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Clytemnestra’s hands are soaked in her husband’s blood. The gold of her wedding ring gleams with it, thick and hot, and something animal sparks in her chest. He isn’t twitching anymore, isn’t yelling— a soulless body lying on a bed-turned-altar. For you, blood of my blood, Clytemnestra thinks gleefully. His blood is for you. I have done what a mother must.
Agamemnon is unmoving and growing cold, life spilling heavy onto their bedsheets. His hair lays lank over their pillows, face twisted into a final expression of shock. He is nothing but a body now. No king, no ruler, no man.
She is done here. She has one more death to enact.
He has brought a woman home, and through the thrum of her heart a sick anger begins to grow. He murdered her daughter for this fight, and another woman is what he finds important enough to take home? She would rather the riches of Troy, for all the importance Agamemnon placed on it. Iphigenia, the blood I spill tonight will outweigh yours. I will avenge. I will be worse than the man that caused this.
Clytemnestra emerges from her bedchamber, gripping the knife tight enough to hurt. A thousand bodies would not amount to Iphigenia, would never give enough blood to quench the life that spilled from her— but Clytemnestra can kill two, and she can enjoy it. That will have to be enough. She is expecting a chase, working herself up to sprint and dig her hands into the shoulders of a terrified, shaking woman.
The woman is in the hallway, head bowed, hands clasped. Her hair is long and dark, curling around her shoulders like a shadow. She’s dressed in such a way that her clothes leave a shoulder bare, probably by Agamemnon’s will. She does not move away as Clytemnestra approaches.
“Look up,” the queen commands.
She does. Immediately, Clytemnestra’s grip on the knife slackens.
Iphigenia is staring back at her, her wide dark eyes rimmed red and her cheeks stained with tears. When Clytemnestra blinks, the face is older— though not by much— with sharper cheeks and a hollower expression. She’s less marked than her beautiful girl, with only one mole right below her eye, but it’s similar enough to make her hand shake. Their skin color is the same, hair color indistinguishable.
The woman’s eyes shift to the knife, then back up to meet Clytemnestra. There is no fear there. When she speaks, her voice is round, full and smooth, as though nothing is wrong at all. “You see in me a girl I am not.”
She has an accent, gentle and sloping. It makes her speech almost song-like, but the weight behind it is anything but.
Clytemnestra doesn’t flinch, but it’s close. There is something in the air around this woman, heavy and thick. “You know not what I see, woman. You know nothing.” She hefts the knife up, towards her long sloping neck, and the woman simply tilts her head up. Her dark hair curls gently around her shoulder, bare, exposing too-thin collarbones. Iphigenia’s hair had just gotten long enough to brush her upper back when she’d been taken.
“Queen most high, feared Clytemnestra.” The man that greets her bows low, and there’s no mistaking the real respect in his tone. “Rise,” she tells him, crossing her legs as she sits up straighter in the throne. “Who are you, to come into my home?”
The man’s eyes meet her, a shocking bolt of silver. “I am Odysseus, son of Laertes, king of high and rocky Ithaca. I come bearing wonderful news for your eldest, Iphigenia.” Clytemnestra considers him. Ithaca, hm? Agamemnon has spoken of him before. She can detect nothing but sincerity, a soft glow of real delight, but the hair on her neck stands up.
The woman at the end of her knife blinks slowly, hands loosening to rest at her sides. “I know things no other man can think of,” she says, and now the roundness of her tone gives way to something deep. “Your husband is one of many who meets his end by ignorance. But I will not be taken unawares— no, Clytemnestra, bloody and great. I know exactly what you will do to me.”
She does not speak like Iphigenia. This confidence is unreal, unfamiliar. Her beautiful, sweet daughter had never been so assured of anything, except maybe her mother’s devotion.
Clytemnestra can’t find anything off with this man, but she feels so suddenly like something is wrong. Even if she had known what to say, Iphigenia appears from the left hallway, standing straight. “I greet you, stranger,” she says softly, dark eyes kind and expectant. Her brown skin glows in the sunlight dancing through the terraces. “You bring something for me?”
