Though her face remained impassive, I swore I heard Penelope’s voice catch as she whispered, “Good night, Melantho.”
29
I found my brother waiting at the harbor.
Though “harbor” was perhaps too grand a term for the tiny structure stretching tentatively into the sea, its edges crumbling from years of disuse.
I could just make out Melanthius through the darkness, sitting on a large cluster of rocks by the water’s edge, face tilted up to the curved moon. All he had were the clothes on his back, and it made my heart heavy, knowing he had nothing else to take with him.
Except me.
Melanthius was quiet as I came to sit beside him, our tense silence eased by the sighing waves. I breathed in the salt-brushed air, watching the moon trace her silver fingers over the water like a lost lover’s ghostly caress.
“You’re not coming.”
It wasn’t a question, but still I answered, “No.”
I felt him shift beside me. “Is it because of…what I did?”
“No,” I repeated, softer this time.
I turned to look at Melanthius, but his face was tilted away, features wholly consumed by the night.
“I don’t understand.” There was none of the usual venom in his voice, just a suffocating sense of exhaustion. “I don’t understand howyou couldchoosethis life.”
I picked up a stone, turning it between my fingers as I weighed my next words.
“I rescued two women from the slave market today,” I said.
“How?”
“Laertes gave Penelope silver to purchase more handmaids and I—”
“So you didn’trescuethem. You bought them.” Disgust dried out Melanthius’s voice. “You paid a slaver.”
“I bought them their lives back,” I snapped. “I bought them another chance.”
“That how Penelope justifies it, is it?”
“It was my decision. I chose to save them—”
“That’s not saving them, Melantho! Not if they’re still slaves.”
I clenched my jaw, tossing the stone away. It skimmed over the silvery waves with a satisfyingplink,plink,plinkbefore disappearing beneath them.
“I saved them, Melanthius,” I gritted out. “Because I know they’ll be treated fairly in Penelope’s care, and that’s a far better fate than what awaited them—”
“They are—”
“No. Don’t interrupt me. I don’t want to hear it. You know why? Because for the first time in my life, I feel like I did something right. And it made me realize how sick I am of hating myself. I don’t want to do it anymore, Melanthius. I’m so tired of it.” I rubbed my face with my hands, willing the surge of emotions to steady itself before continuing. “If I stay, I think I can help more people. Penelope wants to build something here, something important, and I want to be part of that. I want to be part of something I can feel proud of.”
Melanthius was silent for a painfully long moment, face still turned away, shoulders hunched as if he were shielding himself from a storm. I longed to reach out, to take his hand in mine. But I did not.
“So you’d rather be her slave than my sister.” The words scrapedout of him, barely a whisper, yet they hit me hard enough to bruise.
“It’s not like that.”
“It’s exactly like that. I gave you a choice: a chance of freedom at my side or a life here as a slave. And you chose her.”
