For the fairest, the inscription read. It spread discord aplenty, as intended. The goddesses squabbled and shrieked, and if beauty were judged to be internal as well as external, none of them were terribly pretty in that moment. The gods knew better than to get directly involved. They passed that responsibility to a mortal, and washed their hands of the whole affair.

The three front-runners, meanwhile, offered the best bribes they could think up: wisdom, power, love. Any normal man would have given his left arm for any one of the three. But the judge was not a normal man, and the squabbling goddesses—as well as the one who had thrown the apple in the first place—failed to take into account the truly phenomenal size of his ego.

For the fairest, the inscription read. The prince of Troy, handsome even in his rustic shepherd’s garb, buffed the apple’s golden surface, nodded in approval at his reflection, and smiled at the goddesses as he walked away.