stench rose from it—rot and honey, blood and perfume. Something wrong.
The boy smiled sweetly, he mouthed his words and dropped it.
The Earth cracked.
And from the cracked Earth bones sprouted like wheat in the fields, and there she stood: in a field of bones. No grass, no sky—just bones. They stretched on forever. The wind howled through hollow eye sockets, and from the farthest ridge came a boy. Not a stranger. The same boy from before. The one her soul seemed to recognise as her brother.
Now that they were closer, she could see it, he had her eyes. Her mother’s mouth. The same dark curls as Helenus, only looser, wild like a lion’s mane. He smiled, but the smile made her cold.
The apple that had fallen from his hand and shattered on the ground—not into broken fruit, but into soldiers and bones and blood. They poured out like ants from a broken hive, wearing bronze and blood, screaming in a tongue she did not know but somehow understood: Ruin. Ruin. Ruin.
Then Ilion grew around them, impossibly fast—walls of white stone rising up like teeth, piercing the sky. Cassandra stood alone now on the walls of her city, watching her unknown brother disappear into its heart, apple in hand, vanishing into the smoke.
She stood before the gates of Ilion, and they were open. The night air was filled with the scent of smoke and salt. A great horse—no, not a horse, but something in the shape of one—loomed just beyond the gates, made of bones and fire and shadows. It moved like it lived, breathing smoke from its mouth. From its belly, men crawled out, faces shadowed by their helms, knives in their hands, dripping red.
“No,” she breathed. “No, you can’t come in. We’re safe inside. Hector said we’re safe.”
But no one listened.
The gates groaned open, and her city let the monsters in.
One among them had eyes like a bird, strange in colour, and a mouth that curved like a knife's edge. His fingers were covered in spider silk, pulling on invisible strings— though she did not know his name yet, only that he was clever and cruel.
She screamed to the guards on the wall, screamed until her throat tore open, but no one looked. They could not hear her. The wind swallowed her words.
She turned.
The sky was on fire.
Flames. Screams. Splintering wood. Blood. So much blood. Ilion burned as if it had been soaked in oil. Her home—her temple—her family— gone.
She ran through the streets barefoot, ashes sticking to her skin. Around her, bodies lay twisted in the dust—noblemen and servants, babes and warriors, their eyes glassy with betrayal. The air was too thick to breathe. Smoke burned her throat. The sound of weeping and steel drowned everything else.
She reached the steps of the Temple of Athena, hands outstretched to the sky.
“Please,” she begged, to the goddess, to the stars, to anyone who might hear. “Please, make them stop!”
The temple doors stood open—inside, the statue of the goddess wept blood.
Cassandra stumbled in.
She did not pray. She collapsed before the altar, her tiny fingers clawing at the cold marble as if she could bury herself inside it, as if the stone could protect her. Her mouth moved without sound.
Footsteps.
A shadow fell across her.
A man—tall, helmeted and for a brief moment, she thought it was her father or her brother, but something seemed wrong about him—stood in the doorway. His sword dripped red. He grabbed her by the hair.
“No!” she shrieked, kicking, thrashing. “ Please—please—don’t— ”
But he did not listen. Of course he didn’t.
Nobody ever did.
He dragged her from the temple as it collapsed behind them, Athena’s face shattering into dust. Outside, the city was gone. The towers melted like wax. The flames licked the stars. In the square where once fountains had played, now stood a heap of golden apples, rotting from the core, swarmed by flies with human faces.
She looked at the palace.
Her mother turned away.
Her father vanished into smoke.
Helenus… he stood among the crowd, eyes full of tears, but he said nothing. He did nothing.
And Hector—
Hector was dead. His body lay on the steps, his chest caved in, arms spread wide as though he’d tried to shield the city with his own flesh. His face was turned toward her, peaceful even in death.
She screamed his name.
No answer.
The soldier dragged her, stumbling, her feet catching on stone, her knees bloody, and she knew, in the deepest part of her soul, nobody would come for her.
She was alone.
She had always been alone.
And the last sound she heard was the chorus of mocking laughter—not from the soldiers, but from the gods above, distant and gleaming, looking down upon her suffering with amusement.
Even Apollo smiled.
Cassandra woke with a gasp, cold sweat slick on her skin. The braziers were still cold. The room still dark. Her body trembled as though the flames from her dream had reached her bones, and now reality was far too cold.
She clutched her knees to her chest. The braziers had long since gone cold.
The scent of sandalwood incense still clung to the corners of the high, shadowed bedchamber like the ghost of a memory—sweet, but not comforting. Shadows ruled here. Pale moonlight filtered through the carved lattice of the windows, casting crooked patterns on the marble floor that moved and twisted as if mocking her. The warmth of the day had fled hours ago, and with it, any chance that one of the servants might remember to light the hearth.
