Page 6 of A Spark in Time (A Knights Through Time Romance #21)

As Lysias led her through corridors that smelled of oil and hot bronzework, Bebe couldn’t help noticing how the city’s wealth concentrated itself here like a bad perfume.

Tapestries hung thick and dark, their dyes impossibly bright; silver bowls the size of hatboxes sat like ornaments on low tables; boys in linen skiffs moved like shadows to carry cushions and oil-lamps.

Servants brushed past in quiet efficiency, their hands heavy with rings and little pouches that jingled faintly.

The faces she’d seen in the market—sun-browned, lined, busy with survival—were nowhere to be found.

Here, power announced itself with gilding and silk and the careless display of other people’s labor.

It made her stomach clench with the knowledge that the men waiting ahead could buy and sell lives, including hers, without a second thought.

The Archons received her in a room that reeked of power and pomade.

Five men, all bearded, all draped in fabric that probably cost more than most Athenians saw in a lifetime.

The one in the center had the kind of beard that suggested he spent considerable time thinking about important things—or at least wanted everyone to think he did.

“ ? ? ργυρ ? Σειρ?ν,” he intoned. The Silver Siren.

“Βεατρ?κη ? νομ? μοι,” she corrected. My name is Beatrice.

They exchanged glances—surprised, calculating, worried.

“ ? λλην?ζει?;” You speak Greek?

“Μανθ?νω... ? μ?νθανον.” She caught herself, trying to find the right tense. I learned.

“Where?” The thin one on the left looked like a disappointed fish, all bulging eyes and pursed lips. “Who teaches our language to foreigners?”

“I come from... very far away. A place where we study the wisdom of Athens.” True enough, if misleading.

“And what wisdom have you brought us?” The center beard leaned forward. “The Spartans threaten. Our allies waiver. If you’re truly a sign from the gods...”

She thought quickly. What would they want to hear? What could she say that was vague enough to be safe but specific enough to be valuable?

“I have seen...” She paused dramatically, remembering every prophecy she’d ever read in Greek literature. They all had a certain rhythm, a certain vagueness. “I have seen Athens standing when others fall. I have seen your democracy spread like seeds on the wind. But...”

They leaned forward as one.

“The path requires wisdom. Patience. The bear is strong but sluggish.” Bear was sometimes used for Sparta, she remembered. “The owl must be clever.” The owl was Athens’s symbol.

“Speak plainly,” Fish Face demanded.

“I cannot. The gods speak in symbols, not strategies.” She touched her temple as if receiving divine wisdom, feeling like a complete fraud. “But I see... water. Victory comes from the sea.”

Which was actually true. Athens’s navy would be crucial in the coming conflicts.

The Archons murmured among themselves. She caught words—“oracle,” “prophecy,” “Delphi.”

“You claim to be an oracle?” Beard Central asked.

“I claim nothing. I am what you see—a stranger who arrived in strange circumstances. Whether that makes me oracle, omen, or accident is for you to decide.”

Clever, Lysias had said. She needed to be clever.

“But I will say this,” she continued, letting her voice carry the authority of her expensive education. “I appeared when you needed a sign. That itself may be the message.”

More murmuring. Then the one who’d been silent—elderly, with eyes that had seen too much—spoke. “She stays with Lysias. Under guard. We will watch and wait.”

“And if she proves false?” Fish Face asked.

“Then we deal with false prophets as we always have.”

She didn’t need a translation for that. The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees.

As Lysias led her back to her room, his hand on her elbow in what was either protection or possession, she felt the weight of what had just happened.

“You did well,” he said quietly. “The sea victory—clever. Themistocles has been arguing for more ships.”

“Will it be enough?”

“To keep you alive? For now.” He stopped at her doorway. “But you need to understand—Athens doesn’t tolerate deception well. If they think you’ve lied...”

“I know.”

“Do you?” He turned her to face him, his hands on her shoulders, warm through the thin fabric. “This isn’t whatever soft place you come from. This is a city at war, even if the war hasn’t officially started. People disappear. Especially women who know too much or claim too much.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Be useful. Be careful. Be quiet when possible.” His thumb brushed her collarbone, perhaps accidentally. “And stay close to me.”

“Because you’re protecting me?”

“Because I’m the only one with a vested interest in keeping you alive.” He dropped his hands. “My reputation, my position—they’re tied to you now. If you fail, I fail.”

“That seems unfair.”

“Welcome to Athens.” His smile was sharp as a blade. “Where democracy means some are more equal than others, and women aren’t equal at all.”

After he left, she sat by the window again, watching the sun set over this ancient city. The ring, she managed to grab it and hold it in her fist when the women took her dress and undergarments—pulsed with its own cold light against her skin.

You wanted freedom, she thought. This isn’t freedom. This is just a different cage.

But even as she thought it, she knew it wasn’t entirely true. Yes, she was trapped. Yes, she was in danger. Yes, she might die here, thousands of years before she was born.

But she was also alive in a way she’d never been in 1926. Every breath mattered. Every word carried weight. Every choice could be her last.

It was terrifying.

It was exhilarating.

It was freedom, just not the kind she’d imagined.

If she was going to survive this, she’d have to remember every scrap of what she’d ever learned about the ancient world—names, dates, myths, battles, the endless parade of gods and grudges from her classics classes.

All those hours she’d spent yawning through lectures at Vassar, the postcards her father sent from Athens, the ruins she’d walked in Rome—she needed them now.

They were no longer trivia. They were weapons.

She remembered nights on the Riviera, where the stars drowned beneath hotel floodlights and champagne lanterns. Here they were raw and eternal, as if the sky itself were daring her to make a wish.

Tomorrow, she’d have to continue the charade. Pretend to be an oracle, a sign, whatever Athens needed her to be. She’d have to navigate a world where women were property, where slavery was normal, and where democracy was still figuring itself out.

But tonight, watching the stars appear—stars undimmed by electric lights, stars that sailors would navigate by, stars that poets would write about—she felt something she hadn’t felt in years.

Hope.

Not for rescue. Not for return. But for the possibility that maybe, just maybe, she might survive this. Could find a place in this impossible time. Could become something more than a beautiful girl with good breeding and no choices.

The ring pulsed again, hidden in a scrap of fabric she’d tied around her waist, and this time it felt like agreement.

You wanted to matter, it seemed to say. Now you do. Every choice, every word, every breath matters.

Be careful what you wish for.

She was beginning to understand that phrase in ways the ring’s previous wearers probably had too.

Helen chose love and started a war.

Cleopatra chose death over submission.

Marie Antoinette chose ignorance until it was too late.

What would Bebe Merriweather choose?

Survival, she decided. For now, just survival.

But as she watched Lysias’s silhouette move through the courtyard below, she wondered if survival would be enough. Or if the ring, having brought her here, had other plans.

Plans that involved a warrior with scarred hands and dangerous eyes.

Plans that involved a war she knew was coming but couldn’t prevent.

Plans that involved a choice between safety and something else—something the ring had been waiting twenty-four hundred years to offer.

Not yet, she thought. First, survive. Then...

Then she’d see what kind of choosing a girl from 1926 could do in ancient Athens.

The stars watched, silent and eternal, offering no answers.

But for once in her life, Bebe Merriweather didn’t need them to.

She’d figure it out herself.