Chapter 57 #2
“I shouldn’t be here.” I pulled my hands free from hers, a cold panic chasing me to my feet. “It’s not safe, not when he’s lurking in the palace—”
“He’s not,” Penelope said, rising with me. “He has chosen to continue to reside with Eumaeus.”
“It’s still too much of a risk.” I strode across the room, shaking my head. “I can’t put you in danger like this. I won’t.”
“Melantho.”
The strain in her voice halted my steps.
I turned back, and we stared at each other, the reality of our situation hanging, unspoken, between us. I looked to the door, knowing I should go while realizing with equal certainty that I would never be able to leave her.
If this were to be the last night we shared, then the gods themselves could not drive me away.
We both moved at once, our lips meeting like a crash of lightning, a sudden strike of brilliant light, ripping open the darkness around us.
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 the slope 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 do you feel?”
“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 about her. 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. I wanted to 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.”
She was quiet then, and I realized she was crying, the moonlight turning her tears to bright pearls on her cheeks. I kissed them away, willing my own not to fall.
“Tomorrow, if things do not go as we have planned, I will have a ship ready at the abandoned harbor. I want you to take the handmaids there, Melantho. The crew will take you far away from here, wherever you wish to go.”
“I won’t leave without you.”
“You may not have a choice.”
I shifted so I was leaning over her now, hands pressed on either side of her head, my curls spilling around us.
“Penelope. I am not leaving you.”
Instead of replying, she kissed me. I knew better than to take her silence as defeat, but I did not want to argue with her. Not tonight.
She reached up to toy with one of my ringlets, tenderly tucking it behind my ear, and I could scarcely breathe for how heavy my heart weighed in my chest.
If I had loved her less, this moment would not have hurt so much. This pain, I knew, was the price of loving her as I did, so completely, so irrevocably, and it was a price I would have willingly paid over and over.
“It has been my greatest privilege to love you, Melantho, and to be loved by you. I want you to know that.”
I pressed my hand to her lips, shaking my head. “Don’t. Please. Don’t do that.”
Don’t say goodbye.
“Melantho,” she whispered against my fingertips.
Despite the tears burning in my eyes, I smiled.
“Say that again,” I breathed.
“Melantho, Melantho, Melantho…”
My lips replaced my fingers, and Penelope continued to whisper my name into my mouth, over and over, like a promise, a prayer, a vow carved from the very depths of her.
And I knew nothing in all the world would ever sound sweeter than this: my name on her tongue, shared between lips in the dark.