Chapter IX
IX
I sleep little over the next two weeks.
At the first hint of sunlight on the day of my departure, I am out of bed and on my feet, barely able to contain the excitement coursing through me.
Already, the midsummer sun warms the air, and I do not wait for the slaves to bring clothes for me, as they usually do.
Instead, I head straight to Euryale’s bedchamber.
She is already awake and seated at her vanity. She meets my eye and smiles knowingly.
“I thought I might see you this morning,” she teases.
“I don’t know what to wear,” I say in a small voice.
Euryale offers a half smile, then gestures.
Together, we kneel before her wooden chest and she throws the top open with a flourish.
A sigh of admiration escapes me. The chest is filled with tunics in every color, each more finely made than the last. I let my fingers graze the fabric of a particularly pretty yellow tunic embroidered at the hem with white flowers.
“What about this one?” I ask hopefully.
Euryale regards the tunic, then shakes her head. “It’s not quite right.” She continues rifling through the trunk until she finds another and holds it up. “Here, this one is better.”
I can’t disagree with her. The tunic my sister is holding is silver gray and embroidered with green thread. In the morning light, it shimmers as though it has been woven from strands of the wind itself.
“I’ll help you dress,” Euryale offers, and I don’t object as she helps me remove my old tunic and step into the new one. Once she’s pinned it, she steps back, a hand on her chin. She looks thoughtful.
“Good…” she says slowly. “But it’s still too plain. You’re missing something.” A wicked grin touches her face. “You know, you could borrow some of mother’s jewelry. She still keeps it in a box under her bed.”
Without thinking, I shake my head. “Not anymore,” I say. “That was the first place I looked when—” I stop short, realizing too late that I’ve said too much.
Euryale frowns, confused. “When…what, Meddy?”
I hold my sister’s gaze for as long as I can before I look away. In that moment, I want to lie to her, I want to avoid the pain I know I’m about to inflict. It would be easier. But I have already taken so much from Euryale. I know I can’t take away her right to the truth.
“Eury…” My voice cracks. “It…it was me. I’m the one who visited Maheer’s bedchamber the night he died.” I watch understanding splinter across my sister’s face as I tell her the rest. I see the moment shock turns to hurt, then to anger. By the time I’m finished, her eyes are wet with tears.
“I told you I wanted to marry him.” She doesn’t yell, but I wish she would. Her soft words are far worse. “I told you I wanted to marry him so that I could leave this island.”
“You deserved better.”
Between the three of us, Euryale has always been the sweetest, the gentlest. There’s none of that in her countenance now. Instead, I find something in my sister’s face I’ve never before seen: resentment.
“You had no right to make that decision for me.” Her voice trembles. “You had no right to interfere with my life.”
When I told Athena what I’d done, she praised me for my valor. Now I understand how easily valor can be disfigured.
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” I whisper. “I thought I was protecting you.”
Euryale laughs, but it’s a harsh sound. “You’re my baby sister, Meddy,” she snaps. “I don’t need you to protect me.”
The words sting, but I don’t flinch from them. I know I deserve this. With a single act, I’ve managed to steal my sister’s chance to leave this island while inadvertently securing my own. Guilt pricks at me like a stubborn thorn, then burrows deep beneath my skin.
“I’m sorry.” Even as I apologize, I know it’s not enough. Euryale doesn’t answer; she only continues to stare at me in horrible silence, as though seeing me anew. I’m grateful when there’s a knock at the bedchamber door. Seconds later, Stheno enters.
“I like your tunic,” she says matter-of-factly, glancing at me. “But your locs need to be moisturized and retwisted before you go.” She turns to my sister. “Eury? You’ll help me?”
For a moment, I consider the possibility that my second-eldest sister will refuse; I even half expect her to leave the room entirely.
I’m surprised when, instead, she grabs several clay jars of pomade and a bottle of rose oil from her vanity.
Her expression is distant but resolved as she nods to Stheno.
“Let’s get to work.”
—
I should feel tension as Stheno directs me to a chair for her and Euryale to begin oiling my scalp and retwisting my locs, but the truth is that from the moment their fingers touch my head, a familiar ease settles over me that steadies my breathing.
My sisters stand on either side of me, each taking a section of my hair to work on as they slip tiny golden cuffs into different locs.
