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Chapter Text

I was born to silence. But not the kind that soothes the spirit. Not the lull of sleep, not a gentle hush that stills the wings of birds before rain, nor the sacred quiet that descends upon altars before the first prayer is spoken. Mine was another silence altogether: a silence hammered from divine wrath, one that simmered in the waters of spite, and made to fit around me like a too-tight chain.

It was not the absence of sound, but the burden of a voice that was not mine to wield. I was not mute. No, not in the way pitying strangers imagine– not in the tender tragedy they assign to the voiceless. I could speak. My lips formed words, shaped syllables, spat curses. But the truth is crueler than muteness: I could speak only what was true . Not what was safe. Not what was kind. Only what was —and when pressed beyond that, only what will be . The future curled in my throat like smoke, and if I dared to open my mouth, it spilled out in riddles I scarcely understood.

There were times I tried to twist my meaning, to temper it, to soften the sharp edges of truth with honeyed tones—but the gods do not allow for gentleness in the cursed. My tongue would not obey me. Words leapt from it like birds set a flight. I spoke, and the air seemed to thicken, to warp around the sound. People listened. Not to me, no. Never to me– but to what I carried. As if my breath itself were threaded with augury.

I came to hate the sound of my own voice, and yet feared its silence more.

Each breath I drew tasted of prophecy. Not metaphorically—no, the taste was real, and I could not escape it. My tongue knew when a god’s hand had stirred the well of my thoughts. It was there in the tang of metal, in the bitterness of ash. The flavor would change, depending on the weight of the vision. Sometimes it was sour, like spoiled wine. Other times it was sharp, biting, like the sting of lemon on a cut. And sometimes—when the future I was forced to utter brought ruin—I could taste blood. I would swallow, and it would not go away.

Even now, I cannot name all the voices that have passed through me. They leave no memory, only aftertaste. They speak and vanish, and I am left behind with nothing but the echo. I did not want this power. I never sought it. But I was born to it, shaped by it, rendered small beneath its gaze. 

My earliest memories were not of laughter, nor of lullabies sung by a tender tongue. There was no softness in my childhood, no mother with idle hands or absent purpose. Lysandra was a storm wrapped in robes of priestly white. Her touch smelled of myrrh, of burnt laurel, of smoke that clung to the folds of her garments long after the sacred fires had died. When she entered the room, the air itself seemed to bow. Not with affection, but with awe. Or perhaps fear.

I never called her “mother.” Not aloud, atleast. She would not allow it. “You were not born for a cradle,” she said to me once, when I had scraped my knee on the temple steps and wept like a child, as children are meant to do. “You were born to stand where others fall.” Then she left me there, bleeding, to learn the shape of pain without her shadow to shield me from it. I wiped the blood with the hem of my tunic and stood. I always stood.

She spoke little to me, save for instruction. “Hold the knife like this.” “Do not flinch at entrails.” “A false reading is worse than no reading at all.” She taught me to interpret the quiver of flame, the flight of birds, the shape of oil in water. I memorized the rites before I learned to write my name. My hands grew callused not from play, but from grinding powders, from drawing sacred circles in ash. The temple was my nursery. The gods were my lullaby. And the city—Troy—was the great trembling beast that roared beneath us all.

Lysandra had no use for softness. She was the gods’ mouthpiece, a seeress with spine and smoke in her gaze. The priests called her hierophant , the Revealer of the Sacred. Kings bent at her word. Soldiers sought omens in the sweep of her hand, and women clutched their wombs as she passed, as though to shield unborn children from divine attention. They said she could turn the sky with a whisper, that her breath summoned thunder. I never knew whether the gods loved her—or simply feared to silence her.

But there was one story my mother would not tell. 

It hovered around her like incense never quite burnt away…clinging to the folds of her robes, catching at the base of her throat when she thought herself alone. And though the temple echoed with myths as readily as it did chants, though I was taught a hundred tales of godly wrath and mortal folly before I had shed my first tooth, this one—the story of me —was forbidden.

I asked, once. Just once.

I was eleven, perhaps twelve. Old enough to know that not all silences are empty. Old enough to see how the priests would glance away when I entered, as though I carried smoke in my wake. Old enough to understand that my affliction was not mere fate, but origin.

“Why can I only speak like this?” I had asked her—naïvely, foolishly, with a child's hunger for clarity. “Why am I not like the other children?”

Lysandra did not strike me. She did not raise her voice. But she stilled. Utterly. As though the breath had fled her body, as though even the air feared to move. Then she turned, slowly, and I saw it—the war beneath her composure. A flicker of something old and ugly flashing behind her eyes. She knelt, took my face between her hands. Her fingers were steady. Her voice, quieter than prayer.

“Do not ask again,” she said.

I never did.

But still—there were signs. Cracks in her mask that I learned to trace as others traced constellations. When she looked at me too long, her mouth would twitch. Not with affection, but something like grief. After ceremonies, when her power had been spent and the gods had loosened their grip on her limbs, I would find her in the dark, curled around a cup of wine she never drank, whispering names into her sleeve. Names I never recognized. Names I suspected might never have belonged to mortals.

There were rumors. I heard them first from a kitchen servant, careless with her words and drunk on leftover honey-wine. She spoke of a night when the sky split open. When the great temple doors shattered from their hinges without wind, and Lysandra was found at dawn—barefoot, bloodied, her robes torn as if by talons or teeth. No one dared ask what happened. No one dared speak of the thunder that had howled for hours without a storm.

The priests stopped calling her “beloved of the gods” after that.

Some said she had rejected a divine favor. Others claimed she had been chosen —and punished for resisting. One version, whispered so faintly it barely breathed, said the Father of Gods had taken what was not his to take. That Hera, in her fury, could not strike her husband and so laid the curse upon the woman’s womb instead.

And I—I was what grew there. A child not of love, nor of devotion, but of divine vengeance. A living rebuke. A vessel of truth, hollowed by spite. My voice is the result not of blessing, but war between immortals. My soul is an echo of a crime no one dared name aloud.

But she loved me, I think. In her own way. In the way wild things sometimes love what they birth—distant, unyielding, with a kind of savage pride. I longed for her approval the way some children long for warmth. She taught me strength, but never gentleness. But sometimes, when I speak a prophecy and the gods drag the air from my lungs, I wonder whose hand first set that power in me. I wonder whose voice I echo when I speak. 

And I wonder if she ever saw my face and thought: 

This is the price I pay .

She named me Themistra—not for beauty, but for balance. For vengeance, too, though she would never have admitted that in daylight. In the long hours before dawn, when the oil lamps guttered like dying hearts, she would whisper truths into my ear that no child should hold: that the gods may curse the innocent to wound the guilty, that silence is not peace, and that being born a woman was to be born with your throat already in a fist.

We lived in the shell of what once had been a villa—marble fractured, mosaic tiles turned to teeth. Vines crept through the bones of the place like memories that would not die. The gods had not forsaken Troy entirely; they simply refused to offer comfort. Omens nested in the corners of our walls. I once watched a sparrow fall dead into our hearth and my mother called it a gift.

And though Lysandra offered prophecy to kings and generals, she would never allow my talents to serve those not born of Troy. "You are a weapon of this city," she told me once, pressing the sacred blade into my hands for the first time. "They will fear you," she whispered, brushing my temple with her hand, voice like smoke from smoldering embers. "And they should. Let them."

But then Odysseus came. Not as a hero, though they sang of him as such, but as a shadow in a man’s shape. The King of Ithaca. A snake wrapped in a man's skin. He came for the truth. Not justice, not peace. Truth. And he paid more gold than the eastern vaults could hold. My mother—who had once spat at the thought of foreign coin—began to tilt her head at the scent of it.

He studied me.

Not like a child. Not really. But then again… something in his gaze hesitated. Flickered. There was sorrow in it. Recognition. As though he saw not just a prophetess, not just Hera’s cursed mouthpiece, but a child. And not just any child.

A boy with sunlit curls and wide eyes. Someone left behind. He looked at me and, for a heartbeat, I believe he saw a son.

That—more than my riddles—unsettled him. Still, he asked for the future. “Tell me what you see,” he said, hands steepled, voice too calm. I did not answer right away. I looked at him, and saw not the lion of war they described, but a man already haunted. Weariness in his shoulders. Distance in his eyes. A yearning so sharp it gleamed beneath his skin.

Then the fire caught me.

It always began like a breath I didn’t take—like the gods inhaled through me. The room dulled, dimmed, blurred at the edges. The heat of the flames leaned close, pressed into my skin like hands. My mouth moved without my permission. My throat opened like a wound. And I—Themistra—I vanished.

What left me was not mine. It was theirs.

“The gates will open, not to fight—

But in the name of gift and night.

Wood will walk, though born of tree,

And from its womb, the end shall be.”

The words tumbled out like smoke from a burning house—slow, curling, final. My tongue stung from them. And in my mouth, the bitter taste of coppery blood.

There was no understanding. No interpretation. Just the lingering taste of something bitter and final. I didn’t know what I’d said. That wasn’t the point. Prophecy is not for the prophet. 

I had always hated it. But worse than the hatred was the fear.

Because for some reason, something inside me whispered: 

This one will matter. He will matter. 

And I didn’t know why. 

He blinked. Just once. Ran his hands through his hair, slow and deliberate. Then he left. No questions. No thanks. Only silence.

And I was grateful for it. Because I had needed a moment to remember where I ended and the gods began.

But then came Achilles, bold as dawn, and Patroclus, quiet as dusk. Not together, but in strange succession. And others followed. More and more. My name passed through the Greek camp like smoke—my words, more coveted than armor.

Suddenly, my visions were a currency the gods themselves seemed eager to mint. And as my status swelled, so too did the danger. When word of my influence reached the city gates, Prince Hector himself ordered that I be moved within the city walls. "Let her not speak ruin into our hands," he said, and his tone was less cruel than afraid. I was to be housed in a sanctum near the citadel, where I could be watched and protected.

But fate, as always, had other plans. For war does not love truth. It devours it. Grinds it into dust beneath its heels. And those who survive, rewrite what happened into legends that fit their guilt.

They say Troy burned for ten years, but that is not true. It died in a single night. The long siege was but the fever before the final breath, the gnawing of hunger before the wolf tears through the outer layer of flesh. What truly kills a city is not war—it is the moment hope flees like a sea-nymph dropping into water. And hope died, I think, the night I watched them wheel that horse through the gates.

Even I—cursed as I was, compelled to truth and the riddles of things to come—could not make them listen. I had spoken of fire in the bellies of beasts. I had warned of wood that watched. But riddles are never trusted, not when the lies are dressed as gifts and gilded with the promise of peace.

The priests chanted. The people danced. And the gods…oh, the gods laughed. Some of them, atleast. 

I remember the wind that night. It had a strange weight, as though it bore witness. I remember the moon, bruised with clouds. I remember the thud of the trapdoors opening, the low creak of foreign breath entering sacred air. 

I was in the temple outside the city when the screams began. My hand had just lit the incense when the first scream peeled down the hill like a strip of torn skin. Then more and more. Rising, ragged, unending. 

There is a sound people make when they realize they will die. Not panic. Not fear. But a sort of denial so primal it curdles in the lungs. I heard that sound again and again, as if the city itself was drawing one final breath through a throat full of blood.

And the fire. Gods, the fire.

