We tumbled into bed, hungry and wild, our desire made desperate by the looming threat of daybreak. Our fingers fumbled gracelessly as we raced to undress each other, as if it were our first time again, not our last. And when our bare bodies met in a frantic whisper of skin, I knew I would forever be tortured by this memory of her, naked and alive and so achingly beautiful in my arms.
Penelope had once said that belief gave people a sense of purpose in this life. I had never much cared for our gods, but within the depths of Penelope’s love, I had found my religion, and as we worshipped at the altar of our bodies, we became, for that briefest moment, the rulers of our own universe, as endless and inevitable as the Olympians themselves.
We became eternal.
When our pleasure had shattered and made us anew, we lay tangled together, breathless and limp, trying to ignore the edges of the world creeping in around us.
“Do you think we will succeed tomorrow?” I whispered into theslope of Penelope’s neck. I could feel her pulse thrumming against my lips.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I think we will.”
“And…afterward?”
“We will be free of the suitors, and Ithaca shall have a king,” she murmured. “You will be safe. Telemachus will be safe.”
“And you will be his wife again.”
She held me closer. “I was always his wife, Melantho.”
“You know what I mean.”
It was selfish, I knew, to sink into my jealousy when there was so much more at stake. I forced the feeling away, trying desperately not to think of whose arms she might be in the next night. But his face still came, unbidden—those wild, vacant eyes, the harsh lines of his face as he sneered at me, those thick hands closing around Eurycleia’s throat…
“He’s different,” I whispered. “Odysseus.”
“War changes men.”
“He doesn’t seem…safe.”
“It is because he doesn’t feel safe.”
I considered that for a moment, then shifted onto my elbow so I could face her properly.
“And how doyoufeel?”
“I am still deciding,” she admitted, fingers tracing the dusting of freckles across my collarbone. “It is…a lot to process. I had resigned myself to the idea that I would never see him again.”
“Were you…happy to see him?”
“‘Happy’ is too simple a word.” Penelope smiled somberly. “But for all Odysseus has done, he is Telemachus’s father, and a part of me will always care for him because of that.”
I lowered my gaze. “Did you ever…love him?”
Penelope considered the question, as she always did. I knew she was never one to rush answers to appease my feelings. She would respond truthfully, and that was something I deeply admired abouther. Though still, it hurt to know the answer was not a simple, resounding no.
“Once, I thought I could,” she admitted. “Before the war, during that first full turn of the seasons in Ithaca. Iwantedto love him, I tried to, and I feared there was something wrong with me when I realized I could not.”
“Why couldn’t you?” I breathed.
The shadows curved as Penelope smiled. “You know why, Melantho.”
My throat burned with all the emotions I did not know how to voice. In the silence, I swore I could hear the seconds spiraling away from us, our future unraveling like the threads we had plucked from Laertes’s shroud, ready to be woven anew.
“I cannot bear to think of a life without this,” I whispered, burying my face in her neck.
“This doesn’t have to be the end,” she murmured against my hair. “Odysseus will travel, and he will be preoccupied with his own affairs. Perhaps we could find a way—”
“Penelope.” I pulled away to look at her again. “You know we cannot risk it.”
