For a while, we said nothing, but there was something in the depth of her silence that made me finally ask, “Why don’t you want any more handmaids, Penelope?”
She let out a small sigh, hands knotting in her lap.
“That summer…when we were children…”
Her eyes flickered to my back, then away again. I’d never heard her so hesitant, words brittle and stumbling.
“It…broke something in me…seeing what they did to you…knowing it wasmyfault…knowing I couldn’t protect you.”
Callias’s screams filled my mind, and I thought of how it had felt to watch him being branded. The guilt had devoured me whole.
Was that how Penelope had felt all this time?
I felt a shiver of shame that I had never considered it, how that day could have scarred her as deeply as it had me.
She continued, “Afterward, I vowed I’d never take a handmaid again. I’d never be responsible for a person’s life like that…never let innocents be hurt because of me. But then that morning after my wedding…” She flinched at the memory, screwing her eyes tight. “Your friends…what my uncle did to them…because ofme.”
I watched, stunned, as the emotions consumed her composure, leaving her so raw and vulnerable. I wondered if she might even cry. I had never seen Penelope do so before. Not a single tear. But her eyes remained dry when she opened them, her expression steadier.
“Hippodamia and Autonoë were forced upon me when I arrived here,” she said. “I tried to refuse, but I had no choice.”
“And what about me?”
“I accepted because of your deal with Odysseus.”
“I…didn’t know you knew about that,” I admitted quietly.
“I tried to talk him out of it,” she said with a somber smile. “Notof freeing you of course. But the terms of his deal.”
“Why?”
She looked away. “I hated the idea of you being forced to endure my company.”
I noticed that Penelope was picking at the skin around her nail beds. The old habit made her seem younger—childlike even.
“I just don’t want to hurt anyone again,” she whispered.
Her words were so painfully delicate, yet they clutched at my heart with a fierceness that stole my breath away.
I felt a sudden, overwhelming rush of sympathy for her, as strange as it felt to place such a thing in someone who was supposedly my master. But had Penelope ever acted like one? She had protected me, cared for me,foughtfor me. Never once had she treated me like a slave. And yet I had continually branded her with the title of “mistress.”
I think we should see people in our own light.
“What happened wasn’t your fault, Penelope.” The thought blossomed on my lips, a truth I had always known but been too blinded by bitterness to let myself see. “None of it was ever your fault.”
She shook her head. “Melantho—”
“Itwasn’tyour fault.”
The firmness in my voice made her finally look at me, and her eyes were like the waves before us, churning with such devastating beauty.
“I’m sorry I made you believe it was,” I added, then, even quieter, “I’m sorry I’ve been so cruel to you.”
“You were never cruel, Melantho,” she whispered. “You were just hurting.”
We stared at each other for a long moment, the past swirling around us like warm currents. Perhaps it was being here, away from the palace, lost in the anonymous chaos of the kingdom, that made me feel as if I were seeing Penelope for the first time again. Not the Spartan princess or the future Ithacan queen but the Penelope I had met that night so long ago. The beautiful girl wrapped in moonlightand shadows and secrets. A girl who was just trying her best in this ugly world. The girl who had kept fighting for me, no matter how many times I pushed her away.
But who had ever been fighting for her?