People tried to run. The alleys filled too fast—bodies crushed against each other like sea foam against rocks. I saw the injured topple over the hills and lay lifeless. I saw men I had seen in passing since childhood with swords lodged in their bellies, twitching like fish. I saw a girl, no older than I, with her braid still woven for festival, her throat opened from ear to ear. I stepped in blood that had not yet cooled.

 Lysandra held my hand with the desperation of someone who’d already lost everything once. “Don’t look back,” she hissed. But I did. I saw our roots crumble. I saw our dead. I saw beauty scorched and called it victory. But we ran. We hid. We waited.

However, you cannot hide from history. Troy's name still clung to our skin like the stench of smoke. Looters found us in the ruins of a shrine. I was eleven. My mother stood before me like a lioness, defiant and wild. “Take everything,” she begged. “But not her. The gods speak through her. She is holy. She is magnificent!”

They laughed. Of course they did. “Magnificent?” one scoffed. “She’s just a girl. Pretty, though. We’ll see what her riddles are worth in bed.” 

My mother lunged. Her hands became claws. Her voice a roar. She bled and rose and bled again. She looked up to the sky, eyes blazing. "HERA! ZEUS! OLYMPUS! LOOK AT ME! " she bellowed. "You sent me this fate—watch it unfold! Do you delight in this? Is this what satisfies your golden thrones?”

A boot slammed into her ribs. She coughed blood, and still she rose. Feral hisses seeped from her lips. "You punish my womb, and now you steal my heart? Cowards! Fiends! You take what is not yours to take and call it justice!" They beat her. She bled. But she never bowed. “She will be your reckoning,” she screamed, eyes on me even as her blood soaked the stone. “Let her voice be the very thing that ruins you!”

I was dragged away. Kicking. Screaming inside the cage of my cursed throat. I bit. I fought. But I was taken— and so was she. 

That night, while the ship rocked beneath the heavy breath of the Mycenaean sails—snapping like whips against the sky—I dreamed in silver and shadow. Moonlight draped over antlers sharp as shattered glass, and a bow pulled taut with raw, unyielding fury. Artemis— at least I think it was her— came to me then. Not the gentle huntress of whispered prayers, but a tempest cloaked in wrath. Her fingers grazed my brow, cold as winter’s edge, and her voice was a thunderclap inside my mind: “Mine.” Was all she said. 

And when dawn tore through the horizon, the sea roiled with a strange, electric hunger. A storm was not rising in the heavens—it was rising in me. Artemis had claimed me, not with incense or hymns, but with a savage, sacred fire burning wild beneath my skin. I was hers, utterly and irrevocably, and I would endure whatever fate she wove.

They took us to Mycenae. My mother was given to Agamemnon, a concubine bound in finery and iron. I, to the court, as a prophetess to amuse and terrify. They kept me alive not for mercy, but for profit. My mouth a parlor trick. My skills a novelty.

But I was safe for a while. Safe, and waiting for six years.

Mycenae had caught a whiff of the enduring Queen of Ithaca who was husbandless. Penelope was her name, and she had been holding Ithaca down all by herself for sixteen and a half years now. A feat to be applauded, but for a woman? Never. Many nobles, aristocrats and peasants came crawling to Mycenae’s doors to request for some sort of gift to give Queen Penelope— in hopes of securing her hand.

I had held her in some sort of high regard until Eurymachus came. He arrived like a shadow sliding between pillars, his smile sharp as broken glass. His eyes, ever calculating, lingered on me—not with curiosity, but with ownership disguised as favor. “If I may,” he said, voice as slimy as he appeared, “a token from Mycenae, to honor Queen Penelope’s grace and secure a place among her suitors.”

I had just recently turned seventeen. 

My mother’s face twisted with a bitter storm that no prayer could calm. The fire in her that had since dimmed when we arrived on Mycenae now erupted in full force— brought to life like a phoenix. Lysandra, whose voice was usually the temple’s unyielding steel, now trembled—not with fear, but with a fury that scorched the air itself. She stepped forward, her gaze a blaze meant to sear Eurymachus where he stood. And throwing all Greek customs away, she spoke. 

“You will not touch her,” she spat, words sharp as a dagger’s edge. “She is no trinket to be bartered in courts drunk on greed and lust.” Her hands curled into fists, knuckles pale. “She belongs to herself, not to your scheming or the hunger of men cloaked in false honor.”

Agamemnon, seated heavily nearby, rose with slow menace. His eyes were cold, unreadable, but his hand struck like thunder across Lysandra’s cheek. The sound cracked the room—a violent punctuation to her defiance. 

“Silence,” he commanded, voice a blade cutting through the murmurs. “You forget your place, former priestess. Your daughter is property now. Your will means nothing.”

Lysandra’s hand lifted instinctively to her reddened cheek, but her spirit did not break. The woman who had once bent the will of kings, now forced to bend her pride. 

Instead, her eyes flared brighter—an unbowed storm refusing to die. “You may silence me,” she said, voice low and trembling with rage, “but you will not break her.”

I stood frozen, caught between the fire of my mother’s wrath and the cold shadow of our captors. The bitter taste of powerlessness seeped into my bones. Lysandra’s lip bled where his ring had caught her, but she did not flinch again. Her gaze remained fixed on me—an unspoken liturgy, an unbroken tether. She was not pleading. She was commanding. Live. Endure. Do not forget.

I could not speak, not with a voice that men would understand. But within me, beneath ribs pressed in by years of ache, something ancient stirred. I vowed, without words, without sound, as the gods once did when the world was young.

I will not be his gift. I will not bow. I will be flame, and wind, and the arrow loosed in stillness. I will endure.

Even Eurymachus, smiling like rot in bloom, flinched when I looked at him. Artemis— as much as I hated the gods— had not claimed me for quiet suffering. But even so, I was taken to sea. 

And the sea has many hungers. Salt, for one. Blood, for another. I gave it both. The Mycenaeans bound my hands like I was a beast, though my only weapon was prophecy. The journey to Ithaca was… uneventful. Sailors called me “ Exophthalmic .” Bug-eyed. A word far too advanced for such simple men. Some joked. Some touched. I snarled at them in response, spitting the truth of my hatred for them right at their feet. One had even said, “I’d beat you, but it’d ruin that face.” Then he did it anyway. 

At night, I dreamed of feathers and flame. My mouth a weapon. My words cutting like a sword. Wings black as mourning cloth. In the dream, I screamed—and the sky broke. When I woke, the salt still crusted my skin, but my soul burned. Rage curled in my belly, slow and patient. Ithaca’s cliffs loomed like jagged teeth. 

We docked at sunrise. The ship groaned as it kissed the shore, its hull sighing against the pale Ithacan sands as though relieved to release its burden. The planks creaked with weariness, as if they too longed for rest. Sailors leapt overboard with the grace and callousness of men who had danced too long upon the line between sea and soil—unchanged by the storms that marked them, untouched by the lives they ferried. 

I remained where I was, curled in a corner of the deck like an omen no one wished to read. The taste of salt clung to my tongue, mingling with the sour tang of bruised fruit and old fear. The sea had not drowned me. Not yet.

I rose, spine aching from the voyage, and stepped forward. Each footfall down the gangplank echoed like a drumbeat in my bones. When my soles touched Ithacan soil at last, a tremor passed through me—not fear, not exactly. Something older. Something deeper. It was ancestral, blood-deep—a fury remembered by the marrow. The earth here was dry, sun-bleached and thirsty, cracked like old hands clinging too long to the illusion of power. And ahead, half in shadow: a house that looked less like a palace and more like a battlefield dressed in wealth. A war memorial still pretending to rule. The House of Odysseus. A flicker of a memory. Of a man.

Eurymachus disembarked last. He’d dressed for the occasion—soft fabrics, gold thread, the swagger of a man who had never heard no as anything but foreplay. He offered me his arm.

I did not take it.

“Come now,” he murmured. “Let’s not sulk. It’s a generous gift I’m giving.” He reeked of confidence that had been steeped in cheap wine and fermented ego. 

I turned my face away. Not in shame, but in refusal.

We climbed the winding paths that led to the palace like ants up the neck of a beast. Around us, the island whispered. Olive trees hissing in the wind, goats bleating on distant hills, waves murmuring secrets that even I could not yet hear. My feet ached, but I walked. Head high. Mouth closed. Vow intact.

The courtyard was a carnival of gluttony. The stench of roasted meat and unearned laughter clawed its way into my nose. Fat men lounging on couches where kings once sat, fingers slick with grease, mouths slick with lies. They devoured grapes and girls in equal measure. They mocked the gods even as they drank to them. Wine ran in rivulets across the stone floor, ignored by the musicians who played only for coin, not for glory. There was no music in this place, only noise. 

Disgust curled in my belly like a viper. Troy had fallen for less. Ithaca was not a kingdom. It was a carcass. And these were its vultures, squabbling over meat that did not belong to them. They had not built this hall. They had not fought for its walls, nor wept over its stones. Yet here they were, draped in Odysseus’s linens, slurping from his goblets, feasting on the bones of his absence. My lip curled. My fists clenched in the folds of my tattered robe. 

“Oi, Eurymachus!” came a voice from the threshold—a man with olives tangled in his beard and the swagger of someone too drunk to feel shame. He raised his goblet high, grinning like a dog who had spotted his first meal. “What’s that you’ve dragged in—a courtesan or a servant?”

“For the Queen,” Eurymachus bellowed, flourishing an arm like an actor mid-tragedy. “A seeress! Straight from the loins of Troy. Blessed by gods, cursed by fate— all that rot.”

Laughter cracked like whips. It echoed through the stone hall, coarse and cruel, slapping against my ears. A chicken bone sailed through the air and struck the ground near my feet with a hollow clack.

“She looks like a cat dragged from the cistern,” someone jeered. “Will she foretell tomorrow’s tide, or just warn us when the wine turns sour?” Laughs erupted around like a chorus of hyenas cackling.

Eurymachus yanked me forward by the wrist, his hand clammy with sweat and entitlement. He puffed up like a rooster preening in a pit of would-be lions.

“She can only speak the truth. And she speaks in riddles, should you ask.” he declared, as though unveiling a prized relic to a room of pigs. “Words wrapped in mystery, kissed by Olympus, trained by priests, broken by the Mycenaeans. The Queen will be thrilled. ”

I did not speak. I had not spoken for days. Not since Lysandra’s lips dripped blood in forced silence. Not since Agamemnon struck her and called it order. Not since Eurymachus traded silver for my silence and called it gallantry. The laughter around me was thick as oil. It clung to the arches, oozed down the walls, soaked into the rushes at my feet. These were not men. They were dogs dressed in gold, snarling over scraps of power and pleasure.

I stood in the center of their mockery, wrists red from rope, sea-salt dried into the corners of my mouth. I had not wept. I would not. That, at least, I could keep from them. They saw a gift. A curiosity. A bauble to impress a queen. But I was no gift.

Inside me, the dream still burned. Feathers black as a starless sky. Fire curled in my ribs, caged but not cold. Artemis had touched me. She had pressed her claim into my marrow.

Themistra. Prophetess. I was both and none of these. I was rage with a human face. So I did what prophets do—I watched. I measured the sneers, the careless sprawl of their limbs. I counted the lies they poured into wine cups, the oaths they twisted into flirtation. I learned them. I named them. And silently, silently, I made another vow—

One day, you will know my name. 

And you will speak it with fear. 

Eurymachus’s hand still gripped my wrist. I could feel his pulse—fast, eager. He thought himself a clever man. He thought himself safe. I tilted my chin just slightly. Met his gaze with eyes like bitter amber. He did not flinch. But he looked away. Just briefly. 

