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Without him, nothing would ever be right again.

I know not how much time passed before Alexander burst into the chambers, only that Hephaestion’s limbs had grown cold, although his broad chest still retained its warmth. I would cling to that warmth until it was gone, stealing the last trace of my husband’s soul from me.

“I came as soon as I could,” Alexander began, then stopped short as his gaze fell first on me, and then on Hephaestion. Abject horror spread across his face and he fell to his knees as if he’d received a mortal wound. “No,” he moaned. “No, no,
no
!”

The last word was a shout that might have shaken the stars from their moorings. I sat up as Alexander crawled to Hephaestion’s side, ignoring me as he threw himself over the body of his friend, companion, and lover.

“I should have stayed,” he sobbed. “I should have stayed.” Tears cut swaths down his handsome face as he howled and beat his fists against the mattress, his entire body shaking with the force of his grief. Tears poured freely down my cheeks then, grief for myself and for Hephaestion, and also for this man who had inspired Hephaestion’s love and who so clearly still loved him.

“Leave us!” he screamed, hurling the copy of Sappho’s poetry at me in a flurry of bone white pages. “Get out!”

And I did, the dog on my heels as I stumbled outside into my sister’s waiting arms. “Oh, Drypetis,” Stateira said, falling to her knees as I keened into her shoulder. “My poor, dear Drypetis. I’m so, so sorry.”

And I sobbed then, releasing the torrent of grief for my lost husband within the strength of my sister’s frail arms.

CHAPTER 23

Ecbatana, Persia

Thessalonike

We approached Ecbatana that autumn, a city known as the Place of Gathering for its location in the center of Persia, gleeful with anticipation at the fanfare and celebrations promised for Alexander’s sister and brother. Our travels had been smooth, save for a fever that had overtaken our traveling party outside Babylon, affecting several soldiers, Cassander, and young Adea. Cassander hadn’t pressed his suit with me since the night by the fire, but now he stayed behind in Babylon to recover, freeing me from glaring at him to make him keep his distance. Cynnane too remained with her feverish daughter in Babylon and would rejoin our party after Adea recuperated, but the rest of us pressed on with Antipater’s entourage to Alexander, passing golden fields that promised a bountiful harvest and a pleasant year to come. But instead of fanfare, our entourage was greeted by a city swathed in black.

Ecbatana was built onto a hillside with rainbow-hued battlements clinging to its incline, first white, then black, red, blue, orange, silver, and gold with the gleaming stone palace atop the pinnacle itself.

“What’s that?” Arrhidaeus pointed from his place in the chariot next to me, but I could only squint at the strange shape on the road that led to the main gate of the outer wall. I recoiled as we drew closer.

“Close your eyes,” I barked at Arrhidaeus. “Now!”

I cringed myself and averted my gaze from the crucified corpse covered in a swarm of feasting flies. A crude wooden sign lay at his feet, a black scrawl in Greek that proclaimed his crime.

Here stands Glaucus, the man who killed Alexander’s heart.

“Alexander,” I gasped. Next to me, Arrhidaeus moaned and burrowed his face into my shoulder as if he could sense my panic. I squeezed him tight even as my heart thundered with fear for Alexander. A glance at Antipater’s chariot revealed that he shared my shock.

I cracked the whip over our matched sorrel mares, making the chariot lurch over the rutted path.

“He can’t have died,” I murmured, clutching the chariot with one hand and Arrhidaeus’ thick wrist with the other. “Not Alexander.”

It had been more than ten years since I’d seen my brother, and I’d traveled nearly all the way across the empire to see his face again, to hear his battle stories, and to join him as he conquered the rest of the world.

Now the gods had stolen that opportunity from me.

I told myself that it couldn’t be true, that nothing could kill my golden brother—but even a man who claimed Achilles and Heracles as his ancestors could not cheat death.

We approached the outer white gates and I threw our name and titles up to the silent guards, my mind still reeling. “Where is Alexander?” I asked the soldiers, and held my breath, fearing the answer. “Is he dead?”

“Not Alexander,” one of them said, and my heart lightened, only to be ripped from my chest with his next words. “It is Hephaestion who has traveled to the river Styx.”

The man who killed Alexander’s heart.

Since they were boys, Hephaestion had been Alexander’s companion, the Patroclus to his Achilles. Laughing, brilliant Hephaestion, now cold and dead so far from home.

The man I’d thought to marry.

My fingers stifled my moan and Arrhidaeus’ hand grasped my elbow. “How?” I asked. “What enemy could have slain Hephaestion?”

“No enemy,” the soldier answered. “’Twas a fever that laid him low, though some say it was poison that finally killed him. Some feared Alexander would follow him after the way he clung to the corpse for a whole day and a night. It took all his Companions to pull him from the bed.”

“When did Hephaestion die?” I asked, scarcely able to croak out the words.

“Five days ago.”

Five mere days. I felt a flutter of panic, wondering if Cynnane or Adea might have fallen too since we’d left them behind in Babylon.

But the guard continued. “Alexander threatened to have Hephaestion’s wife killed if she laid a finger on her husband. It’s not right, what Alexander’s doing, keeping the body locked away.”

Hephaestion’s
wife
. We’d heard rumors of the massive weddings at Susa and that Alexander had taken two new wives, but there had been no mention of Hephaestion’s marriage. I thought of the last time I’d seen him at the banquet in Pella and his letter urging me to seek out Cynnane, feeling a flush of guilt that we’d parted so poorly.

