She shouldn’t be here.

That’s what I told the Council. What I told Kharon. What I told myself every time I saw her in the training yard, small and swift, cutting through the boys like a blade through silk. Spartans are forged, not found. And she—she was a girl, a whisper of softness in a world built on iron.

But damn the gods—she did not bend.

She bled more than any of them. She bore punishment with silence. When her bones broke, she set them herself. When her name was spat in the dirt, she buried it with the rest of her past. She never asked for mercy. Never once.

I tried to break her. Not out of cruelty—out of duty. Because war does not care if you are righteous, or brave, or good. War only respects the ruthless. And I needed to know she could survive it.

But I see it for what it is: a sickness. The same sickness that infected my sister—Helen, with her smiles and softness, who thought she could walk among wolves and not be torn apart. She believed she could be one of us. That Sparta would make room for her. All it made was a grave.

And now she—this girl—walks the same path. Eyes like a storm at sea. Hands bloodied, teeth bared. As if sheer will alone could make her worthy of the name Spartan.

I hate that she’s here. I hate that she stands in the same halls Helen once begged to be let into. I hate that she won’t break.

But gods help me, I watch her anyway.

When she fights, there is something in her that stirs the air—like the beat of war drums before a battle. She reminds me of everything I was taught to destroy, and yet I cannot look away. She is wrong. A woman should not be in armor. A woman should not speak like a soldier. But she does. She commands.

I tell myself it’s contempt. I tell myself I want her gone. But the truth coils beneath my ribs, quiet and venomous:

Part of me wants her to win.