I didn’t want to leave her.
I didn’t want to die.
But I couldn’t find my way back. Everything was too murky, melting into a sea of hazy, thick shadow…and I was sinking…sinking…
Until I heard it. A scream.
It ripped through the darkness, through my mind, my very soul.
Herscream.
Then…air. Sweet, precious air filled my lungs. I gulped it down desperately, my throat feeling as if it were being carved open with blades of fire.
Slowly, the world seeped back into focus, those shadowy waves receding to the edges of my vision.
“Penelope?” a voice murmured.
Her name was no longer a thread but a bolt of pure lightning in my veins, forcing the life back into my body. I pushed myself to my knees and saw a figure standing before me, etched in silvery moonlight, hair billowing on a midnight breeze.
Penelope.
I tried to call her name, but only a hoarse gasp escaped me. Her gray eyes cradled mine, shimmering with shards of love and pain and rage. I reached for her, and she moved toward me. But then a shadow fell between us, blocking her path.
“Penelope,” Odysseus repeated, softer now.
“What is going on here?” she demanded.
“You are not supposed to be here,” he said. “This is no place for a woman.”
She dared a step forward, moving back into my line of vision. “What are you doing to my handmaids?”
“You must leave.”
“I demand an explanation.”
“I will not ask you again,” Odysseus warned, a dangerous edge creeping into his voice. “I will explain everything in time.”
A silent war was waged across Penelope’s face as her gaze swept around the courtyard, from Melanthius’s motionless body to our weeping friends to her trembling son. Finally, those gray eyes settled on me.
I’m sorry, they seemed to say. Forgive me for this.
“Odysseus?” Penelope suddenly gasped, turning to peer at him through the gloom. “Is…is that really you?”
A peculiar timidity crept over the king of Ithaca then, seeming so out of place on his bloodied, brutal body.
“I…I did not wish for our reunion to be like this,” he muttered, glancing away.
Penelope’s hand flew to her mouth, and with a dramatically feminine flourish, she crumpled to the ground. But Odysseus was there to catch her, and I could do nothing but watch as that monster cradled my whole heart in his murderous hands.
“Itisyou,” Penelope whispered, reaching up to touch his face. She spoke in a voice that was not her own, soft and cloying. “Odysseus. My Odysseus.”
“It is me,” he murmured, holding her tight. “I am here, Penelope.”
He leaned in then, perhaps to kiss her, but Penelope turned her face away.
“I feel unwell.” She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. “This…this is all too much.”
“You must go to your rooms,” Odysseus agreed. “I will fetch Eurycleia—”
