It made me sick to my stomach, to think my love for Penelope could put her in danger. I would sooner have carved my own heart out than risk her safety.
My hand fell back to my side, and Penelope slowly opened her eyes.
“I will always be his wife,” she whispered, voice broken and aching. “What I feel for you cannot change that.”
This should not have hurt me, for I had always known it to be true. But the heart is a foolish thing, and I felt Penelope’s words spear through mine, fracturing it into tiny, jagged pieces that cut me from the inside.
Penelope stared at me, her expression so calm. A part of me could have hated her for it, yet I knew this was her way. This was how she survived. She would never fall apart, because shecould notfall apart, not when so much rested on her shoulders. I had never learned to master myself like her. My emotions were wild and untethered, and that made them all the more dangerous.
I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes, willing the tears not to come.
“You can never be mine.” The words were an aching echo of Penelope’s own from just a few days ago.
Carefully, she peeled each hand away from my face, forcing me to stare up into her piercing gray eyes. I knew they would haunt me forever, those eyes.
“You own every part that matters,” she whispered.
I think she meant the words as a comfort, but they only encouraged more tears to spill.
How could we love each other so greatly and the world still denyus? I wanted to scream at the hopelessness of it all.
“We wasted so much time,” I choked.
She reached out to brush away my tears. “I know.”
I was certain some god or another was laughing at us, delighting in the tragically cruel timing of all this. Perhaps it was their doing. The gods did always relish such suffering.
I turned to look at the night sky. Soon it would be morning, and with that first, tentative breath of a new day, I knew everything would change.
“When?”
Penelope followed my gaze as she replied, “A few weeks at most.”
A few weeks.The last ten summers seemed to spiral away between those three simple words. A few weeks and Odysseus would return, and everything we had built here would be his. A few weeks and he would take Penelope in his arms and kiss her and claim her, and she would be forced to accept his love and offer hers in return. I winced as images seared my mind, visions of her and him and all the things a wife was expected to do for a husband…
The room seemed to shrink around me, growing too small, too airless,too much…
“I will leave you to rest,” I said abruptly. “You have had a long day.”
Penelope gripped my hands tighter, that calmness fracturing as she whispered, “You do not have to go.”
Carefully, I pulled my hands free from hers.
“Good night, Penelope,” I whispered.
She went very still as I moved to leave, each step feeling heavier than the last.
“I will see you in the morning…won’t I?”
As I turned to look at her, I felt the pieces of my heart slipping through my fingers like sand.
“Of course you will,” I lied.
42
A harsh shriek ripped through my dreams, wrenching me awake.
I sat bolt upright in bed, panting. The sound came again, this time more of a shout. Grabbing my oil lamp, I slipped from my sheets, the stone floor cool beneath my feet.