The man smiles softly. “The best of news,” he confirms, standing to his full height. Iphigenia is a full head shorter than him. “Your father has found for you a man better than any, a man who will bring respect to you and your house for ages to come.”
Clytemnestra stiffens. She had not been made aware of this— what is her husband playing at?
“I expect my intent is not hard to guess. Do you grieve for what I have done to my husband? Did he promise you anything of mine, being as young and pretty as you are? You will not get it. I will be rewarded by your blood in my mouth.” Clytemnestra bares her teeth, but even then the woman does not look afraid.
“Iphigenia cried for you, when she met her end.”
The Queen surges forward, knife digging into the softness of a young neck, slamming the woman into a pillar. She grunts softly, but otherwise makes no move to escape. “You know nothing! ” She roars into the quiet, baring her teeth and leaning in until she can see every spot, every wrinkle of this woman’s skin. But even then, as furious as she is, heart pounding like the drumbeat of war, Iphigenia’s terrified face is what she sees. She blinks it away, but the resemblance is more uncanny up close.
Iphigenia beams, and the air itself smells sweet. She skips forward a little clumsily, approaching Odysseus. “I am to be married, stranger?”
The man nods, fondness glimmering in stone-like eyes. “To the best,” he agrees. “Achilles has asked for your hand.” Iphigenia’s hands fly up to cover her mouth, and she turns to her mother. “Do you hear that? Achilles! Achilles wants me!”
Clytemnestra finds it in herself to smile, despite the yawning, dark pit that grows in her stomach. Odysseus does not look anything but sincere, but something about him is so unnatural that she almost thinks his happiness is worse.
The woman’s eyes gleam almost cruelly. “‘Mother,’” she begins, voice suddenly dropping off into youngness, such a perfect recreation of her daughter’s voice that again the knife wavers. “‘Womb that made me, woman that raised me, save me! Save me from this, the knife that comes my way.’”
To her absolute horror, tears sting in her eyes. She hasn’t heard her dear daughter in so long. To hear it from this horrible woman, however painful, feels more like a blessing. “Stop,” she orders, but the woman’s eyes blaze with something forceful.
“‘Gods high, please find it in yourselves to spare me! Pious as I have been, I beg!’”
Clytemnestra can see it in her mind’s eye, the twisted face of her baby, sobbing and shaking as she’s hauled onto the stone like cattle.
“Agamemnon was the one to drive the knife down. She did not struggle, the brave girl that she was, as her blood stained the earth. Artemis demanded it, you see. This was not the only child your husband has murdered.”
Clytemnestra snarls, longing to sink her teeth into this woman’s throat herself. But she looks like Iphigenia, and she is so cruel but so, so similar. She is young.
And even as she speaks these horrible words, she isn’t smug. She’s saying these things to hurt, definitely, but not because she herself finds them good. Clytemnestra tries not to let that make a difference.
Suddenly, the feral blaze in her eyes leaves, to be replaced by nothing but expectation. Her eyes widen, the perfect picture of a young girl. “I know what will become of you. You believe your life will be smooth from here, but you married into a bloodline cursed. You will not live long. But go ahead, dreadful Clytemnestra, and follow in the footsteps of your husband.”
As though her limbs were puppeted by someone else, she drives the bloody knife home, into the soft and blameless skin of the girl. Her heart pounds in her ears as new blood splashes, and still all she can hear is her daughter sobbing, calling out to the people who were supposed to save her. The woman sinks to the floor in Clytemnestra’s arms, staining her clothes dark, and never looks away. She dies with her eyes open, gaze finally soft.
Clytemnestra holds Iphigenia, the night before she’s set to sail for her wedding. Her daughter rests in her arms, limp with sleep, but her eyes are still open, fixed on her mother’s face. She smiles softly, hand coming to cradle the sharpness of her cheek. “I will be someone,” her daughter murmurs happily. “I will bring honor to us.”
Clytemnestra cradles the blood-soaked body, pressing trembling lips to dark, curly hair. Limp in sleep, limp in death, she holds her daughter again.
“You are someone,” she says, voice cracking, tears spilling down her cheeks. “My girl, my girl, my girl.”