“Melantho.” Her voice was strangely quiet, strained almost. “Who did this?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Tell me it wasn’t your brother.”
“I saidit’s nothing.” I turned away, hating how ugly my words sounded against the softness of her concern.
Penelope captured my chin and tilted my face back to hers. Her touch was so gentle I felt the dangerous urge to lean into it, though the feeling was accompanied by a sharp stab of guilt.
How many slaves would you step on to keep Penelope’s attention?
I jerked away from her, my eyes settling on the swollen leather pouch Laertes had left on the table.
“What was Laertes’s offer?” I asked.
Penelope hesitated. “It was nothing of interest.”
“It must have been something.”
She sighed, touching a finger to her brow. “Laertes believes I require more handmaids. Apparently, it lookscheapfor a future queen to only have three. He was worried I did not find any of the palaceslaves ‘suitable’ and that was why I had been resistant.”
“He left you silver?”
She waved a dismissive hand. “He said the slaver is at the market today. He wanted me to send someone to purchase more handmaids. I am going to refuse, of course.”
“What do you mean, ‘of course’?”
Penelope hesitated at my tone. “Because I do not need more handmaids, and I think the slave market is barbaric. I want nothing to do with its business.”
“You already have something to do with it, Penelope.Youownslaves.”
“A husband owns slaves,” she replied carefully. “A wife owns nothing.”
We stared at each other for a tense moment, knowing this was dangerous territory for us to tread.
“How much did he give you?”
“What does it matter?”
“What does it matter?Are you truly asking me that?”
Penelope watched with infuriating calmness as I stalked across the room and snatched up the leather pouch.
“Do you realize what this is?” I demanded, letting the silver pieces spill across the table. “This is a person’s life, Penelope. You have that power, right here, and you are asking me ‘what does it matter’?”
“I did not mean it like that,” she replied, her voice so maddeningly composed it only stoked my rage. Of course, she could be calm about this. It wasn’t her life on the line. “I chose the wrong wording—”
I threw the silver down in anger, the loud clatter of metal against wood silencing Penelope.
“You could save people’s lives with this. Laertes has given you that power, and you are going to refuse it?”
Penelope stared at the scattered silver. I hated how well she hid her thoughts, how she always kept me on the outside while I continuallybared everything for her.
We are nothing to them.
“It is not so simple,” she finally said.
Her words splintered something in my heart, and I felt my rage rush up to greet it, filling in those fissures.
