ATHENS, GREECE - 550s BCE Acantha is the twelve-year-old daughter of Evander, one of Athens' most important politicians. Still a barefooted wild child who loves to wrestle and race with her brothers, she is hardly ready for womanhood- and yet it is thrust on her abruptly when her father announces her imminent marriage to Leonidas, one of his political colleagues. Acantha is forced to dull her fire... until, at eighteen years old, she meets Danaë, the daughter of a Spartan merchant, and an intriguing girl who shows Acantha a world of freedom that she never knew existed.