“Odysseus will be… He’ll be pleased with you.”
She tried to smile, but the corners flickered and shrank like a dying flame. She began fiddling with the brooch again, her eyes distant.
“Are you all right?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“The celebrations will be wonderful. My uncle has spared no expense. I suppose that is unsurprising though. It is not every day there is a double royal wedding.” Penelope spoke in that empty, performative voice I had heard her use countless times around others. But never with me.
I held her gaze. “You didn’t answer my question.”
She inhaled slowly, then turned back to inspect the brooches once again.
“My whole life has been building up to this moment,” she murmured. “Ever since I can remember, I have known this was what I was destined for. To be married. To be a wife. So I spent my whole life trying to be in control of it, to guide the threads of fate as best I could.”
“And you did. Your plan worked.”
“I know.” Her back was turned to me, so I could only read the tight lines of her shoulders. “I just thought… I don’t know. I suppose I thought if I was in control of the situation, it would make me feel better when the time came.”
“But you don’t?”
Penelope bowed her head for a moment, then glanced over her shoulder at me, her eyes unbearably soft.
“I didn’t mean to offend you with the yarrow,” she said. “I thought it would help.”
The sharp change in conversation threw me, and I suddenly felt ashamed for having stormed in there over something as ridiculous as a plant. Today of all days.
But it was never about the yarrow.The truth danced dizzyingly onmy lips.
“I shouldn’t have disturbed you,” I said instead.
Penelope turned to face me fully and smiled that quiet, secretive smile of hers. “I’m glad you did all the same.”
“Why?”
She tilted her head, considering her reply. “You always seem to calm me down. Even when we were children. You make my mind…quieter.”
I laughed, the abrupt sound surprising us both. A rush of embarrassment prickled over me, but when I glanced at Penelope, her eyes were gleaming with a brightness I had not seen since that summer we had shared long ago.
Her smile widened. “That is amusing to you?”
“I just don’t believe anyone would ever describe me as a ‘calming’ child. I was so…chaotic.”
“I know.” She chuckled softly. “But I suppose I found calmness in your chaos. It was why I enjoyed your company so much.”
I hated the effect her words had on me, my traitorous heart stumbling over itself.
“I always thought it was out of pity—that you spent time with me.” The thought somehow found its way to my lips, and I instantly regretted how pitiful it sounded aloud.
Penelope’s smile vanished. “Why would you think that?”
“Because I wasn’t your friend, remember?” I knew the question was petty, but a part of me felt compelled to say it, to give voice to this wound I had carried for so long that refused ever to heal.
Penelope said nothing for a long while, and within the depths of her silence, I found myself wishing she were not so infuriatingly impossible to read. Even as a child, Penelope had expertly worn this mask of hers, keeping her emotions tucked in close to her heart. Once, I’d believed I had learned how to slip beneath that guise and see therealPenelope, the one whose eyes sparked with mischief and whose cheeks flushed with excitement at a new challenge. But now Iwondered if that had been just another performance.
It was so hard to tell, sometimes, which Penelope was therealone.
Did she even know?
“Do you remember our conversation the night we met, when I walked you back to your quarters?” she asked quietly, eyes fixed on some distant spot.
