Forget it. She would get a boat somehow.
She scaled the steps to the queen’s loge, keenly aware that all attention had shifted from the victors’ podium to her. Light filtered through the silken overhang, casting the shaded platform in red and blue, jasmine tumbling from its railings in sweet-smelling clouds. There were no seasons on Themyscira, but Hippolyta had the vines and plants changed with every equinox and solstice. We must mark time, she’d told Diana. We must work to maintain our connection to the mortal world. We are not gods. We must always remember we were born mortal.
Not all of us, Diana had thought but hadn’t said at the time. Sometimes it was as if Hippolyta had forgotten Diana’s origins. Or maybe she just wanted to. There are different rules when you’re royalty.
Diana had no doubt that her mother had seen her as soon as she entered the arena, but now Hippolyta turned as if glimpsing her for the first time and smiled in welcome.
She opened her arms and embraced Diana briefly. It was the proper thing to do. Diana had lost. If her mother showed too much warmth, it would be perceived as foolish or inappropriate. If she treated Diana too coldly, it might be seen as a rejection and could have far-reaching repercussions. The embrace was as it should be and nothing more, balanced on the sword’s edge of politics. So why did it still prick her heart?
Diana knew her role. She remained at her mother’s side as they placed the crowns of laurel on the victors’ heads, and smiled and congratulated the morning’s competitors. But the cold coil of worry in her belly seemed to have sprouted tentacles, and with every passing moment they squeezed tighter. She told herself not to fidget, to stop checking the position of the sun in the sky. She felt sure her mother could tell something was wrong. Diana could only hope Hippolyta would blame her behavior on the shame of losing the race.
The games would continue through the afternoon, followed by a new play at the amphitheater in the evening. Diana hoped to be back at the cave long before then, but there was no escaping the first feast. Long tables had been set in the gardens beside the arena, laden with warm bread, heaps of poached cuttlefish, grilled strips of venison, and pitchers of wine and mare’s milk.
Diana forced herself to take some rice and fish, and pushed a piece of fresh honeycomb around her plate. It was usually her favorite, but her gut was too full of worry. She caught Maeve’s questioning glance from the end of the table, but she had to remain with her mother. Besides, what exactly was she going to tell Maeve? I definitely would have won but I was busy transgressing against divine law.
“In Pontus we would have had lamb grilled on the spit,” Tek said, pushing at the venison on her plate. “Proper meat, not this gamey stuff.”
No animals were raised for slaughter on the island. If meat was wanted, then it had to be hunted. It was not a rule created by the goddesses or a condition demanded by the island, but Hippolyta’s law. She valued all life. Tek valued her stomach.
Hippolyta just laughed. “If you can’t find meat worth eating, drink more wine.”
Tek raised her glass and they clinked cups, then bent their heads together giggling like girls. Diana had never seen anyone make Hippolyta laugh the way Tek did. They’d fought side by side in the mortal world, ruled together, argued together, and together they’d chosen to turn from the World of Man. They were prota adelfis, the first of the Amazons on Themyscira, sisters in all but blood. Tek didn’t hate Hippolyta—Diana was fairly sure she couldn’t hate her—only what she’d done when she’d created Diana. Hippolyta had made a life from nothing. She’d brought a girl into being on Themyscira. She’d made an Amazon when only the gods could do such a thing.
Once, when Diana was just a child, she’d woken in her palace bedroom to hear them arguing. She’d slid from her bed, the marble cold beneath her feet, and padded down the hall to the Iolanth Court.
This was the heart of their home, a wide terrace of graceful columns that overlooked the gardens below and the city beyond. The palace was full of objects that hinted at the world her mother had known before the island—a golden cup, a shallow black kylix painted with dancing women, a saddle made of tufted felt—pieces of a puzzle Diana had never been able to fit together into a whole story. But the Iolanth Court held no mysteries. It ran the length of the western side of the palace, open on three sides so that it was always flooded with sunlight and the sound of fountains burbling in the gardens below. Sweet, waxy plumeria twined around its columns, and its balustrade was marked by potted orange trees that drew the gossipy buzz of bees and hummingbirds.
Diana and her mother took most of their meals there at a long table that was always cluttered with Diana’s schoolbooks, half-full glasses of water or wine, a dish of figs, or a spill of freshly cut flowers. It was where Hippolyta welcomed new Amazons to Themyscira after they had been purified, her voice low and gracious as she explained the rules of the island.
But with Tek, Hippolyta ceased to be the dignified, benevolent queen. She was not the mother that Diana knew, either; she was someone else, someone a little wild and careless, someone who slouched in her chair and snorted when she laughed.
Hippolyta was not laughing that night. She was pacing back and forth on the terrace, the silks of her saffron-colored robe billowing behind her like a banner of war.
“She is a child, Tek. There is nothing dangerous about her.”
“She is a danger to our very way of life,” Tek said. She was seated on a bench at the long table in her riding clothes, elbows resting on the table, legs stretched out before her. “You know the law. No outsiders.”
“She isn’t an outsider. She’s a little girl. She was made of this island’s very earth, fashioned by my own hands. She’s never even been outside.”
“There are rules, Hippolyta. We are immortal. We’re not meant to conceive, and the island was intended for those of us who have known the perils of the World of Man, who know what it is to fight against the endless tide of mortal violence, who choose to turn away from it. You had no right to make that decision for Diana.”
“She will be raised in a world without conflict. She’ll walk a land in which blood has never been spilled.”
“Then how will she know to value it? The gods did not intend this. They made their laws for a reason, and you have subverted them.”
“The gods blessed her! They endowed her with living breath, made my blood to flow in her veins, bestowed their gifts upon her.” She sat down beside Tek. “Be reasonable. Do you think it was my power that gave her life? You know none of us have magic like that.”
Tek took Hippolyta’s hands in hers. Seated like that, hands clasped, they looked like they were making a pact, like they were colluding over some wonderful plan.
“Hippolyta,” Tek said gently, “when do the gods give such a gift without exacting a price? There is always a danger, always a cost, even if we haven’t seen it yet.”
“And what would you have me do?”
“I don’t know.” Tek rose and rested her hands on the balustrade, looking out at the dark stretch of city and sea. Diana remembered being surprised by how many lanterns were still lit in the houses below, as if this were the appointed hour in which adults argued. “You’ve put us in an impossible position. There will be a reckoning for this, Hippolyta, and all for the sake of something to call your own.”
“She belongs to us, Tek. All of us.” Hippolyta laid a hand on Tek’s arm and for a moment, Diana thought they might make peace, but then Tek shrugged her off.