Meet Berenike

The Alchemist of the Ash

You speak of breaking the glass ceiling as if the glass won’t cut you on the way down. I didn’t break a ceiling; I burned the palace to the ground and walked out through the smoke.

My sister Arsinoe calls herself a ghost. She lives in the lull between the waves, seeking healing in the dirt. I do not seek healing. I seek transmutation.

I am the eldest. I am the Queen who took the throne because my father was a Roman puppet, and I am the woman who watched the world cheer for my death. While Arsinoe was busy being traumatized by the sight of my blood on the stairs, I was busy surviving the unthinkable.

I didn’t just lose a crown. I lost the man who was my soul, the love of my life who died when my father marched back into Egypt with the Roman legions at his back. I was forced into exile, executed in effigy, and left to birth our twins in the wake of his ghost.

I have done the hardest thing a woman can do: I have survived being erased.

My magic is Alchemy. I don’t wait for things to grow; I command them to change. I understand that everything—power, gold, even grief—is just matter waiting for a stronger will to reshape it.

I look at your 21st century and I see so many women cowering behind the very men who would trade them for a promotion or a vote. You apologize for your ambition. You shrink so you don’t intimidate. You play by the rules of a patriarchy that would watch your head roll without blinking if it meant keeping their seats.

I have no patience for your polite revolutions.

My twins are not heirs to a throne of stone, but to a legacy of iron. They are the proof that you can take everything from a woman—her home, her husband, her name—and she will still find a way to create a world from the ashes.

Arsinoe can offer you a sprig of lavender for your nerves. I am here to show you how to turn your leaden chains into a crown.

— Berenike