Zoya

“Steady, Lamia!”

My mare bucks under me, startled and uneasy. Then she slows, and I breathe again.

Another accident averted, just in the nick of time. For a change.

Because, I, Zoya Undergrove, have the worst luck of all time.

If it’s not an accidentally loosened saddle like today, then it’s a puddle of water on the stairs, or eating the one bad mushroom out of a batch of fresh and healthy ones. There’s always something going wrong with me.

“You’re not unlucky. You’re cursed, Zoya.”

The memory of my best friend’s wide-eyed warning brings a small smile to my face. Here under the dappled sunlight near the creek, Isodore’s fears and suspicions seem very far away indeed.

And besides, my steed is the usually docile gray mare that my father gave me just a year ago. Being accident-prone as I am, he still warned me to be careful when riding Lamia. But I trained her myself, and she’s usually as responsive to the sound of my voice as she is to my hand on her reins.

But perhaps she’s just feeling lively today, because she whinnies and veers off the grassy path again, throwing up her head in a defiant mood.

“Lamia, behave!”

Honestly, if anyone else in the village saw me struggle to control her, they’d laugh. Everyone in the entire kingdom of Ebonvale would be rocked with hilarity at my predicament, seeing that I’m half-sitting and half-hanging off the back of a horse while she trots in slow circles.

The sun winks through the gleaming dew-touched canopy of leaves above. It’s still early in the morning, too early for this nonsense. Far away in the distance, a cow moos low and contentedly. Lamia chooses to take this as a personal insult and gives an angry neigh in response.

“Lamia, what is wrong with you today?”

Of course, she can’t answer. Though even if she were a human being, I’m sure she would toss her luxuriant ash-white mane of hair at me and prance away like an offended goddess just the same. That’s just the kind of thing I’d expect today.

I pull at her reins. That’s my first mistake.

My second is digging my spurred heel into her side to force her back onto the overgrown but still relatively flat plane of the bank of the creek.

My third mistake? Not realizing that Lamia has a grudge against the world today and that I just so happen to be the closest victim at hand.

One final and dreadfully definitive buck of the mare’s strong legs later, I go tumbling off her back in a tangle of reins and fall onto the ground with a loud thud. My saddle hits me right in the face.

Moments later, the slippery mud next to the creek gives way and I find myself sliding backward.

“No. No. For the sake of all that is sacred and pure in this world, please, no—”

The cold water hits me, and I scream.

Lamia stops and turns, her beautiful gray tail swishing curiously. It’s as if she’s astounded to see me struggling to catch my breath in the cold water she literally just dumped me in moments ago.

“I hate you!” I scream at her between gulps of freezing water. “I’ll kill you, you horrible beast! I’ll cut you into little pieces and sacrifice you on the altar to Artemis, see if I don’t!”

Lamia cocks her head and trots back to me inquisitively, curious to see what all the fuss is about. I give her a savage glare as I clamber out of the creek, grumbling and utterly disgusted. My tunic and trousers are soaked, and my mood is ruined.

“I’ve changed my mind,” I tell her darkly, wringing some of the cold water out of my long black hair. “I’ll give you to Isodore. She’s always complaining about the price of ingredients for her potions, so she’ll be glad of some of your extremely well-fed flesh, you ungrateful thing!”

Lamia nuzzles at my face affectionately. I slap her away and begin to trudge on the not-very-long walk back home, though it seems like a hundred miles with soaking wet clothes and a recalcitrant horse trotting along behind me.

But the sun climbs higher in the sky and dries me off a little, improving my temper at the same time. By the time I reach the farmhouse, I’m a little more cheerful about the whole incident.

“Zoya!” My stepmother, Rhea, stares at me in astonishment. “What in Demeter’s name have you been doing to yourself?”

“Me?” I give her a mock-indignant stare. “I did nothing. Lamia, on the other hand, decided it was a good day for me to go swimming. Thankfully the creek isn’t deep enough for me to drown in, but when I tell you it was a near thing. . . ”

“Oh, how terrible!” Rhea tries to sound sympathetic, but her dark brown eyes are full of laughter. “Come indoors, I’ll run you a hot bath. You must be freezing, poor child.”

