I stared at Penelope, and it felt as if time itself had taken a breath. I could not hear the storm anymore, could not see the clay-bricked cottage around me or feel the chill of the tiled floor beneath my feet. There was onlyherand the hammering of my heart against my ribs.
There was nothing in the world I knew better than Penelope’s face, so my focus was immediately drawn to all the ways it had changed. Her eyes were shadowed, and she looked thinner, her skin pale andcheekbones more pronounced, emphasizing the unfamiliar hollowness of her cheeks.
The silence thickened, punctuated only by a faint tapping noise. I realized, too slowly, that the sound was her teeth chattering.
She was freezing.
Had shewalkedhere in this storm? It would have taken her all day.
Concern bridled every other emotion eddying inside me, pulling my thoughts into focus.
“You need to get warm,” I said, moving toward the hearth. “Come here.”
Penelope obeyed, trailing behind me like a lost, shivering child. I threw more logs on the fire before running to my room.
“You need to change out of your wet clothes,” I instructed when I returned, handing her one of my tunics. “You can use my chamber.”
She nodded, her eyes landing heavily on mine. There was so much unsaid between us, so many questions begging to be asked, but I could not think on that now. Not until I had made sure Penelope was warm and safe.
“Go,” I urged softly.
She took the tunic from me and then disappeared into my room. I tended to the fire while I waited, and within those few moments when Penelope was gone, doubts seized my mind. Had I just imagined her? Was this all some cruel hallucination? Had I finally gone as mad as Laertes? But then she appeared in the doorway, and a deep sigh of relief escaped me.
Penelope padded silently over to the revived fire, reaching out her trembling hands toward it. Wordlessly, I handed her the fur pelt I retrieved from Laertes’s favorite chair.
“Thank you,” she said as she wrapped it tightly around her shoulders. She was not looking at me but rather at the flames, their amber fingers dancing in her eyes. Her hair was still wet, sticking to her cheeks in dark spirals.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, her voice painfully small. “I just…Ihad to see you. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.”
She glanced around us. “Laertes…”
“In bed, asleep.” I motioned to his chamber. “He won’t bother us.”
She stared at the door to his room, and I watched as a raindrop gathered on the end of her lashes, sparkling in the firelight. She blinked it away before it could fall.
“Penelope, what’s happened?”
She pulled the pelt tighter around herself. Despite her height, she looked so small wrapped within it. How I longed to reach out and hold her. My entire body ached for her touch, as if she were the air and I a drowning woman.
“Odysseus is not coming home,” she murmured.
“What do you mean?”
“They say he has settled on an island with a goddess. He wishes to stay with her, to start a new life. Apparently, she will make him immortal.”
“Are…are you certain?”
“I sent scouts to confirm it.”
“What of his army?”
She shook her head. “I do not know.”
“He can’t… Hewouldn’tabandon Ithaca like that,” I insisted, though the words felt flimsy between my teeth. What did I know of Odysseus or what kind of man the war had turned him into? What could ten summers of bloodshed make someone capable of?
Penelope kept very still, unnaturally so, as if she were balancing a great weight and feared a single wrong move would make it all come crashing down.