And that was the first victory.

And then, through the colonnade, she appeared. The Queen of Ithaca. A hush fell over the suitors, and they watched, enthralled with her.  

Her hair was the color of ash and tawny, streaked with silver like cracks in old stone—lines not of weakness, but of weathering, of wisdom. Her eyes, cold and endless, surveyed the scene with the precision of a woman who had measured every lie told beneath her roof. She walked with grace, but it was the grace of a blade sliding from its sheath. There was no softness left in her. Only calculation. She was her husband’s match—cunning, tireless, and impossibly composed. She said nothing at first. Her gaze passed over the suitors with the weariness of a woman who had seen this performance far too many times. Seen too many clown tricks. Her eyes settled on me. Not with hope. Not even curiosity. 

Eurymachus released my wrist with a flourish, like a merchant unveiling spoiled fruit and daring the buyer to object. “A gift,” he announced, his voice puffed with pride, “from the high halls of Mycenae to the honored hearth of Ithaca. A prophetess, Queen. A seer to soothe your waiting heart—or at the very least, amuse it.” 

He bowed, too deeply. Theatrics always bored me, but this performance was especially pathetic. A dog pretending to be a courtier. Behind him, the other suitors chuckled like pigs at a feast, wine-drunk and greasy with self-satisfaction. Penelope did not blink. Did not breathe, it seemed. She regarded Eurymachus the way one might regard a dead bird on the threshold. Uninvited, and inconvenient. 

“For me?” she said at last. Her voice was low, smooth as olive oil, but sharp enough to slit a throat.

Eurymachus straightened, pleased with himself, not hearing the blade beneath the balm. “To honor your grace,” he said, with a smile too wet at the edges. “A gift worthy of your household, that the gods might look kindly on your suitors—and you might look kindly on one of them.”

He gestured to me like a peddler unveiling a trinket: See, she shines in the light. Exotic, mysterious. Then he gestured to himself. Yours, if you’ll have me.

Penelope raised a brow, a gesture so slight it might’ve been the flick of a knife. “I am not in need of more riddles,” she said. “I have spent years deciphering lies wrapped in hope.”

That silenced even the drunkest of them.

But her eyes had not left mine. They studied me—not my dress, or my posture, or the bruise darkening along my cheekbone. No, she was measuring something deeper. A crack in the earth. A change in the wind. A girl who stood too still, whose silence was not submission, but strain.

Then, at last, she spoke again, softly: “But still. Eurymachus has brought you. And the gods do not send messengers idly.”

No , I thought. They do not. They send warnings. And I am both. That was when it hardened within me: this resolve. The Greeks had stolen my city. My temple. My mother. I would hate them all. Every olive-eating, wine-guzzling, empire-pillaging son of a god. I would hate this place, its sun-drenched arrogance and blood-soaked roots. I would hate the halls of Odysseus, his kingdom of carrion-feeders, and the Queen who bore the same blade-slick cleverness in her eyes. 

Penelope turned, and with a nod, summoned an elderly woman forward. The old nurse stepped beside her like a ghost long bound to this house, her hands folded, her expression unreadable.

“Take her to the women’s hall,” Penelope said. “Have her cleaned. Fed. Dressed in something Ithacan.”

Her gaze returned to me for one last moment.

“Then bring her to me.”

The woman Penelope left behind stood tall despite her age, her eyes sharp enough to shave bark. She did not flinch when I looked at her. She simply nodded and led me through the halls, her sandals whispering against the stone. No wasted words. No glances back to see if I followed. As if she already knew I would.

She brought me to a basin carved from cold stone, water steaming faintly within, and she rolled up her sleeves. 

“Eurycleia,” she said by way of introduction. “If you’re staying, you’ll learn it.” 

I said nothing. But I watched her. Warily. Like the half-wild thing I had become. I let her usher me into the tub. She moved around me like a tide, steady and inevitable. Humming something low and wordless as she fetched the oils and the cloth. When she approached, I snarled—a reflex born of too many bruises, too many hands that didn’t ask—but she didn’t flinch. She dipped the cloth, wrung it out, and she scrubbed my arms with calm determination, as if she were scrubbing a hearth or blood from a garment. Not a girl with teeth still bared.

Not a girl at all.

Just something that needed cleaning.

“You carry a storm in your spine,” she murmured without lifting her gaze. The cloth moved—scrub, scrub—steady, relentless. “The Queen did, once. Before time carved her heart into ice.” I met her eyes, silent. Still as stone. Scrub, scrub. She didn’t pause.

“The suitors, they’ll leer and laugh. That’s all they know how to do. Eat, boast, and rot in fine linen. Odysseus would have gutted them with a glance.” At his name, something in me twitched. Rage, or memory. Perhaps both. 

Eurycleia didn’t miss it. The scrubbing ceased. 

“Ah. You know the name, don’t you? Everyone does.” She sighed wearily.  “But I knew him when his hands were small enough to wrap around my finger. Raised that boy like my own.” She whispered wistfully.

“Stubborn as an ox. Heart full of trickery and grief.” 

She smiled at something distant, then dipped the cloth again.

“And his son—Telemachus. Just a babe when his father sailed away. Grew into his shadow quietly, quickly. A good heart, though he buries it deep. Just like his mother.”

The name rippled across the surface of my mind. The son. The boy Odysseus so dearly missed. Where was Odysseus now? Alive? Dead? Lost? 

I said nothing. My eyes traced her hands moving, washing away the grime. Not as mercy, but as a reckoning. I listened. To her words. To the silence that lingered after. To the storm rising slowly beneath my skin. When she had finished scrubbing the dirt from my limbs, she fetched fine linen, softened by time and many washings. Her hands were gentle but sure as she helped dress me, muttering about skinny hips and half-starved shoulders. She worked oil into my skin with slow, practiced movements, murmuring to herself about how the salt would dry me to scales if left too long. 

Her touch was neither indulgent nor detached—it was the touch of someone who had spent her life tending wounds that should not have existed. She combed my hair with a bone-toothed comb, catching at the knots with patient fingers. Her touch was firm, never cruel. She worked from root to end with the same care one might give to an ancient tapestry—preserving what was there, smoothing the frayed parts.

“Your hair is like seaweed,” she said gently, not unkind. “Knotted with curses, tangled in storms. But if you let it, it will catch the light… and shine.”

She oiled it too, and began to twist small braids near my temples. Her fingers wove faster than thought. Her humming changed—now a lullaby in a tongue I didn’t recognize, older than Greek. Finally, as she smoothed the hair down my back, she asked, “And what do they call you, girl?”

The silence stretched, thick and heavy—like the weight of all the words I’d swallowed, all the breath I’d held since that night my mother had been struck by Agamemnon’s hand. Names had become ghosts, and my voice a locked door. But now, under Eurycleia’s steady gaze, her hands weaving through my tangled hair, something fragile stirred.

“Themistra,” I said at last, the word barely more than a whisper.

Eurycleia froze, fingers tightening for a heartbeat, then softened, as if she’d been holding her own breath too long.

“Themistra,” she echoed, reverent and low, “a name carried on wind and fire. You carry it still. You are not lost.”

She did not ask for more. She did not press. Only resumed her braiding, slower now, as though each twist of hair were a stitch sewing my soul back into my skin. I sat still beneath her hands, but something in me shifted. My name had been a wound for so long. Now it lived again, like a flame rekindled in the ash. Outside, I could hear the clatter of goblets and the slurred boasts of men who thought themselves kings. 

Their world was one of noise and hunger, and I would not belong to it. But I had spoken, and the silence was shattered.. 

There would be no going back.

Chapter Text

There is a kind of silence that is not peace. It dwells in the hollows of the body where grief is housed, makes itself a tenant in the throat, the chest, the marrow. I have known this silence since girlhood, and it has grown with me—not as a shadow grows, mimicking shape and movement, but as ivy does, clutching and claiming, rooting itself into the very architecture of the soul. This silence is not mine by choice. It was pressed upon me, as punishment or prophecy—older than temples, heavier than prayer.

They say the gods are just. They say this with trembling lips and superstitious hearts, and they say it most when justice is nowhere to be seen. 

They say it like a prayer, but it is a plea—hollow and desperate. A child’s chant in the dark. A shield made of cobwebs. I have heard it whispered over broken bodies and burning homes, chanted at funerals, muttered beside blood-slick altars. The gods are just.

The gods are just. 

As if repetition can summon righteousness. As if piety can make it true. But I have seen the justice of the gods. I have lived it.

The gods are not just. They are meticulous. They do not forget a slight. They do not forgive a curse hurled at their temples or a prayer left unspoken. They do not overlook the crimes of mortals—they hoard them. Like bones. Like coins. They stack them high until the weight is enough to crush a life. What they call justice is often vengeance with a crown on its head. What they call mercy is survival by accident. They choose their favorites, dress them in fate, and send them into the world to wound the rest of us. They watch, and they feast, and they demand praise through the rubble of what they've ruined. The gods are not just. But they are powerful. And we have no power but what they lend—and take back, just as easily. So we tell ourselves their justice is coming. 

Even when it walks on broken legs. Even when it comes too late. Even when it never comes at all.

The moment I was clean—truly clean, not merely rinsed of dirt, but rid of the filth that clings to the spirit after violence, after silence, after being passed from hand to hand like coin—I felt the lie of that comfort settle on my shoulders like a weight. The gods are just. The lavender oil masked the sting, but did not soothe it. My limbs were wrapped in borrowed linen, my hair braided with care, and the skin beneath it all still remembered chains. Still remembered screaming without sound. Still remembered my mother’s face as she bid me to endure. 

Eurycleia did not speak again, not of gods, not of names, not of what might come next. She stepped back when the last braid was laid flat against my shoulder, nodding once with the solemnity of someone who has bathed the dead and the living both, and knows there is little difference between them. Her hands smelled of rosemary and ash. I rose, joints aching with the memory of kneeling too long, and followed where she led.

My hair, once a matted crown of salt and wind, a thicket wild with the sea’s fury, now lay strangely subdued. It had been tamed—smoothed into long, gleaming waves that cascaded down my back like dark water at dusk, parted only by two slim braids that curved behind my ears like quiet sentinels. I lifted a hand to it, fingers trailing through the strands as if to reassure myself that it was still mine, though it no longer felt like it. Gone was the tang of brine, the resistance of knots and salt-encrusted ends. In its place: order. Gloss. A stranger's elegance.

My fingertips drifted from my hair to the edge of the tunic I now wore—soft linen, dyed in a dull, pomegranate red, cinched loosely at the waist. Ithacan weave. Ithacan scent. Ithacan claim. It lay upon me like a second skin I had not chosen, clinging to my limbs with a foreign insistence. The fabric moved when I did, brushing against my thighs like breath, whispering of domestication and decorum, of civility wrapped in cotton thread. I loathed it.

There was a wrongness to it all—the way the cloth skimmed my shoulder, the way it yielded to my shape without resistance. My old garments had been coarse and crude, yes, but they had belonged to me. They had borne the stains of my journey, my fight, my blood. This tunic—clean, soft, silent—felt like a shroud masquerading as a gift. I wanted to tear it from my body, shred it seam from seam, scream into its folds until it remembered the sound of defiance. But instead, I stood still, breathing through my teeth, my fingers curled at the hem as if weighing the cost of such rebellion.

