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Later, after their husbands had gone to bed, all that was left was Irene and Helen passing a bottle of red wine back and forth without bothering with glasses anymore, formality faded to distant memory as the queens melted together into the sofa in Irene’s chambers. Irene stared at the floorboards with her hand gripped tight around the neck of the bottle. “Sometimes,” she said quietly, so quietly if Helen weren’t so close she wouldn’t hear, “I remember being trapped in my father’s house with a dozen women who wished my mother dead and only didn’t drown me because my brother would be king. And I think about you, in your mountains, climbing trees and hitting your cousins with sticks. And I still hate you with all my heart.”
Helen, curled up beside her, dropped her forehead into the braid draped over Irene’s shoulder, breathing in the scent of her hair oil. “Sometimes I think about you brazenly declaring yourself queen as Hephestia on earth with no finger of the gods on you at all and I still want to wrap my hands around your throat.”
Irene passed the bottle. “I’m sorry.”
Helen drained the last of it. “Me too.”