Though I can’t see what they’re doing with my own eyes, I can picture it perfectly because I’ve learned to do the same for them over the years.
I realize something with a sharp pang: This will be the last time for the foreseeable future that my sisters do my hair.
As they work, I think of my mother, too. The memory of her visit to my bedchamber two weeks earlier now has the haze of a dream around its edges, but I still recall the look on her face, what she said about Athena.
She killed gleefully, brutally, without mercy.
I’ve tried to push those words out of my mind, but they’ve remained snared in my consciousness. I am grateful to be pulled from my thoughts as Euryale circles me and tips my chin upward to look at her. Somehow, she manages to look at me without meeting my eyes.
Forgive me, I silently pray. Please forgive me, one day.
“You’re ready.” She holds up a bronze-rimmed looking glass, and I peer into it.
The girl staring back at me looks like me, but older and more mature. I let my fingers comb through my locs and relish their feel, their sweet aroma. For perhaps the first time in my life, I feel truly beautiful, and it’s all because of my sisters. My throat tightens, and I find I can’t speak.
“One more thing.” Stheno withdraws something from her own tunic’s pocket and offers it to me. It is a necklace made of a single white seashell looped through a plain leather cord.
“For you,” she says, “so that you don’t forget home.”
I recognize the gift as a parting one, and suddenly I’m struck by the great and terrible irony of this moment. All my life, my greatest fear has been that my sisters would leave me behind. Now I’m the one leaving them.
“Thank you.” The words are choked.
“Oh, don’t make a fuss.” Stheno rolls her eyes half-heartedly. She blinks quickly, but I don’t miss the tear she hastily wipes away.
“We’ll miss you,” Euryale says. As always, she is gentler.
I meet my sister’s gaze and see a storm of emotions there.
I know she is still angry with me—perhaps a part of her always will be—but I also see tenderness.
I remember the story she told me, about when I almost drowned at the beach when we were small.
I realize she likely sees me the same way I see her: as someone to be cherished and protected.
She pulls me into a hug, and I am surprised to feel Stheno’s arms wrap around us, too.
I stand there for a few seconds, trying to memorize this moment.
As quickly as it started, it’s over, and then my sisters are stepping back from me.
It’s time.
I find Theo in the gardens.
I’d known that I would—the gardens have always been our place—but I’m still relieved to see him sitting on the lawn, whittling away at a piece of wood with a small blade.
He’s focused as he works, still as a statue except for his hands, and with a pang, I realize it’s going to be a long while before I get to see him again.
He looks up when he hears my footsteps, and when his eyes land on me, they light up.
“Is it too much?” At once, I’m embarrassed. “Eury picked out the tunic, and I told Stheno not to make my hair too—”
“You look beautiful, Meddy.”
They’re simple, earnest words, but at once, I’m calm again. Theo has always had that effect on me. He stands and crosses the lawn, so that we’re face-to-face.
“How do you feel?” he asks.
“I’m nervous.”
“Don’t be,” he says. His words are kind but firm. “You’re going to do well in Athens. I’m sure of it.”
“I hope so.”
Saying goodbye to my sisters was hard; somehow, saying goodbye to Theo is even harder.
I feel the same knife-sharp pain, but in a different place.
All our lives, Theo and I have nurtured the same dream.
We have spent hours fantasizing about what it might be like to leave this island.
We always promised each other that when we did, we’d go together.
I’m breaking that promise now. Theo is yet another person I’m leaving behind.
“I wish you could come,” I whisper. “You deserve to.”
“I’ll be all right.” His smile never wavers. “Just bring me back some new maps and scrolls, if you see any.”
I pull him into a fierce hug, and his arms tighten around me. I try to memorize everything about this moment: the tickle of Theo’s curly hair, the way he smells like my mother’s gardens.
“I’ll miss you, Meddy,” he whispers.
“I’ll miss you, too.”
“Medusa.”
We break apart, and I find my father standing a few feet away. He gives Theo only a cursory glance before his gaze locks on me.
“Come,” he orders.
Theo gives me one last wave as I walk toward my father. I look over my shoulder, trying to preserve that picture of him standing among the flowers, until I’m forced to look away. Then he’s gone, too.
—
I follow my father away from our palace and down to the island’s shoreline. I’ve been given no information about how I’ll be traveling to Athens, and if my father knows, he offers nothing as we amble carefully along the line where the shore yields to the sea.