Calliope is invoked by an old bard and decides she will help only if he surrenders his gold brooch as an offering.

Creusa wakes to find Troy in flames, searches desperately through the burning city for her family, and dies before dawn.

Captive Trojan women, including Hecabe and Cassandra, huddle under Greek guard awaiting division as war prizes among the warriors.

Amazon warrior Penthesilea fights for Troy and is killed by Achilles, who immediately slays the soldier who dares to laugh at his grief.

Agamemnon refuses to release the captive Chryseis to her priest father, and Apollo sends a devastating plague through the Greek camp.

Iphigenia arrives at Aulis expecting to wed Achilles but is sacrificed at the altar by her father Agamemnon in exchange for sailing winds.

Paris awards the golden apple to Aphrodite at Mount Ida, claiming her promised prize of Helen and setting the Trojan War in motion.

Polydorus's body washes ashore and Greek soldiers deliver it to the captive Trojan women to mourn.

Hecabe kills Polymestor's two sons and gouges out his eyes to avenge his murder of her son Polydorus.

Polyxena learns from Menelaus that she will be sacrificed at Achilles's tomb and chooses death over a life of enslavement.

Zeus and Themis decide to use a great war as the most effective way to reduce the crushing burden of mortals on Gaia.

Greeks demand Andromache surrender her infant son Astyanax, who is taken from her arms and thrown from the walls of Troy.

Clytemnestra traps Agamemnon in a sewn robe and stabs him to death in his bath, then returns to kill Cassandra in the temple.

Andromache survives enslavement by Neoptolemus, gives birth to his son Molossus, and eventually marries the Trojan prince Helenus.

Calliope threatens to take away her entire song and leave the bard in permanent silence if he refuses to accept it.

The novel opens with Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, challenging an old bard's narrow vision of what war stories should be. Troy falls in flames, and Trojan women are captured and enslaved by Greek warriors while the gods' manipulation of mortal lives is slowly revealed. The war was engineered by Zeus and Themis to cull the population, with Paris's fateful choice of Aphrodite supplying the necessary spark. Key sacrifices mark the conflict's brutality, from Iphigenia slaughtered for sailing winds to Polyxena killed at Achilles's tomb and young Astyanax thrown from Troy's walls. In the aftermath, Hecabe avenges her murdered son, Clytemnestra murders Agamemnon upon his return to Mycenae, and Andromache survives enslavement to eventually find stability. The novel closes as it opened, with Calliope warning that her song will be silenced if the bard refuses to understand the true cost of war.

The war's most consequential events, from Troy's fall to its bitter aftermath.

Theano warns her husband Antenor that warriors are hiding in the wooden horse, and they decide to betray Troy to ensure their family's survival.

Hecabe realizes that Antenor's family was spared from the Greek destruction because he had opened the city gates and betrayed Troy.

Agamemnon threatens Odysseus's infant son to expose his feigned madness and force him to join the expedition to Troy.

Hecabe recalls striking Cassandra violently to silence her after she emerged in torn clothes from Apollo's temple screaming terrible prophecies.

Briseis is captured after watching Achilles slaughter her entire family and resolves that she will never let the Greeks see her grieve.

Zeus forces the sea nymph Thetis to marry the mortal king Peleus after a prophecy warns that her son will surpass his father in power.

A sympathetic blacksmith crafts Laodamia a bronze statue of her dead husband Protesilaus, which becomes her only comfort in grief.

Helen tells Hecabe that Aphrodite drove her mad when she tried to refuse Paris, insisting the grudge belongs with the goddess, not her.

Hecabe confesses that she and Priam could not bring themselves to kill the infant Paris despite the prophecy that he would destroy Troy.

Penelope writes sarcastically about Odysseus spending a full year on the island of Aeaea as the husband of the sorceress Circe.

Eris, goddess of discord, finds a small golden apple on deserted Olympus and devises a plan to sow strife among the gods.