The mirror, if there had been one, might have shown a girl reborn. But I felt not feel rebirth. Only erasure, delicate and perfumed.

Raise your chin , I murmured inwardly, recalling my mother’s voice—stern, unwavering, the way it had always been in moments that mattered. Walk like you carry offerings in your silence. Let them see poise, not warning.  

The cadence of her lessons clung to my ribs like prayer. But the truth pulsed beneath my skin: I carried no honey, no peace. I carried blades—sharp, gleaming truths tucked behind my ribs, honed by exile and grief. Let them look. Let them guess. The weight I bore was not for tribute. It was for reckoning.

Let no one mistake this for surrender. I did not enter this house to kneel. I did not come to throw myself upon mercy, nor to plead for chains to be broken that were never justly placed. I came because the gods do not erase what they have inked. And for now, my name was scrawled not in their prophecies, not carved in glory, but scribbled in the margins. An afterthought. A smudge of fate between greater lines. But even marginalia can bleed through the page if pressed hard enough. 

The door creaked open, ancient wood groaning like it resented being witness to yet another moment that would mean nothing to most—but everything to me. A herald's voice called out—not the name my mother gave me, Themistra, daughter of Lysandra, but some mangled shadow of it, softened and slurred to suit foreign tongues. A hiss where a th ought to be. A vowel dropped like a stone. It was a small thing, and yet it struck deeper than I liked. As if even here, even now, I was not permitted to be whole.

Penelope dismissed the others with a motion as subtle as the drift of a falling leaf, yet they obeyed as if it were the crack of thunder. Her chamber was no throne room, no lavish cage of silks and golden trim. It was a quiet place, but it breathed. The walls held the weight of years, soaked through with secrets and sleeplessness. A hearth glowed low, not for warmth, but watchfulness. Here was a room that remembered—each creak in the floorboards, each furrow of a brow, each night passed without word from sea or storm.

She sat at its center, not like a queen adorned but like a creature who had outlasted her own myth. There was nothing decorative about her—no languor, no shine meant to seduce. She sat like a lioness in shade, regal in stillness, honed by hunger and solitude. Her hair, streaked with iron-grey, was pulled back not in vanity but in command. Her eyes—icy blue, sharp as cracked quartz, rimmed with the weary bruises of too many sleepless nights—met mine without flinching. They startled against the dark fall of her hair, a contrast so stark it felt unnatural, as though frost had bloomed in midnight soil. There was nothing soft in her gaze, nothing sentimental. Only the keenness of someone who had measured every loss and tallied every betrayal like ledgers etched into her bones. 

I saw in her no beauty. Not the kind sung in taverns or carved into marble busts. No flushed cheeks or honeyed smiles here. She was something rarer. She was presence. She was purpose. The kind of woman men fear and then claim to misunderstand. Not because she is unknowable, but because knowing her demands they look at themselves, and flinch.

I did not bow. I did not breathe.

In that moment, I stood not before a woman, but before a blade sheathed in silence. Penelope did not rise to greet me, and yet I felt myself summoned all the same. She was seated, yes, but she did not rest. Queens like her never do.

“My son will join us,” she said, her voice cool and steady, as if it mattered little whether I remained whole or broke apart.

I said nothing. I would not lend her my voice so easily—not after the last time I gave something freely, and my city turned to ash beneath the gods’ indifferent skies.

“You are Trojan?” 

Her words struck like a sudden flame, and heat bloomed fierce in my chest—rage molten and ancient, a scream folded into memory’s shape. Still, I held my silence. She hummed softly, as if answering a question only she knew.

Then her son Telemachus entered, as all sons of war do—wide-eyed, trembling with the weight of expectation. He carried the shape of a sword not yet drawn, the promise of battle yet untouched. His dark locks fell in unruly waves that stopped after the same stubborn jaw and fierce brow his father held, but he was unshadowed by war’s cruel hand. He moved swiftly but uncertainly, standing awkwardly near his mother. Penelope’s eyes flickered with irritation. Perhaps he had arrived later than she had hoped.

“Telemachus,” Penelope’s voice was taut, like the string of a drawn bow, “You are a prince. Enter a room like one.” He ducked his head sheepishly, scratching the back of his neck.

Her gaze shifted back to me. Penelope drew a slow breath, then said, “This is she—the prophetess.” Her words hung between us, sharp and heavy, a verdict cast in the quiet chamber.

My gaze met his.

His eyes—gods, they were blue. Not the mild blue of seafoam or summer sky, but the kind that lives in the underbelly of glaciers. A blue that does not warm. A blue that waits, ancient and patient, to crack. His mother’s eyes lived in him like a second inheritance—ice mirrored in ice—but his were younger, still tinged with the uncertainty of an unblooded blade. There was no cruelty in them, not yet. But there was distance. That, I recognized.

“A prophetess?” he echoed, doubt rippling through his voice like a stone through still water. “Then speak. Tell us something true.” 

And the room tilted. Gods, I hated him for asking, for I did not will the tilt. It happened within me. At once, the air thickened—sludgy, impossible. My lungs shrank like frightened animals, and my throat burned, dry as dust yet seared as though I’d swallowed coals. A violent stillness took hold of me, not silence, but a kind of strangled stasis. My muscles froze with terrible reverence. My spine straightened against my will. Something inside me curled away from my bones, something small and human, while another thing—the god-thing—rose.

I tried not to let it happen. I did. But resistance is nothing to a divine mouth that means to speak.

The words surged up from the pit of me—not my stomach, not my heart, deeper. From a place language should never grow. I felt them claw their way up my throat like brambles dragging themselves through flesh. My jaw ached from how wide it had to open to accommodate them. My tongue felt unfastened, unmoored. My body became a tunnel. A pulpit. A cracked amphora spilling oil.

"The olive tree bears fruit though fire kissed its roots.

A mother weeps where her loom once sang.

The son chases the shadow of a name,

but it is the silence that answers him first."

It did not feel like speaking. It felt like being unstitched. It felt like birthing a scream that no longer needed my consent. When the final syllable fled my lips, my entire body jerked—small, involuntary, like the aftershock of choking. I tasted iron. The room had gone terribly still.

I stood there, stunned and emptied. Cold sweat slicked the back of my neck, and my hands—clenched without knowing—ached with their own tension. My mouth hung open just slightly, as if more would come. As if the god had not quite finished with me. My heart beat against my ribs like it had lost its rhythm.

And still, I did not understand what I had said. I never did. The words left me like wilting petals of a flower. 

The silence stretched, long and taut, vibrating like a thread pulled too tight. My limbs still trembled—though subtly now, like leaves shivering beneath the weight of dew. My breath ghosted from me in shallow draughts, each one a little steadier than the last, as I coaxed my body back from the brink. The gods had rifled through me with careless hands, flaying thought from bone, and left behind only the echo of their will and the ache of having been used.

I blinked, forcing my eyes to stillness. My shoulders dropped a fraction, no longer braced for divine invasion. I willed my jaw to close. It clicked faintly—like the lid of a tomb. My hands, still curled into trembling fists, opened finger by finger with deliberate slowness, as if releasing venom I’d been clutching for too long. I straightened my back with the quiet rigidity of someone rebuilding their spine from splinters. I became stone again. Not smooth, not flawless, but unyielding. It was not peace, but posture. Not serenity, but survival.

Control. I knew it intimately. Like a childhood friend turned cruel lover—familiar, indispensable, but never gentle. I had mastered the art of stillness long before this palace, long before the war. I knew how to smooth the quake from my limbs. How to mask a flinch in the breath between sentences. How to exhale not like a girl caught trembling, but like a woman weighing consequences.

Penelope saw it all. I knew she did. Her gaze missed nothing, and for a moment, I thought she might speak—might press the matter further, demand more truths, more riddles, more pain. But instead, she inclined her head slightly, and the gesture was so precise, so sovereign, it was more decree than nod.

Telemachus blinked at me. I saw the riddle strike him—not like lightning, but like a splash of water that never quite becomes a wave. His brows furrowed. His lips parted, then closed. Then: “You speak in riddles,” he said. Bluntly. Dully. As if I had chosen to dress my truths in gauze.

I turned toward him. My joints cracked softly, resentfully, — heard only by myself —  as I moved. “I speak in chains,” I said, and my voice was hoarse—stripped, not worn. “Forged by the gods.”

Penelope’s expression had not shifted, but something beneath her skin had. I felt it. As if her stillness had deepened rather than broken. She looked at me like she’d found the trapdoor in a palace she herself had built—and now wondered what lay beneath.

“Do you serve Hera?” she asked, her voice even, but not empty.

My jaw tightened. “I serve no one,” I said, though I said it with less certainty than I’d meant to. “But I am bound to her spite. That is not service.” 

I stared fiercely at the royals. “It is sentencing.”

Telemachus’s face contorted, not in fear, but in discomfort. He had expected something cleaner, I think. A vision of light, of fire, of heroism spun in gold. He had expected a seer from the stories—wise and willful and wreathed in certainty.

He had gotten me instead. Not a seer, but something fractured. Something unsettling. A girl-monster with lips. 

He stood back, but his gaze lingered. The suspicion had thinned, softened into something quieter. Not trust—not yet—but a troubled sort of fascination.

“Why did Eurymachus bring you here?” he asked.

“To impress us,” Penelope answered for me. “Or to unsettle me. Possibly both.”

I said nothing, because the truth was neither. Eurymachus was a fool. And fools do not plot; they pose. He brought me not to frighten or flatter a queen, but because I was beautiful and broken, and he thought that made me valuable. Like a shattered vase inlaid with gold—something tragic, something exotic. He craved Penelope’s hand in marriage and believed I might serve as a token, a spectacle. But Penelope, I saw, had already sorted this in her mind like a thread between her fingers. She knew.

Penelope turned away from me and reached for something on her table—an unfinished weaving, or perhaps a letter. Something that allowed her to end the moment without further ceremony. As if I were a guest dismissed. Or a weapon she had sheathed.

“That is enough for today,” she said. Her voice held neither softness nor scorn—only finality. Like a door swinging shut on a storm.

I said nothing. Not because I lacked the words, but because there were none civil enough for what I wanted to say. I did not bow. I would not give her that. I wanted to scream. I wanted to strip the linen from my body and howl my grief into her ceilings. I wanted to curse the Greeks and their fine sandals, their olive-fed arrogance, their gods who played war like it was chess. I wanted justice.

A servant appeared like smoke beside me, summoned by nothing but her silence. Red-haired, slight, no older than I. Her eyes were not sharp like Penelope’s, but soft and darting, like a rabbit always scanning for the hawk. She did not speak, only bowed her head slightly and gestured for me to follow.

Her presence was not imposing, but quiet. And it was that quiet that pricked at something buried in me—something I had not allowed to ache yet. She smelled faintly of soap and seawater, like someone who scrubbed stone floors in the morning and cried into her pillow at night. I did not know her name, but I imagined, in another life, she might have been my friend. We walked in silence. My legs moved, but my thoughts had not caught up. They lagged behind like ghosts with broken feet.

The hallways blurred past, and I forced myself—visibly, physically—to still my breath, to roll back the tide. My hands unclenched. My shoulders lowered. I stitched myself together with will alone. It was not grace. It was not strength. It was defiance.

The room was small, but not cruel. That was the first thing I noticed. There were no chains. No watching eyes. No piles of moldy straw or stink of blood and sweat. Just a narrow bed, pressed neatly with linen the color of overwashed bone. A brazier and hearth at the foot of the bed. A single window carved like a wound into the wall, high and narrow, letting in a ribbon of decaying honey-colored light. A wooden chair. A basin. A shelf that held nothing.