Hephaestion was gone now, but I prayed that he’d found happiness at Alexander’s side these past years, and perhaps with his wife too.

I cracked the whip and we jerked forward toward the citadel, traveling through all the colored gates in silence. The residents of Ecbatana watched us with curiosity and many wore ashes in their hair and streaked on their foreheads to proclaim their state of mourning. The air was still, no music to herald our arrival, no children laughing as they played catch-and-find or ran with hoops down the streets. It was as if the city had been sieged and all those who remained were merely shades. We passed horses with their manes shorn off in a clear sign of mourning, and a temple that had been razed to the ground within the blue ramparts, incongruous with the otherwise splendid surroundings.

“Asclepius,” I murmured, frowning at the ruined stone remnants dedicated to the god of healing, his snake staff broken and forgotten on the ground. So Alexander had thought to punish the god who forsook him, and crucified his healer too, presumably the physician charged with treating Hephaestion’s fever.

Arrhidaeus disembarked first and lifted me down by the waist, thrusting one hand into mine. “I’m scared, Nike,” he said. “I don’t like death.”

I pressed my lips against the back of his hand as we entered the palace. “No one does, my Titan.”

Yet we each carried within our hearts the day that Hades would claim us. I prayed that the god of death would be gentle when he came for Arrhidaeus, stealing my brother white-haired and warm in his bed.

My sheathed sword bumped along my leg like an old friend as attendants directed us to Hephaestion’s chambers. A dark-haired and disheveled young woman stood in the corridor, yelling at the contingent of guards posted outside. “I don’t care if Ahura Mazda himself gave you the orders,” she said, stomping her feet. “You will let me inside that room!”

The soldiers remained impassive, their spears and shields held at attention.

I approached just as the woman whirled around, her face ravaged from days of crying. Her features were too angular to ever be called beautiful, but her gold-flecked eyes flashed with intelligence.

And fury.

“Who are you?” she asked, her Greek accented with the rolled consonants I’d come to expect from the Persian nobility, at odds with the rumpled robe she wore.

“I am Thessalonike, Alexander’s sister,” I said. “And this is Arrhidaeus, his brother.”

She stopped, as if my words had sapped some of her anger. “Hephaestion spoke often of you. . . .” Her voice trailed off and she rubbed her red, sore eyes before regaining control of herself. “I am Drypetis, daughter of King Darius and wife of Hephaestion.”

If I’d had to guess which woman Hephaestion would one day wed, this woman would have been at the bottom of the heap. Still, there must be more to her than was evident at first glance if she dared now to berate Alexander.

“And Alexander?”

“Is within.” Drypetis gestured toward the guards. “These brutes answer only to him, but perhaps you can make them see reason.” She looked ready to gouge out their eyes, but then her lower lip quivered. “He’s been in there with Hephaestion for five days. Hephaestion must be prepared—not even Alexander has the right to deny Hephaestion’s funeral rites.”

“Have there been funeral games?” I asked, but I knew the answer even before Drypetis shook her head.

“Only the order against music and the command that all horses be shorn,” she said. “And Glaucus was crucified.”

I shuddered at the remembrance of the physician’s body. I’d see to it that the corpse was removed regardless of whether Alexander found his right mind again.

“Have there been any priests?”

Drypetis blinked and nodded, wrapping her arms around herself. “Both the priests of Ammon and Ahura Mazda, but Alexander ordered them away.”

My brother truly had lost his mind to grief if he risked offending the gods or their officials. Perhaps that was the route to help him recover again.

“Find an oracle,” I said. “And bring him here.”

“An oracle?” she asked. “There are no oracles in Ecbatana.”

“None at all?”

She shook her head. “You Greeks love your oracles, as do the Egyptians, but we Persians don’t claim to read the future in Ahura Mazda’s sacred flames.”

I tapped an unsteady rhythm with my fingers against my sword, pacing as Cynnane often did, before suddenly halting. “I need parchment,” I said to Drypetis.

“Parchment?” She slanted her brows at me.

“I’ve traveled all the way from Greece and along the way, I intercepted an important message from the oracle at . . .” I snapped my fingers, plucking a name from the air. “From Siwa. The oracle of Ammon foresaw the death of Hephaestion and has instructions from the god as to how the epic hero must be honored. Alexander answers to no mortal, so it will take a god to order him to live again.”

Drypetis wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and drew a shuddering breath. “You know Alexander well. That sounds like a plan Hephaestion would have concocted.”

“Hephaestion never stood for Alexander’s tantrums.”

“I know,” Drypetis said, fingering the gold pendant at her throat, a hollow bulla depicting a winged Icarus on one side and what appeared to be Daedalus on the other. “I reminded Alexander of that through the door, but it didn’t go over well.”

I smiled, for I already liked this Persian princess, even if she
had
married Hephaestion.

Drypetis eyed my sword and greaves after she’d waved down a passing attendant and ordered the boy to find paper and pen. “I didn’t realize the Greeks trained women to fight,” she said.

“Only the Illyrians,” I said. “And me.”

She smiled at that, seemingly satisfied, but her fingers fluttered in her lap as if they itched to ply a loom or whet a blade, depending on what sort of woman she was.

“Hephaestion was like a brother to me,” I said, which I now realized was true, despite my attempts to think of him as a possible husband. “The sort of brother that puts spiders in your bed, but still manages to make you love him.”

“He did think himself Ahura Mazda’s gift to this world,” she said, dashing a sleeve across her eyes. “I thought it my duty to point out his many flaws lest he start demanding cups of ambrosia like a god.”