Unlike my father, Rhea was born and raised in the aristocracy, so she has lovely manners and the beauty to match. But that doesn’t prevent her from complaining about the fact that my father refuses to move to the city to live in a mansion with her. He prefers his prosperous and placid vineyards instead.

I just know she’s going to make this latest accident of mine yet another excuse to nag at my father about how unsafe the countryside is. But I’m very fond of her regardless, since she’s always been kind to me. Well, mostly, I reflect as I follow her inside.

“Why do you think you keep having all these accidents, Zoya?” she asks casually, turning the lever to open the sluices of the aqueduct leading into the marbled bathing chamber so that the fresh water comes rushing out in a hurried froth. “Perhaps Aphrodite is jealous of your beauty?”

I catch a glimpse of myself in the bronze mirror opposite us and snort scornfully. “As if.”

Next to my tall and slender stepmother, with her warm rich brown eyes and hair like the autumn forest, I cut a poor figure indeed. I’m much shorter, with pale blue eyes and black hair that has a tendency to get as tangled as a crow’s nest.

“Now, now, don’t jeer,” Rhea says kindly, though still with that small smile. “You might still grow a little taller. And there’s room for you to fill out as well.”

I glance down at myself disparagingly. Scrawny as I am, it’s not exactly pleasant to have to contemplate my own figure.

But I’m freezing, so necessity overrides my self-consciousness. I strip off my simple tunic and leather trousers and sink into the water heated by the thermal springs below the house with a thankful sigh.

“I’ll comb out your hair for you, shall I?” Rhea says coaxingly. “A few drops of that rosemary oil and it’ll start growing more evenly. You’ll see.”

“Alright,” I murmur, already resolving not to get my hopes up. For all her well-meaning efforts, I’ll never be as beautiful as my father’s second wife. Sometimes I wonder if my own mother was as ugly and scrawny as I am or if I inherited my looks from my father’s side of the family.

Though it’s not a question I’d dare to ask him, of course. From the day my father became a widower, the whole world knew that his first marriage was not to be mentioned in his presence. He was too wracked with grief and silent with the burden of it.

Though I was only a child, I remember that bleak period of time all too well. Being chosen by Rhea Corrino, a woman from one of the most well-regarded patrician families, as her husband and protector brought a smile back to his face for the first time in a long while.

And though he’s as good as told me that he’ll never love her the way he loved my mother Aurelia, Rhea makes him happy in her own way. So for his sake, and to keep the peace in this house, I must let her fuss with my hair and face as if I’m a little doll she likes to play with.

Rhea puts a dollop of scented oil on a wooden comb and tugs it through my hair. It snags with a vicious jerk, and I cry out in pain.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” She touches my stinging scalp gently. “I didn’t see the snarled-up bit there, my sweet. I’ll try again, shall I?”

“Don’t bother,” I say, my voice overladen with doom and gloom. The sun filters in but dimly into this darkened room, and the sound of splashing water echoes off the stone walls. “Isodore already gave me spelled charms to ward off my bad luck. But nothing works, does it?”

“Oh, charms.” Rhea’s voice turns contemptuous and cold, as it does every time she hears Isodore’s name. “You should go to Aphrodite’s temple and pray to her. That would do you a lot more good than some witchy little girl’s charms, I promise you.”

“Alright.” I close my eyes, comfortable in the warm water. “I’ll go today.”

True to my word, I visit Aphrodite’s shrine before breakfast. Placing an armful of sunflowers and a wooden dove to propitiate her at the altar, I kneel before her placid stone visage.

“Oh, goddess,” I say under my breath, “grant me grace, good fortune, and prosperity. And if you can stop me from having these constant accidents, that would also be ideal. Thank you.”

An unexpected breeze ruffles my hair. I open my eyes, and Aphrodite’s statue shimmers through a pearly white haze.

Then every single candle and torch-bearing sconce in the temple flickers into being, and out again.

“Your journey has just begun, Zoya of the dark,” whispers an unearthly voice. “Beware the man with two faces. He is both your doom and your destiny.”