Excerpt from Elektra by Jennifer Saint, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

But what I had mistaken for a dreamy exchange of glances between my cousin and her lover was actually the silent formation of a plan, for Odysseus bounded up onto the platform where we sat and shouted for order. Although he was short and bandy-legged, his was a commanding presence, and the hall fell silent at once.

"Before the lady Helen makes her choice," he boomed, "we will all swear an oath."

They listened to him. He had a gift for bending the will of others to his own purpose. Even my clever cousin was enthralled by him, and I had thought no man's intellect could ever be a match for hers.

"We have all come here today for the same purpose," he continued. "We all wish to wed the beautiful Helen, and we all have good reason to think that we are a worthy husband to such a woman. She is a prize beyond any that we can imagine, and the man who can call her his own will have to go to great lengths to protect her from those who would seek to seize her away from him."

I could see that every man in the room was imagining it. They had all envisaged being the one to have her, but Odysseus had soured the dream. They gazed up at him, enrapt, waiting for him to reveal the solution to the conundrum he had presented.

"So, I propose that we all swear that, no matter whom she chooses, we will all join him in protecting her. We will all make a most solemn vow that we shall defend his right to have her—and keep her—with our own lives."

Our father leaped up, overjoyed that Odysseus had saved his triumphant day from almost certain disaster. "I will sacrifice my finest horse!" he declared. "And you shall all make your promise to the gods upon its blood."

And so it was done, and all our father lost that day was a horse. Well, a horse and his daughter, I should say, and a niece as well, to make it quite the bargain. All were taken off his hands in one fell swoop, for Helen had only to breathe the name "Menelaus" before he was up, clasping her hand in his and stammering out his gratitude and devotion; Odysseus offered for Penelope in almost the next breath; but my eye was caught by the dark-haired brother, whose surly gaze stayed fixed upon the stone tiles. Agamemnon.

* * *

"Why did you choose Menelaus?" I asked Helen later. A flurry of handmaidens encircled her, draping her dress, braiding her hair into elaborate swirls, and making countless tiny adornments that were entirely unnecessary.

Helen considered my question before she answered. People only ever spoke of her dazzling radiance, sometimes moved to poetry or song in praise of it. No one ever mentioned that she was thoughtful or that she was kind. I could not deny the odd pang of envy that had reared up inside me, cold and poisonous, growing up alongside a twin whose magnificence would always throw me into shadow. But Helen had never been cruel to me or tormented me. She had never boasted about her beauty or mocked her inferior sister. She could not help that heads would swivel to gaze wherever she walked any more than she could turn the tides of the sea. I had made my peace with it, and, to be truthful, I didn't yearn to bear the weight of her legendary allure.

"Menelaus…" Helen said meditatively, lingering over the syllables of his name. She shrugged, twisting a smooth curl of hair around her fingers, to the visible annoyance of one of the handmaidens, whose fussing ministrations had produced nothing like the bounce and gleam that Helen's effortless coiffing did. "Perhaps there were others richer or more handsome," she said. "Bolder, certainly." She curled her lip slightly, maybe thinking of the undercurrent of violence that had throbbed invisibly around the hall as the suitors eyed one another. "But Menelaus … he seemed different."

She did not need treasure; Sparta was wealthy enough as it was. She did not need good looks; she could provide all the beauty in any partnership. Any man was eager to be her husband, as we had seen. So, what was it that my sister had been looking for? I wondered how she knew, what magic had sparked between them, what it was that made a woman sure that a particular man was the right one. I sat up straighter, waiting to be enlightened.

Excerpted from Elektra by Jennifer Saint. Copyright © 2022 by Jennifer Saint. Excerpted by permission of Flatiron Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.