The girl—my silent guide—stepped aside and gestured me in. I did not move at first. My feet, traitorous and leaden, held to the floor as though they feared the stillness might be a trap. As though the room might vanish if I dared believe it was mine.

She waited patiently. 

“What is your name?” I asked.

She blinked, startled, as if she had not expected me to speak to her. Her voice was soft. “Melantho.”

Melantho. A name like water slipping over stone. I tucked it away, somewhere safe.

“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it. 

She nodded once, her expression unreadable. Then turned and left. The door closed with the gentlest of sounds. Not a slam. Not a lock. A hush. And I was alone.

Alone.

The silence rushed in to fill me like smoke curling into a hollow lung. It did not comfort—it suffocated. I stood in the center of the room and let it bear down on me, pressing against my ribs like the weight of a phantom hand. I did not cry—not yet—but my body remembered how. The memory of weeping was etched into my marrow, older than language, older than the gods who toyed with me. My mother had taught me well: tears were for those with nothing left to protect. Crying was a surrender, a white flag raised from the ruins of the soul. And I—I still had pride. I still had names unspoken, futures unburned.

But gods, it hurt to hold it in.

The ache pooled at the base of my throat, thick and sour. I felt the sting behind my eyes and bit it back like a curse. I clenched my teeth so hard my jaw ached, and still the wave surged—grief, shame, rage, the helplessness of being watched and measured and found both beautiful and broken. A thing to be gifted. A thing to be pitied. A prophetess on a leash.

I lurched toward the basin. Water splashed over my cheeks. I welcomed it. It cut through the heat in my face, scalding despite its chill, and I gasped at the sensation. As if the cold might carve out the rot inside me. As if it might cleanse what the gods had touched.

My reflection blinked up at me from the rippling surface. Blurred. Warped. Unknowable. Who was she? My hair had those two chunks braided hastily—by whose hands, I could not recall—and now it was falling apart, stray strands curling like question marks along my temples. My lips were cracked. My cheeks blotched from restrained emotion. My eyes—

What was in them?

Not helplessness. Not yet. 

Something darker. A wilderness stripped bare by fire. A forest still smoldering, smoke clinging to the hollow trunks like ghosts. They were my mother’s eyes—no softness, no indulgence. Only flint and spark and the echo of unwept tears.

She used to say, "We do not cry. We calcify." I remembered her voice, low and sure, as she picked through the spices on her shelf. "The gods already feast on our pain. Don’t let them drink your tears too."

So I didn’t.

Even now, when every inch of me begged to unravel, I held the thread taut. My breath came shallow, ragged, but still I refused release. I would not break. Not for them. Not for anyone.

My fingers gripped the basin’s rim until my knuckles shone like bone. My knees trembled. My heartbeat pounded in my ears like the drum of war. I wanted to scream. To shatter the chair, hurl the basin, tear my hair out by the roots and paint the walls with my fury. But I didn’t.

I swallowed it. Shoved it deeper.

Buried it like a seed in the pit of my gut, knowing it would sprout later, when I could no longer hold the garden down. 

And then—slowly, with the ritual care of someone lifting shards from their own skin—I straightened. I adjusted the drape of my tunic. Smoothed the fraying braids with trembling hands. I inhaled once, deeply, until the air cut less like a knife. My heartbeat steadied, if only by a thread. The ghosts within me did not quiet, but I no longer listened. I set my jaw. I blinked. And I began to wear my calmness like armor, brittle and beautiful and utterly false. 

I pulled away from the basin, hands still dripping, the cold water trailing down my wrists like veins carved in ice. My breath came steadier now, though each inhale scraped a little against the ribs.

I crossed the room in silence and let myself slide down the stone wall, knees drawn to my chest. The moonlight stretched across the floor like a blade, cool and pale. The chamber was spartan—stone, wood, woven things that bore the smell of smoke and salt. It reminded me of a prison that had forgotten to lock its door.

The door suddenly opened just enough to admit a girl—Melantho, I remembered. Pale and narrow-shouldered, she entered with the caution of someone approaching a wounded animal, a tray balanced in her hands.

She shuffled forward and placed it gingerly on the ground, then took a step back. Her eyes were wide and frightful, and I found myself wishing I had the energy to attempt to soothe her. I peered over the tray and stared at its contents. Figs, olives, bread. I didn’t touch it. 

"I won’t eat," I said, voice hoarse but certain.

Melantho hovered momentarily. “You don’t have to,” she started, flicking her eyes down to the tray and then back up to mine. Her tone wasn’t unkind. Just tired. As if she had delivered too many trays to too many broken women.  

I said nothing. My gaze lingered on the figs, the bread—each item too carefully placed, too clean. Even the olives gleamed, like small, oiled stones. The scent of them made my stomach churn. 

“I’ll just…” She placed the tray near the wall, careful not to let the plates clatter. “If you change your mind.” She stepped back quickly, as if afraid I might speak again. Or not speak at all. Melantho hesitated at the door, one hand on the handle. “The Queen wanted you to be comfortable,” she said, her voice wavering like a bird unsure of its flight.

I didn’t answer. The chamber felt vast—far too grand for someone like me. The walls were draped with tapestries, their intricate designs mocking me with their peaceful serenity. Gods and heroes, stitched into the fabric, their eyes forever watchful, as though they could see the shape of my shame, even here. 

Melantho placed the tray down with quiet care, the sound of porcelain a distant echo in the stillness of the room. She lingered, but her presence only reminded me of the one who had sent me here—the one who had chosen me for this fate. Penelope. Queen of Ithaca.

The thought of her name on my tongue tasted bitter, like the last remnants of a dream that had shattered on the rocks.

“Penelope. She spoke as though she already knew me.” I said finally, my voice tight, barely contained. Melantho’s eyes darted toward the door, like she was weighing whether she should stay or go. She swallowed hard, but said nothing.

“She knew me,” I pressed. “She accepted me. Eurymachus… sent me to her.” My fingers dug into the hem of my sleeve, the anger rising in me like an unwanted tide. “As a gift. You don’t just give people like that away.”

Melantho seemed unsure of how to respond to the venom in my words, her fingers twisting the ends of her apron. After a long silence, she spoke, her voice almost too quiet to be heard.

“The Queen... she doesn’t take gifts lightly. If she accepted you, it’s because she believes you’re valuable. She doesn’t trust easily.”

I laughed, sharp and bitter. “Trust? What trust is there when you're treated as a commodity? What trust is there when they send you away like cattle for slaughter, and someone decides you’re worth more alive than dead?” My voice cracked on the last word, but I didn’t care.

Melantho’s eyes shifted uncomfortably, as though she was suddenly very aware of how small the room had grown. I could almost hear the weight of her thoughts pressing against the stone walls. The silence stretched, thick as oil.

“I know that you think she’s…” Melantho hesitated, searching for the words. “Cold. But you don’t know her like I do.” She turned, as though she was about to offer more—some piece of wisdom or comfort—but stopped herself.

“I know her well enough,” I said, the bitterness still thick on my tongue. “She’s the queen who survived seventeen years in her husband’s absence, holding Ithaca together like it was nothing. She can wear her strength like a crown.” I paused, staring at the tray of food she’d left behind, but my words came out colder than I intended. “I can respect that. But respect doesn’t mean I have to like her.”

Melantho didn’t respond to that. She simply nodded, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. There was a deep sympathy in her gaze, but it wasn’t enough to ease the fire in my chest.

“I’ll come back if you need anything,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. Without another word, she retreated, leaving the door slightly ajar. I stared at the sliver of light that remained in the doorway, the sound of her footsteps fading. The chamber was silent once more.

I stayed where I was—frozen in place. My body ached from the journey, from the violence of the storm that had pushed me into this life, into this palace. I couldn’t look at the tray anymore. The food seemed like an insult—an offering for a prisoner who was still trying to find her chains. 

Penelope had accepted me, yes. But she’d also taken my freedom with a smile that seemed as cold as the marble floor beneath my feet. She’d accepted me as a gift, a piece in her game. I had no illusion about what she had seen when she looked at me—no illusion about what I represented. Not life —but survival. She had done what she had to in order to keep Ithaca standing, and if that meant playing games with the men who thought they could bend the world to their will, then I was just another tool in her arsenal. 

And though I had no illusions, I still hated her for it. 

I pressed my fingers to my throat. The words still itched there—riddles that tasted like rust. My voice was not my own. It never had been. The gods puppeted it, tugged it like thread from a wound.

“It is the silence that answers him first…” 

Why had I said that? What were the gods trying to tell us? I leaned my head against the wall, and thought.

 I thought of the queen—blue-eyed and serpent-witted. Thought of the boy-prince, with his tawny-brown locks and sun-kissed skin. My jaw still ached from holding in the words I wanted to say. My tongue burned with the fire and venom I didn't spit. I had spoken to Penelope and her son without weeping. That was victory, though small. I had not begged. I had not bowed. I had wrapped my truth in thorns and flung it at their feet like rotten fruit. I wondered why Penelope had accepted me. 

Did she see something of herself in me? A reflection of ruin? Or did she merely hunger for prophecy, even from the tongue of a cursed girl? 

I shifted against the wall, the stone cold and unyielding at my back. Somewhere outside, an owl called once, low and mournful. I could still hear the gods whispering in the spaces between silence. Still feel their riddles weaving in my throat like a net I couldn’t escape. I pressed my fingers to my collarbone and exhaled through my nose, long and slow, as if I could trick myself into calm. But calm was a myth, like mercy.

I stared at the tray. The olives. The fig. The steam rising from the bowl.

It would go cold, like everything else.

I did not leave the room. 

Not the next day, nor the one after that. The chamber became its own sort of tomb—complete darkness save for the sliver of moonlight that shifted along the floor like a slow-moving blade. I lay still. I curled into myself like a scorched leaf. I did not eat. The food kept arriving—bread, broth, figs split open like wounds—and I let it rot. The smell grew thick, sweet, nauseating. I welcomed it. It made the air harder to breathe, and I wanted to suffer.

When I rose, it was only to relieve myself. I moved like an old woman, knees stiff, feet numb. I drank water from the basin. It only reflected a stranger—a creature with sunken eyes and tangled hair and lips that had forgotten the shape of kindness.

Servants came and went. Always different girls. They never knocked—merely opened the door with the same caution you might offer a rabid dog. I didn’t speak to them. Didn’t thank them. If they looked at me too long, I snarled. Once, I threw a fig at the wall just to hear it splatter. Another time, I told one girl she stank of the sea and the blood of my people. She didn’t come back.

Good.

I hated them all. Hated their Greek tongues, their smooth olive skin, their little linen sandals pattering across the floor like they belonged to the world. Hated the way they bowed to Penelope. Hated how they looked at me—like I was something to pity, or worse, to fix. As if grief could be sewn shut with warm bread and gentle voices. They didn’t know what I had lost. They didn’t know what it meant to be taken—not just from a city, but from the life that was supposed to be yours. To be dragged across the sea like some cursed trophy, offered up to a queen who spoke riddles with her eyes. They didn’t know what it was to wake up with screams in your throat and no voice to scream them.

So I rotted. Gloriously. Bitterly. Refused to move, to eat, to participate in their illusion of order. If I was going to be treated like a beast, I would become one. I curled in the corner of the room, bones sharp beneath my skin, stomach hollow, heart a coal that would not go out.

