Nobody's Princess by Esther Friesner

it for you.”
    My smile wavered. “You don’t need to—”
    “But I want to!” Suddenly, Aegisthus was gazing at me as if I were something he feared and wanted at the same time. “At first I didn’t, but now that I’ve seen you”—he gulped for air—“I want you to like me.”
    “I
do
like you.” I said it without thinking. “You don’t need to give me an expensive gift for that.”
    “But you’ve got to have a bridal gift from me,” he said. “One that’s good enough for someone like you.”
    I don’t know how the rest of the banquet went. I was too stunned by Aegisthus’s declaration. Only the bride’s husband could give her a gift as rich and gorgeous as a gold diadem. Suddenly it was clear: Without anyone bothering to ask or tell me
or
my father, it had been decided that I was going to marry Aegisthus. No need to wonder who’d made
that
decision. How convenient for Mykenae.
    That night I sent one of my guards to fetch my brothers. I sat in the dark, clutching the hilt of my sword, until they came. When I told them what I’d learned, they wanted to scoop me up and race back to Sparta as fast as their horses could run. Polydeuces wanted to kick Thyestes over a cliff first.
    “Stop it,” Castor said. “You know we can’t do any of that. If we run away, the Mykenaeans will use the insult as an excuse to start a war.”
    “Even if they don’t do that, they’ll take it out on Clytemnestra,” I added. “This is all my fault for insisting on coming here. I’m going to have to deal with the consequences.” I took a deep breath to slow my racing heart. “It’ll be all right. As long as Thyestes doesn’t do anything to
force
me into marrying his son, I’ll just have to put up with the rest of it until it’s time for us to go home.”
    “
I
say it’s time to go home
now,
” Polydeuces insisted. “Before Thyestes can come up with some scheme to keep you here until you agree to the marriage.”
    “He can keep me here until the sky shatters,” I replied. “I won’t marry Aegisthus or any other Mykenaean princeling, and he can’t make me!”
    My brothers just shook their heads.
             
    Castor and Polydeuces tried to stay with me as much as possible the next day. They were waiting for me the instant I stepped out of my room.
    “What are you doing here?” I asked.
    “Protecting you,” Castor said.
    “I don’t think you need to do that,” I said. “I doubt he’s going to abduct me. Where would he take me? I’m already inside his walls.” I was trying to make a joke of a tense situation, but my brothers didn’t see the humor. They also didn’t see that Thyestes’s strength wasn’t in direct attack but in subtlety.
    Though my brothers did their best to stay by my side all day, Thyestes found one excuse after another to separate us. In the morning he told my brothers that the young warriors of Mykenae wanted to test their skills against the princes of Sparta. How could Castor and Polydeuces refuse? And how could I be allowed to go with them when girls were forbidden to watch men’s athletic contests? In the afternoon he told them that they had to speak for Sparta before the Mykenaean nobles. That was no place for a girl either, even the Spartan queen-to-be.
    Keeping my brothers and me apart was only part of the old fox’s plan. While Castor and Polydeuces were elsewhere, the king pushed Aegisthus and me together. I could have hidden myself away in my room until the banquet, but I was no coward. I was Helen of Sparta, and I wouldn’t run away when I could fight.
    The gods must have approved of my bravery, though poor Aegisthus suffered for his father’s arrogance. It was sad. He tried his awkward best to entertain and impress me, while I pretended he wasn’t there. My coldness confused and hurt him, I could tell, but I didn’t want to give him any false encouragement and I didn’t know what else to do.
    That night, during the second wedding banquet, my