“Melantho.”
My name had never been more beautiful than upon her lips.
We stared at each other, and all those years apart melted away, filling the cracks our distance had left behind. Carefully, Penelope reached out and began tracing the outline of my face. Her touch was so gentle, as if she were afraid that I might vanish should she press too hard. Her fingers skimmed across my lips, just as they had done that night on the beach, many moons ago.
“Penelope.” I whispered her name against her fingertips, and she smiled.
In the sweet stillness of dawn, it felt as if we were suspended in our own pocket of time, like the quiet heartbeat between sleeping and waking. A place where the clawing hands of reality could not reach us, where all that existed was her and me and the warm sheets tangled around us.
We were both lying on our sides, our faces so close together I could not see where I ended and she began. I reached out to touch her cheeks, tracing their unfamiliar hollowness. Penelope’s own fingers danced over my shoulders and chest.
“I missed these.”
I laughed. “My freckles?”
She nodded, voice catching as she whispered, “Unbearably so.”
“I’m sorry.” I did not want to speak of sad things, yet the guilt found its way to my lips. “I’m sorry I left…that I never said goodbye.”
“You did it to protect me. You have nothing to be sorry for.” She twirled one of my rust-red curls around her finger, then brushed it against her lips. “Still, I fought the urge to visit you every day. A fewtimes, I even began the walk here. I nearly made it all the way once before I turned back.”
“Why did you?”
“Because it would have been unfair. You wanted distance not only to protect me but to protect your own feelings too. I knew I could not see you when there was still a chance he would return.” She let my hair unfurl from her finger, watching it spring into a perfect ringlet. “But then the news came and…I could not bear it any longer. I had to see you.”
“I’m glad you came.” I took her hand, relishing how perfectly my fingers slotted between hers, as if the spaces had been molded just for me. “Truly.”
“I am too.”
“Though walking through a storm wasn’t one of yoursmartestideas…”
There was a glint in Penelope’s eyes then, one I had so desperately missed.
“In my defense, it wasn’t storming when Ileftthe palace.”
“You just wanted to make a dramatic entrance, didn’t you?”
She huffed a laugh. “I am known for my dramatic tendencies.”
I kissed her hand. “You were mad to walk.”
“I needed the time. To process everything,” she admitted, voice sobering. “I am sorry…about last night. The state I was in…”
“Never be sorry for that, Penelope. Ever.”
Her smile was delicate and vulnerable, still raw from all the emotions she had let spill.
“Did you know your eyes have a little green in them?” she murmured. The unexpectedness of the question made me laugh.
“My eyes are brown.”
“They are. But sometimes when the sunlight catches in them, they’re a little green too.” She ran a careful finger over my lashes. “I used to dream about your eyes, about seeing that hint of green again.”
“I dreamed about you too,” I breathed. “Constantly.”
We lapsed into silence once more as we gazed at each other. Nobody had ever looked at me the way Penelope did, as if I were the very center of this world, the anchor that tethered her to it.
“I don’t know what to do,” she finally said, echoing her words from last night, the ones that had undone her. Though her eyes were dry and clear now, and I could see her mind turning behind them.