The days melted into each other, saltless and still. Time became a fog, thick and foul, through which I floated like carrion. I stopped counting sunrises. The light never changed in that room. I stopped wondering if I would leave. I became part of the stone.

Until the seventh day.

The door opened—not with caution, not with ceremony. No knock. No warning. Just the sound of a hinge and the soft hush of sandals against the threshold.

He entered like he owned the place.

Of course he did.

Telemachus.

The prince of Ithaca, whose voice had barely broken but whose name carried weight like a sword. He didn’t carry a tray. He didn’t carry pity. He carried himself, golden and sun-creased, a boy grown too fast in a house that reeked of men pretending to be kings. He shut the door behind him.

I didn’t move. Good. Let him see what they’d done. Let him witness what the Greeks had made of me—my sunken face, my feral eyes, my hair tangled like seaweed and salt. I was ruin. I wanted him to flinch.

He didn’t.

Telemachus said nothing for a long moment. Just stood there, his shadow stretching across the floor like a question. I could feel his eyes on me. We were two statues locked in a temple of silence—me, hunched in the corner, gaunt and smoldering; him, too proud for boyhood, too soft for war.

When he finally spoke, it wasn’t cruel.

“You’ve been here a week.”

His voice was lower than I remembered. Tired. Measured. But not unkind.

I blinked slowly. My lips cracked when I spoke. “Your spies tell you that?”

He didn’t rise to it. “Melantho tells me you haven’t eaten.”

“Why would I?” I rasped, with the jagged elegance of a cliff-edge. “Would you eat food served by your enemies?”

“Ithaca isn’t your enemy,” he stated.

I smiled. It was not kind. “Then Troy never was yours?”

Silence again. His hands twitched at his sides.

“I was a child,” he murmured at last.

“So was I,” I replied. “But I was born in fire and buried in salt. You were born in linen, wrapped in laurel. You were allowed to forget. I was required to remember.” 

He stepped forward.

I bared my teeth like an animal. “Don’t.”

That made him pause.

“I’m not one of your servants,” I hissed. “And I’m not your pet.” My voice was ragged, brittle with starvation and rage, but I would not let it tremble. “You should have knocked.”

He tilted his head. There was something unreadable in his face—curiosity, maybe. “I don’t knock,” he said. “Not on my own doors.”

That stung more than it should have. My mouth opened, ready to strike—another sharp phrase, another barb—but nothing came. I had exhausted even my venom. I scoffed.

He stood there, watching me rot. The silence pressed in like a tide. It drew away when he spoke again. “I didn’t mean to intrude,” he said finally. “I only thought... maybe you might talk to me. Truthfully.”

I looked at him. Just barely. The shadows carved his face into something older than seventeen, but the voice betrayed him still—hopeful, unsure. A wolf pup’s cry masked as command.

“And I… I came to introduce myself,” he said, a little less sure now. I glowered. “Introduce yourself?” I spat, the words thick as bile. “Is that what you think I need? A name to match the collar?”

His jaw tightened, just a little. But he didn’t leave.

“I’m Telemachus,” he said anyway, like his name was a key that might unlock something inside me. “Son of Odysseus.”

I snorted, low and ugly. “Then I pity you.”

His brows rose—not in anger, but in something like surprise. Or maybe recognition.

“You hate us,” he said.

“Bright boy,” I sneered. “Took you a week. I hate what you are, but I don’t yet know who you are.”

Telemachus crossed his arms, but didn’t move. He stayed in the middle of the room like a soldier unsure if the battlefield ahead was worth the blood. “You have every reason to,” he said. “We burned your home. We took your people. You were brought here like… like spoils.”

“Like cattle ,” I snapped. “Like a rare shell plucked from a shipwreck. Like a gift .”

He flinched then. Good. Let the prince feel something. Let the bones of Troy echo in his chest.

“I don’t want you to starve,” he said quietly.

“Then stop sending your hounds with trays and pity.”

“I’m not here to pity you.”

“No?” I leaned forward, feral and thin, my voice sharp as bone. “Then what are you here for?” A pause. He didn’t answer right away. And that, more than anything, made me pause. He looked down, then up again, meeting my eyes without flinching. “Truth,” he said. “I want to understand.”

I blinked.

“Then listen, prince of Ithaca.” I mocked. “Troy burned for ten years. The gods turned their backs on us and then spat curses as parting gifts. My tongue is no longer mine—it sings only in riddles and truths. I cannot soothe you. I cannot flatter. I cannot lie to make your guilt feel smaller.”  

The silence returned, heavier now. I could feel it pressing against my spine, could feel the weight of him—boy, prince, myth’s orphan—standing there like someone who wasn’t sure whether to offer his hand or draw his sword. He didn’t take a step forward, but something in him leaned closer. Not his body, but his breath—his stillness. Like a deer in a clearing, daring the wind to shift.

 “Then tell me what I am,” he said. “Not who. What.”
His voice was steady, but it wasn’t armor. It was something softer—threadbare cloth held together by stubborn stitches.

I almost laughed. Almost. “You want the truth, prince?” I asked, voice low, nearly a growl. “Fine.”

I stood then. Or rather, I rose —a thing gaunt and unbroken, forged from rot and fury. The blanket slipped from my shoulders like dead skin, and I didn’t care that I looked like a revenant crawling from the ruins. Let him see what the Greeks had made. Let him reckon with it.

“You,” I said, stepping forward, “are a story.”
His brow furrowed. “What does that—”

“You are your father’s son ,” I spat. “The boy people speak of in murmurs and songs. You are legacy. You are a legend's shadow. You are the walking cost of a thousand deaths and ten years of siege. You are everything I lost dressed in finer clothes.”

The words seared my throat as they came out, like they had been waiting for the blood to come first. Telemachus swallowed, but he didn’t interrupt. Didn’t argue. He let me go on.

“You sit in a palace built on the ashes of countless lives,” I said, voice shaking now with its own fury. “You speak of understanding, but you were born on the right side of conquest. You were suckled on safety and named for hope.”

A pause. I drew a breath, deep and dangerous.

“You don’t get to ask who I am. Not until I remember.”

That startled him. I saw it—his lips parting, some question half-formed, but stillborn.

“I am not whole,” I whispered. “I am not clean. I was taken when I was still screaming. And you… you Greeks don’t even know what you took.”

And still he didn’t leave. That—more than anything—unnerved me. His normally ice-blue eyes were storm-dark, still watching, still trying to find something in me that wasn’t ash.

“You’re right,” he said at last. “I don’t know. But I want to.”

“Why?” My voice cracked. “So you can feel better? So you can go to sleep at night thinking you’re not like the rest of them?”

He shook his head. “No. So I won't become one of them.”

The fire faltered in me for a beat. Just one. And still, I hated him. Hated that he said it like he meant it. But I didn’t tell him to leave.

I sank back to the ground, knees aching like a prayer I didn’t want to make. The room felt colder now. Or maybe I had burned too hot. Telemachus didn’t speak again. He didn’t move. He simply sat—across the room, careful, distant—as if I were a wildfire and he was a boy who’d only ever read about flame. 

So we stayed like that: two ghosts of different cities, watching one another through the cracks. And outside, the wind keened against the stone, as if it too remembered.

The minutes dragged on. I could hear them. Not in ticks or bells, but in the slow death of rage—when fury burns low enough to let grief breathe beside it. I hated that too. Hated how still he was. Hated how his presence did not feel like intrusion anymore, but witness.

I had not asked for a witness.

A servant entered timidly, and left food at the door. Telemachus did not look toward it. Neither did I. Let it rot, I thought. Let it join me in the dark.

“You shouldn’t stay,” I said after a long time. My voice felt strange now. Thin and cold, like metal dipped in water.

He glanced at me. “Why?”

“You’re not welcome here.” I didn’t snarl this time. It was worse than a snarl. It was true.

He nodded, slowly. “I know. But I’m not here to be welcome.”

I closed my eyes. Just for a moment. The darkness behind them was thick with old smoke.

“You think this is noble?” I murmured. “Sitting vigil in a room you aren’t wanted in?”

“No,” he said. “But it’s not noble to look away, either.” 

I didn’t answer. I didn’t have an answer. I only breathed, ragged and shallow, each inhale a labor. The fire inside me had not gone out. But it had changed. Where once it had howled and raged, now it smoldered. Quiet. Patient. The kind that waits for oxygen.

He stayed. Not asking questions. Not offering platitudes. Just sat there in silence, like he knew anything more would be too much.

And that, perhaps, was the worst of it. That he seemed to understand that he could not understand. That he brought no balm, no salve—only presence. And a strange kind of stillness that refused to demand anything from me. My stomach twisted. My body ached from hunger and sleeplessness and the weight of carrying too much in a place too small.

I thought, fleetingly, of screaming. Of hurling something. Of scratching at the walls until they bled for me. But I did none of those things.

I lay back down.

Not to sleep. Not to rest. Just to be low again. To feel the stone against my spine. To remind myself that I was not floating—I was still here, still bitter, still tethered to the ground by nothing but hate and memory.

His voice came, soft as dusk. “Will you let them feed you tomorrow?”

I didn’t answer. He nodded, as if I had.

“I’ll come back,” he said.

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“I know.”

He rose—quiet as moonlight—and left without looking back.

I stared at the ceiling. And for the first time in days, I blinked, and salt stung my eyes. But I did not cry. I would not. Let the gods mark me stubborn. Let them see: Troy’s daughters still had claws.

And I would not break for a prince.

Chapter Text

Morning arrived without mercy. The sun leaked through the stone slats like it had nothing to apologize for, painting pale gold over the uneven walls, over my sleeping mat, over the untouched food gone stiff with waiting. The light dared to touch me. I rolled away from it.

I had not dreamt. Not really. Only fragments: feathers tearing through night’s fabric, shrieks that did not belong to any earthly bird. They wheeled around my mind like carrion crows at a funeral pyre. I woke with the taste of ash in my mouth and the scent of Troy still burning in my memory.

I did not rise. I did not speak. But I noticed—absurdly—that someone had exchanged the tray. The figs were fresh. The bread had not yet dried into stone. They were still trying.

I still didn’t eat, though. 

But I looked. 

That was all. Just looked.

The hours crawled by like ants over honey. A breeze stirred through the window, teasing strands of my hair loose. Somewhere far below, a goat bleated once—sharp and stupid—and I hated it, because it sounded alive.

Then footsteps.

Not the clatter of a servant or the drag of a guard. Lighter. Measured. Familiar, now, in the way that thunder becomes familiar after too many storms.

I did not move when he stepped in. Did not speak. He didn’t either.

Telemachus sank to the floor in the same place he had been yesterday. Cross-legged on the cold stone, like we were children in some school of silence, learning what not to say.

He didn’t bring gifts. Or food. Or questions. Just presence, again—like a fool, or a priest, or both.

For a long time, there was nothing between us but dust and air. But something had shifted—some faint crack in the mortar between yesterday and today. I glanced toward the bread. Just once. I didn’t touch it. But I let him see me looking. Let him think it meant something. Let him hope. 

Hope is a Greek disease. 

Let him carry it.

I was born in a city that cracked beneath gods and men alike. I had screamed through ash, through salt, through silence. And I had survived it—not as a girl remade, but as a girl burning . Always burning. I did not need to be whole to be dangerous. I did not need to be gentle to be real. 

Let him wonder what I might become if I ever stopped burning.

But I won’t .

Let the gods hear me: I will not . 

