Delphi in the Region of Phokis
in the Month of Mounichion in the First Year
of the 110th Olympiad (340 BCE)His heart pounded against his rib cage like a siege engine. He pressed his back into the stone wall, closed his eyes and tried to calm his breathing. He couldn’t believe he’d been such a fool. Next time, Charis always promised. Next time, he always hoped. This time ….
He pulled himself to the top of the wall and lay flat. The gates of the Sacred Precinct were locked, and he had to climb out the same way he’d climbed in. On the way out, though, he wasn’t lugging a body.
He glanced behind him, toward the theater, and then down to the Temple of Apollon where he’d left Charis’s body for the priests to find. Stars winked in and out as clouds drifted across the black dome blanketing the night sky. He crouched, reached for a nearby branch, and swung down to land on the ground with a soft thud.
It wasn’t the first time he’d taken a life. But he’d never killed a woman, never killed anyone unarmed. Not that Charis didn’t fight back. His shoulders, red with teeth and claw marks, throbbed. And his face. He ran his tongue across his lip. At least the bleeding had stopped.
He could still smell her. Still see how she licked her lips as she loosened her braids. Still taste the sweetness of her breast, and feel her hot breath as she put his fingers, one by one, in her mouth, wetting them, running her tongue over them, sucking gently until his whole body trembled. When she pulled him down into the soft pile of hay and wrapped her legs around his waist, he had been ready to give her anything—even the gold tiara. Diokles would never know. There were other treasures from the Sacred Precinct to sell.
Of course, none of that mattered now. None of that mattered the moment he felt her brother’s blade against his throat and the trickle of blood drip across his collar bone. The moment Charis scrambled up from beneath him and laughed in his face. Brother and sister, what a pair. Charis’s brother had picked up the tiara and threatened to go to Diokles with proof he was double-dealing—unless he split his take fifty-fifty. And not just on the tiara. On everything. He’d still be a rich man, Charis promised, laughing at how easy it was to blackmail him.
Her brother was still laughing when the dagger pierced his heart. Who was the fool now? Didn’t they know nobody bested him with a blade? And then, like a wild thing, Charis jumped on his back, clung to him, all teeth and nails, punching, kicking. By the gods, he thought all of Delphi would hear. But no one did. No one came. He wanted to make her pay, he wanted to hurt her, but he hadn’t meant to kill her. He groaned and his face darkened as he remembered those last moments. She was not laughing when she died.
He wasn’t even sure how she died. She was on him, tearing at his clothes, biting his shoulder, his neck, one moment trying to flay his back, the next turning blue. Now she was dead. He didn’t care about her brother—the wolves were welcome to feast on his bones—but he couldn’t leave Charis to be devoured like carrion. In the morning Apollon’s priests would find her on the temple steps wrapped snug in her winter cloak. Philon and Kleomon would wait for her brother to claim her, and then, eventually, they would give her to Phoibe for burial.
He cocked his head and listened. Not even a leaf rustled in an occasional spring breeze. Around him, Delphi slept shrouded in darkness. Under the new moon, dull patches of snow clung to nooks and crannies up and down the mountainside. The Oracle wouldn’t start hearing supplicants for another few weeks and without a swarm of pilgrims, Delphi was just another remote mountain village.
Calmer now, he took a deep breath, ran his fingers through his hair, brushed the dust from his clothes, and strode down the path toward the Dolphin’s Cove Inn.
And so begins THE ORACLES OF DELPHI and the story of Aithera of Athens. Well-born, wealthy, educated, and beautiful, Aithera was raised to be the equal of any man. What she was not raised for was a life of limits and disappointment. But after she was forced to marry her cousin to maintain control of her dying father’s estate, she faced a dismal future in a loveless marriage in a city her family helped build but in which she has no rights.
After her father dies, she travels to Delphi to fulfill his last wish and to enjoy a respite from her husband’s dutiful attentions. But whatever hopes she had for a peaceful trip are shattered when she discovers a young woman’s body in the Sacred Precinct. After her tutor, a man with a reputation for finding the truth, is asked to investigate the murder, she is drawn into an ancient struggle for control of the most powerful oracles in the world—and into the arms of Nikomachos, the enigmatic son of a famous priestess.
Her tutor’s past, greedy priests, paranoid priestesses, and stolen temple treasures complicate the investigation. Using the knowledge she gained by studying human anatomy with an Egyptian priest, Aithera performs an autopsia and discovers the cause of the woman’s death. When Nikomachos’s mother is murdered and he becomes the victim of blackmail, Aithera realizes his dangerous secrets hold the key to both murders. Ultimately, she must choose between honoring her marriage vows and saving the man she loves. She chooses love. She devises a plan to force the killer to reveal himself, and, in the process, discovers the cost of love and the true meaning of family.
Kristina Makansi is a historical/mystery (with a heavy dose of romance) writer with a passion for all things Ancient Greece. THE ORACLES OF DELPHI, is set in 340 BCE just after the last Sacred War for control of the Oracle of Delphi and before the rise of Alexander the Great.