They always forgot
Or perhaps they remembered, and simply chose not to come.
Cassandra did not ask. She had learned not to speak unless spoken to. People listened when she was quiet. Not in the way that meant they cared—no, never that—but in the way one watched a spider in the corner of the room, wary and disgusted, waiting for it to strike. Better to go unnoticed.
So she sat curled in the far corner of her bed, a mass of blankets pulled around her, though they did little to stop the chill that had settled around her. The embroidered canopy above her—lilies and suns stitched in gold thread—seemed to mock the gloom. It had once been her pride, a gift from her father when she turned six, when she was still “the Wild Rose of Ilion,” still a daughter he could boast of.
She tried not to remember those days. But memories had sharp claws.
Cassandra was eight now. And cursed.
They said it was her fault. They whispered that a girl who shamed the gods deserved her fate. That Apollo had loved her—that Apollo had chosen her —and she, little fool, had spurned him. They never listened when she tried to explain the vow, the sacred chastity demanded of all priestesses. Why would they? The god himself had said it: Nobody shall believe her.
The first time the prophecy came was just days after.
A burning sun above Ilion, a black sail on the horizon. Screams—so many screams. Blood pouring over marble like spilt wine. And her voice, raw with pleading, crying, “Don’t let him in!”, although she also has no idea who she should be afraid of.
But they only laughed. “Poor child,” they said. “Too much incense in the temple.”
When she screamed, when she wept, when she tore at her dress and begged them to understand—Queen Hecuba had grabbed her arm, hard enough to leave bruises, and hissed through her teeth, “You bring shame upon me with your madness. He was my god once. You do not provoke him.”
And Helenus... Her brother, her twin, her other half.
He had turned his eyes away. The first time, she thought it was just fear. The second, that it was shame. By the third, she understood. He would not stand with her. Not if it meant being cast aside too.
The pain of it never dulled. It just found new ways to ache.
The silence in her room tonight was heavy. Heavier than usual. It wrapped around her throat, pressing, just like His marble-like fingers pressed on there before when He looked into her eyes and cursed her. She had not spoken in five days. No one had come in three. Once, she might have counted the hours. Now, she only counted the stars.
A soft creak sounded at the door. Cassandra froze.
Then silence again.
No one came in.
A trick of the wind, perhaps. Or her own imagination. Either way, it didn’t matter.
She pulled her knees to her chest. Her nightdress was thin, fine linen, once gifted by a visiting Mycenaean noblewoman who praised her beauty and declared her “a little goddess.” How different things were now.
Her eyes prickled. She fought it. Tears were dangerous. Tears led to noise. Noise led to punishment, if not from her parents, then from the world. She could survive the cold. She could survive hunger. She could survive being invisible.
But sometimes, on nights like this, survival wasn't enough.
She turned her face into the pillow and whispered, so softly even she could barely hear it:
“Please… just one person. Just one.”
She imagined what it would be like to have a friend. Not a brother who feared disgrace. Not a mother who saw her as a reminder of her own past. Not a father whose eyes passed through her as if she were already a spirit haunting the palace.
A friend. Someone who might take her hand when she trembled, someone who would bring her figs and whisper secrets in the dark, someone who might hear her warnings and believe.
But when she imagined this friend’s face, it was blank.
She had no memory of what such a face might look like.
She had no one.
Well... Almost no one.
Hector.
The only one who ever looked her in the eye. Who still called her his “little star,” though he never said it when others could hear. Who once carried her in his arms after she fainted in the temple, his face etched with worry as he brushed hair from her brow.
But even Hector... even he did not believe. When she had told him of the Achaeans— beware the man with the lion's pelt, beware the horse with no eyes —he had only frowned and held her tight, whispering, “You’re safe, Cassandra. You’re safe with me.” Believing it to be nightmares or just the delusions of an 8-year-old child.
As if his promises of safety would stop the future.
As if love alone could rewrite the will of the gods.
A gust of wind howled outside her windows. The branches of the cypress trees clawed at the stone like witches trying to get in. She shivered, tucked herself tighter into the corner of her bed, and stared at the moonlight patterns on the marble. She traced them with her eyes, imagined them as roads—roads out of Ilion, out of the palace, out of her curse.
But she never walked those roads.
She stayed, hidden in the shadows, waiting for a morning that never came.
And as sleep finally tugged at her, she dreamed once again. Dreamed of fire, and the sound of a thousand voices screaming, and above it all, her own small voice—
Unheard.
Unbelieved.
Alone.