He stayed there for a long while. Long enough for the shadow of the window’s slats to shift across the floor like prison bars on a sundial. Long enough that the silence stopped being sharp and simply settled. Then—softly, like someone asking a question at the edge of a grave—he spoke.

“Do you remember your name?”

I turned toward him, not all the way, just enough to let him see that I heard. My hair clung to the sweat at my temple. My lips were dry, and when I parted them, it tasted like rust.

“I remember it,” I said. “But I don’t owe it to you.”

He looked at me the way someone looks at a knife that speaks. With awe. And caution.

He stood, then. Still not smiling, still not running. Just watching me as though I might disappear, or combust, or curse him into stone. 

“You’ll starve if you keep this up,” he said—not as a threat, not even as a concern. Just an observation. 

“I’ve lasted this long,” I replied. 

He nodded. One hand hovered as if to gesture, then thought better of it. “I’ll come back.”

I didn’t tell him not to.

And this time, as he left, I watched him go.

I simply settled back down into the nest of my bed and closed my eyes once more. 

I awoke when the door creaked. My whole body tensed. I expected Telemachus again, pale and persistent, with his doe eyes and his stubborn silence. But it wasn’t him.

It was the old woman.

“Good,” said Eurycleia, stepping in with the sureness of someone who had walked every inch of this palace since before it had walls. “You’re still breathing.”

I scowled.

“I’ve seen corpses with more appetite,” she added, not unkindly. I sat up. Slowly. My bones felt older than hers looked. She came closer, not asking permission. The tray clinked as she picked it up and set it on the table with a practiced grace. “The prince said you might eat today.”

“Did he?” My voice was dry as kindling. “How flattering. That I require his predictions like the weather.”

Eurycleia only snorted. “He says many things. Most of them foolish. He’s young.”

I said nothing. She paused, hands folded. “The queen would like to see you. Later.”

That snapped my head up. “Why?”

Eurycleia shrugged. “Because she can. Because she’s curious. Because you haven’t spoken since you arrived, and now suddenly you’re spitting fire at her son.”

“She should thank me. I’m teaching him the world isn’t kind.” I snorted. 

The old woman smiled, sly and bone-deep. “He already knows that. But you may yet teach him something worse.”

I stiffened. “What’s worse than unkindness?”

Her eyes met mine, and they did not flinch. “Despair.”

Silence. Thick as blood.

“Tell her I’ll come,” I said finally.

“Good,” Eurycleia replied, gathering the tray. “And eat something, girl. No one fights well on an empty stomach.”

She left. And I—reluctantly, resentfully—tore off a piece of bread. Not because I was softening. Not because I trusted them.

But because I would not die for them, either.

When I was finished, I stood. My knees ached, but I did not wince. I moved like someone who had never bled—because weakness, once named, becomes invitation. I smoothed my tunic, combed fingers through the snarl of my hair, and braided it back. Tight. Sharp. Practical. 

There was a basin in the corner, a threadbare cloth folded beside it. I dipped the cloth in cold water and scrubbed my face until it hurt. Red. Clean. Presentable. Not for their comfort. For mine.

Let them look at me and wonder what I was. Not who. That would come later. 

I turned to the window. The sea glittered beyond the courtyard, arrogant in its vastness. I hated it. The way it shimmered like a jewel in the sun, like it hadn’t swallowed gods and men and cities whole.

Odysseus’s sea.

I spat on the stone.

When the door opened, I was already standing.

“I’m ready,” I said.

The door opened. A servant girl bowed low, eyes to the floor. She didn’t speak. Good. I was not in the mood to suffer smallness.

We walked through corridors I hadn’t yet seen. The palace was a wound stitched with marble and shadow, lovely in the way a grave might be—elegant, final, and full of ghosts.

She led me to a small room—not the queen’s hall, not a throne room. Something quieter. Something… purposeful.

And there, seated in a high-backed chair with silver in her hair and war behind her eyes, was Penelope.

She did not rise. She did not smile.

She only looked at me, long and sharp.

And then she said, “You’ve made quite the impression.”

The words were cool as mountain air. Not a compliment. Not a warning. Merely observation—measured, distant, laced with something older than formality. We stared at one another, two women carved by different sieges.

I did not bow. I did not curtsey. Let them call it insolence. I called it survival.

“You summoned me,” I said.

Penelope tilted her head. “I did.”

Silence spun out between us. Not uncomfortable—just sharp. The kind that cuts even if you don’t notice you’re bleeding.

At last, she gestured to the seat across from her.

“Sit.”

I sat. Not obediently—deliberately.

Penelope studied me as if I were a riddle dressed in human skin. Perhaps she saw the salt in my hair, the bruises I hadn’t named, the fire I had not put out. Perhaps she saw the prophecy coiled in my throat like a snake, waiting to strike.

“They say you haven’t spoken to anyone, save for my son,” she said.

I shrugged. “They haven’t asked anything worth answering.” A ghost of something like amusement flickered across her mouth. Not quite a smile. More like a twitch of acknowledgment.

“I have no fondness for riddles,” she said. “But I’ve lived among men who mistake silence for consent. I’d rather be spoken to in flame than buried in silence.”

That made me look at her. Truly look.

And I saw it then—grief draped in discipline. Beauty sharpened by abandonment. A queen crowned not by gold, but by waiting.

“You have been buried for a long time,” I said.

Penelope didn’t flinch. “And you were thrown on the pyre.”

A pause. We regarded each other like a knife and whetstone. Then she leaned forward.

“Do you know why Eurymachus brought you here?”

My nails dug into my palm. “To impress you. Or scare you.” I repeated her words from so long ago. 

“Likely story,” she said dryly. “But you are no fool like he is. I’m asking if you know what purpose the gods have for you.”

I blinked. That was dangerous talk.

“I do not pretend to know the gods,” I said.

“But they know you,” she replied. “That much is clear.”

My heart beat faster. She saw too much. Penelope stood. Slowly. Her shadow reached across the floor like a tide.

“I do not want a servant,” she said. “And I do not want a pet. I want the truth. However it comes. Even when it cuts.”

She stepped closer, and her voice dropped low.

“So. Trojan girl. Harbinger. Whatever else you are. Will you tell me what you see?”

I did not speak. Not at first.

Because something old was stirring in my mouth. Something not mine. The first riddle had already begun to form.

It began as a hum in the marrow—a tension, low and thrumming, like the sky before a storm. Then it moved upward, threading itself through sinew and throat, prying open the locked vault of my mouth. My lips did not belong to me. My tongue was no longer mine. The words gathered like blood behind the dam of my teeth, thick and trembling. I clamped my jaw shut, but it didn’t matter. It never mattered.

Because prophecy does not ask permission. 

It does not knock. It kicks the door in.

I felt the gods behind my ribs, cold and vast and cruelly curious. Felt them reach through the cage of me with their long, immortal fingers—hooking something loose in the base of my skull, pulling it forward, dragging it into shape.

Not a voice. A verdict.

My eyes blurred, but I did not blink. I could not. My spine straightened without my consent. My breath hitched once, sharp as a snapped string, and then— then the riddle poured out of me like smoke from a temple fire.

“When the sea spits back what it swallowed,

 and the olive bears fruit in winter,

 when the wolf lays down not in peace, but pretense—

 then the king will come with death in his mouth.”

The room held still. No breeze, no sound. Just that echo hanging between us, fragrant with omen. Penelope didn’t gasp. Didn’t cry out. She blinked once. A queen does not flinch for riddles. She has lived too long in one already.

“And whose death?” she asked.

I exhaled shakily. My throat felt scraped raw. “I don’t know.” She nodded, as if that answer, too, had weight. As if she had already considered the possibility.

“Do they come often?” she asked after a moment. “The riddles?”

“When they choose,” I said. “Not when I want.”

“A curse?”

“A leash.”

Penelope paced once, twice, her fingers brushing the loom at her waist. Her footsteps were soft, but the weight of her thoughts pressed against the silence like a stone sinking in deep water. The plucking of strings somewhere was the only sound—steady, relentless—like the turning of fate’s own wheel.

She stopped and looked at me, eyes shadowed but sharp, as if she were reading something written not in words, but in the space between them.

“A leash,” she echoed, voice low. “But for whom? The seer, or the city?”

I did not answer. The question hung heavier than any chain. The gods had bound me with riddles I could not unravel, with voices that clawed from beyond the veil. Each prophecy was a blade I wielded but never controlled—cutting through truth and flesh alike.

Penelope’s gaze softened for a fraction—an ember’s glow in the hearth of her storm.

“Then you carry fire,” she said quietly. “Not just in your words, but in your blood.”

I met her eyes. For once, the unspoken between us was not sharp with accusation or fear, but tempered with something almost like understanding.

“Yes,” I said. “And I will burn until the end, whether the leash breaks or not.” 

Penelope’s fingers twined tighter around the threads of the loom, knuckles paling like marble caught in a sudden chill. The room seemed to hold its breath, the air thick with the weight of unspoken futures.

“You speak of fire and chains,” she murmured, “but fire, once born, is neither easily tamed nor willingly quenched.” Her voice was a thread of silk and steel, a queen’s voice that carried both command and a silent plea. She stepped closer, close enough that the scent of olive oil and sea salt clung to her like a second skin.

“Tell me, Themistra—will your fire burn us all, or will it be the light that guides us through the dark?”

The question hung like a sword suspended by a single thread. I could taste the ash on my tongue, feel the gods’ invisible fingers tightening their grip, urging me to speak, to unravel the riddle buried deep in the smoke of my soul. I swallowed the bitter silence and met her gaze, steady as a blade’s edge.

“I do not know,” I said, voice low but unyielding. “But whatever comes, I will face it—burning, not broken.”

She nodded once, slow and deliberate, as if sealing a pact with the unseen. The fire inside me did not waver. It was not a flicker but a storm, a reckoning written in flame and shadow. And in that room, beneath the watchful eyes of stone and sky, I knew this was only the beginning.

Penelope’s eyes did not leave mine.

There was something there—not pity, not fear, but understanding sharpened into resolve. The look of a woman who had long since buried softer things beneath callus and cleverness. I realized then that I was not the only one who lived with a leash. Hers was simply made of thread.

“When the gods speak through you,” she said, “do they listen when you speak back?”

I shook my head.

“They don’t care what I want. Only that the words reach the world.”

Penelope’s mouth twitched—almost a smile, though it had too much history in it to be called such. She sat, not in the seat of power behind her but on the low bench beside it, close enough for me to see the silver in her hair catch the afternoon light.

“I do not like riddles,” she admitted. “But I like silence even less. Speak again when the gods come clawing. Until then… if you ever want to speak just for yourself, I will listen.”

It was not a kindness. Not exactly. More like a bargain struck between two women who had both been made into symbols too young.

I bowed my head—not in submission, but in something older. A gesture half-prayer, half-warning. Penelope stood. The moment was done. She became a queen again with the turning of her heel. The sea was grey and stirring.

“Send word if you see more,” she murmured without looking back. “And eat. The living must stay alive.”

I rose.

Not bowed. Not grateful. Just gone.

But the air clung to me as I left, thick with something unsaid. And I knew—she was already trying to solve me. And for the first time in years, I did not feel entirely alone in the ruin.