Penelope writes furiously that Odysseus has navigated Sirens, Scylla, and Charybdis and is now stranded farther from home than ever before.

Gaia laments that greedy mortals have grown too great a burden for her and asks forgiveness for what must now be done.

Penelope addresses Athene, expressing doubt about whether the violent man who slaughtered the suitors and returned home is truly Odysseus.

The Moirai spin, measure, and cut the threads of mortal lives without sorrow, even when Lachesis makes mistakes in her measurements.

Behind the headline events of the Trojan War lie the stories of women whose choices and suffering shaped its course in less visible ways. Theano's decision to betray Troy allowed the Greeks inside its walls, while Briseis and Chryseis were captured and enslaved, each maintaining her dignity in the worst possible circumstances. Thetis was forced into a marriage that guaranteed her son Achilles's mortality, and Laodamia spiraled into fatal grief over the husband she had begged not to go to war. The goddesses' rivalry was sparked by the golden apple Eris discovered and set rolling, while Helen deflected blame for the entire conflict onto Aphrodite. Penelope's increasingly frustrated letters to Odysseus document his reckless wanderings with growing anger, as suitors overrun her household and she devises clever tricks to hold them off. The pool closes with the Fates quietly spinning and cutting mortal lives, indifferent to the suffering their measures create.

The hidden stories of women left behind, captured, betrayed, and forgotten.

Calliope declares that her poem must tell the stories of all Trojan women except Helen, mocking the bard for failing to grasp what she is offering.

Penthesilea accidentally kills her beloved sister Hippolyta and travels to Troy specifically seeking death in battle as a form of purification.

Priam comes to Achilles's tent to beg for Hector's desecrated body, and Briseis is surprised when Achilles unexpectedly agrees to return it.

Calliope warns the bard that the casualties of war are not only those who die in battle, and he must learn this or have no poem.

Hecabe recalls her aged husband Priam supplicating Achilles on his knees, and Cassandra whispers darkly that Achilles has not yet finished.

Laodamia's parents secretly burn the bronze statue of Protesilaus, and after Hades grants the couple one final day together, Laodamia hangs herself.

Penelope describes Odysseus taunting the blinded Cyclops and revealing his true name, not knowing the Cyclops is the son of Poseidon.

Oenone watches Paris leave for Greece with her gift of prophecy and refuses to heal him when he crawls back dying from his battle wounds.

Calliope challenges the bard to consider which act is more heroic: Menelaus raising a war to recover his wife, or Oenone raising their son alone.

Odysseus promises Hecabe he will help her avenge her son's murder at the hands of the Thracian king Polymestor.

Penelope is furious to learn that when Odysseus visited the Underworld to speak with Tiresias, he asked about her last of all.

Calliope watches the weeping bard and reflects that war destroys the victors nearly as completely as the vanquished.

Cassandra recalls refusing to sleep with Apollo after he gave her the gift of prophecy, and he curses her never to be believed.

Penelope reveals she has deceived her suitors for years by weaving a shroud during the day and secretly unraveling it every night.

Cassandra tells Clytemnestra that being believed for the first time means Apollo must have finally abandoned her, then both women enter the palace.

Beneath the surface of the Trojan War are the moments of revelation and choice that determine each woman's story. Penthesilea came to Troy not for glory but for death as purification, and even Achilles showed an unexpected crack of feeling when Priam arrived at his tent to beg for Hector's body. Calliope insists throughout that the real casualties of war are the survivors, using Oenone's quiet endurance to challenge the celebrated violence of men like Menelaus. Cassandra's curse—to speak truths that go unbelieved—traces back to her refusal of Apollo, and it is lifted only at the moment she enters Mycenae and her death draws near. Penelope's private resistance through the unraveling loom keeps her household intact, while Clytemnestra's recognition of a fellow victim in Cassandra shapes a final doomed intimacy between two women about to die. The pool reveals that the war's true meaning lies not in battles won or lost but in the irreversible choices made by women who had no say in starting it.

The pivotal decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that define each woman's fate.