I sat in my chamber. The silence after my departure was different than before—less like a tomb, more like a loom left humming, threads still warm with tension. My heart beat too loudly in my ears. My hands trembled, not from fear, but from the aftershock of something ancient passing through me. I touched my throat. It felt bruised.
When the sea spits back what it swallowed…

I stayed curled beside the stone wall, watching the morning stretch thin across the floor. The figs had begun to wrinkle. The bread was stiffening. I considered them, not with hunger, but with a kind of detached curiosity. Would I wither the same way, if left untouched?

Then—again—footsteps.

Not the queen’s.

His.

Lighter, slower than hers. Less sure of their welcome. Telemachus appeared in the doorway, as he always did: as if he weren’t entirely certain whether this time I would let him stay.

I didn’t speak. I didn’t motion him in.

But I didn’t send him away.

He sat.

A small eternity passed. Finally, he said, voice soft as parchment:

“You told her a prophecy.”

I didn’t nod. Didn’t deny it either.

He picked at a thread on his tunic. “Is it always like that?”

“Yes,” I said. My voice was hoarse, rubbed raw by god-fingers. “It hurts.”

He glanced at me, quick and sharp. Not with pity, but with something stranger. Reverence, maybe. Or awe in the face of something half-terrible. I didn’t like it. It made me feel less human.

“What did it mean?” he asked.

I turned my face toward the wall. “Don’t ask me things I cannot know. I told her what they told me. That is all.”

Another pause. Then:

“Will you tell me your name?”

I hesitated. Shifted uncomfortably.
“Please?” he whispered. 

Names are a kind of magic. They are bones we wrap flesh around, the first crown we wear. Mine had been taken from me in the fire. Hidden beneath the soot. I had only said it once since Troy fell.

But something in me—some sliver, some cinder—shifted.

“Themistra,” I said.

It did not feel like reclaiming. It felt like bleeding.

He said it softly. “Themistra.”

I hated the way it sounded beautiful in his mouth.

“I’ll remember it,” he said.

“Then you’ll carry it,” I whispered. “The name, and the ruin it was forged in.”

He nodded. And he didn’t try to answer. Didn’t try to soothe.

He stayed a little while longer. And then, when the sun had sunk lower and the air had turned warm and sharp with the coming night, he stood.

“I’ll come again,” he said. A promise, this time. 

“I know.”

He hesitated, as if there was more he wished to say. But then he turned and left, his shadow folding neatly behind him. And I sat there with the gods still humming in my blood, and my name ringing in the air like a spell finally spoken.

Themistra.

It should have tasted like triumph, like a banner raised above a battlefield. But it didn’t. It tasted like a wound being licked clean by fire. And I, for the first time in a long while… I prayed.

Not with joy. Not with awe. Not even with hope. 

To pray to a god is to place your throat at the altar and pretend it is not a knife you’re leaning into. I knew that better than most. The gods had broken my city. Had broken my people. Had broken me. I did not love them. I did not trust them.

But Artemis had claimed me. She, of the wild places and silver blood. She, who guarded the hunt and the hunted both. She had watched as I was dragged from the ruins. She had not stopped it. But she whispered. Just once. And I had heard.

I did not know what she wanted of me. But I was hers now. Not by vow, but by survival. So I bowed—not in body, but in something deeper. A half-snarl, half-kneel of the soul. A gesture stripped of devotion, and made only of defiance. The kind of prayer that is less a plea and more a dare.

Let the stones remember my name.

Let the wind carry it.

Let the ghosts of Troy know:

 I still burn.

 And I will not go quietly, not even for you.

Goddess of the wild , I said in the silence. If you are watching, then watch well. I am not your priestess. I am not your plaything. But I am still alive. And if you have use for me, you’d best make it count. Because I will not be gentle. I will not be grateful.

I will burn your enemies with the same fire that burned my home. My fingers curled into the hem of my tunic. The stone floor was cool beneath me, but my skin buzzed with heat, with memory, with something like power. I was not clean. I was not healed.

But I was named. I was burning. And I had prayed. 

That, I think, meant the gods should be very, very careful.

Chapter Text

The stone was warm beneath my cheek. That was the first thing I noticed. Not the ache in my stomach, not the pins and needles in my limbs, not even the sour taste clinging to the back of my throat like smoke. Just the warmth—radiating from the floor like a dying sun.

I tried to lift my head. I didn’t.

Instead, the ceiling above me doubled, then tripled, then blurred into a smear of pale light and shadow. My fingers twitched against the mat, but my bones felt waterlogged, too heavy to obey. I blinked. Once. Slowly. And the room spun like a drunken chariot. I think I was on the floor. Or my bed. Or the sea—yes, the sea, because it roared just behind my eyes, and the salt of it clung to my tongue.

Something was wrong.

But the thought came like it was wrapped in wool. I couldn’t untangle it. Couldn’t name the ringing in my ears or the heat blooming in my skin or the way my ribs moved like they were bound too tight.

Hunger, said a voice. Plain. Cruel. Obvious.
But behind it, something deeper stirred.

You are not immortal. It pounded in my head like a divine message. The gods do not feed their vessels. Only wring them dry.

I tried to swallow. My throat clicked, dry as stone. I turned my head—barely—and saw the tray. Still full. Still untouched. A few flies flirted at the edge of the bread, as if even they were debating whether it was worth the trouble. I laughed.

Or meant to. What came out was a weak rasp. A sound like leaves crumbling underfoot. I think I muttered something. I don’t remember what. Maybe my mother’s name. Maybe mine.

Maybe both.

The door opened.

I didn’t flinch. I couldn’t. I could only stare, eyes half-lidded, as the figure stepped inside and froze.

“I’m not going,” I told the stone, or the shadow, or the sun. “You can tell Eurymachus—I’ll be given to no one. Not even Paris.”

“Gods,” said a voice. “Themistra?”

Telemachus.

I knew him in the way you know the shape of lightning before it strikes—by the charge in the air, the shift in pressure, the quiet just before the storm breaks. His footsteps, hesitant. Then faster.

“Themistra,” Telemachus said again, louder now, closer, his knees hitting the floor beside me. “You’re burning up.”

“Yes,” I whispered. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? I never stopped.”

His hand ghosted near my temple. I flinched.

“What—why didn’t—? Have you eaten? You haven’t, have you—?” His hands hovered over me, not touching. Just flitting from shoulder to wrist to forehead like he wasn’t sure which part of me might break first.

I laughed again. Or maybe I whimpered. I couldn’t tell anymore. It all blurred.

“You’re back,” I mumbled. “Still Greek?”

His face broke. A breath like a prayer or a curse.

“Yes,” he said, soft. “I’m still Greek.”

“Pity,” I whispered. “Would’ve liked it better if you were a goat.”

His brow creased. I could see it now, see the panic creeping into him like frost.

“You haven’t eaten in days. You—gods. I thought you would–” He turned, barking something toward the door—something about broth, and Eurycleia, and towels. But I wasn’t listening anymore.

I was already falling backward. Not in body, but in memory.
My voice, strangely, did not falter. Delirium was its own kind of freedom.

“You need food,” he murmured. “You need rest.”

“I need my mother,” I said. And for the first time, it cracked. The words split in half in my throat like glass underfoot. 

“She’s still in that hellhole. She’s still there. I left her.”

“No,” he said. Firm. Too firm. “You didn’t leave her. The war did.”

“He took me.” My voice was thinner than silk, thinner than breath. “And I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

His expression twisted. Gods, he was trying not to break.

“You survived,” he said. “That was enough. That is always enough.” 

But I didn’t believe him. I let the fever take me again. The floor rose to meet me. And through the haze, I swore I saw my mother’s hands—threading my hair, humming, bleeding, loving me anyway.

And Telemachus stayed.

Of course he did.

His fingers were on my wrist now, finding my pulse like it could tell him anything more than what he already saw. A girl collapsing into ghosts.

“She said my name like it was a song,” I murmured. “Themistra. Themistra. Themistra. But I don’t know what it means anymore.”

He swallowed. His jaw set. “You’ll remember. When you’re well.”

“I think—” I began, and then stopped. The world slipped sideways. A sob pushed against my teeth, and I let it.

“Do you think she sings to herself?” I asked, suddenly small. “When no one’s watching? Do you think she remembers the lullabies, or did he take those, too?”

Telemachus didn’t speak. Just wrapped something warm—his cloak?—around my shoulders. His voice, when it came, was low and cracked.

“She remembers you.”

I didn’t know whether to believe him. I didn’t know where I was. My teeth ached. My eyes boiled.

Telemachus was silent again. But he didn’t move. He didn’t recoil. Just sat there, the stubborn fool, letting my grief batter him like waves against rock. My head lolled. The room spun lazily, like a wheel waiting to break.

“I don’t want to be a prophet,” I mumbled. “I want to go home.”

And then, softly: “But home is full of ghosts.”

Telemachus bowed his head. His voice, when it came, was so gentle I might’ve imagined it.

“You are not alone.”

I let that settle over me like snow. Light. Cold. Almost kind.

I closed my eyes.

And something opened. Not sleep. Not dream. Not prophecy. But something older than all three. Something older than me.

The warmth beneath my cheek flickered. Became moss instead of stone. The smell of salt lifted—replaced by pine, by crushed thyme, by blood dried on laurel leaves. The ache in my limbs didn’t fade, but changed shape. My body was still sick. Still starving. But I was elsewhere now. The trees were wrong.

They bent inward, not toward light, but toward silence. Heavy silence. Alive silence. I knew it by instinct—like a deer knows the breath of the hunter. My breath trembled.

A silver fog coiled between the trunks. And then—

Footsteps. Soft. Bare. Purposeful. 

I turned, or thought I did. My limbs obeyed in this place, though they hadn’t in the last. The mist parted like it feared her, and there she was:

Artemis.

No bow, no crown. Just a woman in a tunic the color of ash before the wind takes it. Her eyes were moons—not because they glowed, but because they were ancient and watching and held no warmth. Her hair was woven with antlers, with bone, with stars that did not twinkle.

She did not speak.

She didn’t have to.

I knew her.

I hated her.

“You,” I said. Or tried to. The word stuck in my throat like dry honey. I coughed, and blood stained the grass at my feet. “You let them take us. Take me . You watched .”

Her gaze did not flinch. A god’s gaze never does.

“She prayed to you,” I hissed, my fever-dream fury rising like a tide. “She begged for mercy—for me, for her—and you let him strike her. You let him drag us away.”

Still, no answer. But in the silence, something stirred: the ache in my belly, the hollow in my chest, the name I bore like a wound.

Themistra.

“One of you cursed me,” I said. “You claimed me. And then you left.”

Artemis stepped forward. I flinched—but my body didn’t move. She crouched, knees folding like water over stone, and pressed two fingers—light as moth wings—beneath my jaw. Where my pulse still stuttered like a failing drum.

“I burn,” I whispered. “And you keep feeding the fire.”

Finally, she spoke. But not with words. Her voice was a ripple beneath my skin. A bowstring pulled taut inside my marrow. A thought I didn’t think, but heard anyway:

You are mine.

You are not meant for peace.

You are meant for flame.

Tears sprung at my eyes. But I wouldn’t cry. 

“Then give me a reason,” I begged. “If I must be fire—let me choose what I burn.”

Artemis stood. She didn’t nod. She didn’t vanish. She simply wasn't there anymore. The trees held their breath. The silence collapsed.

And I woke up.

Back on stone. Back in sweat. Back in Telemachus’s arms. He was whispering something—my name, a prayer, I couldn’t tell. His voice cracked like ice thawing.

But I was back.

And for the first time, I did not feel quite alone in my fury.

“…Themistra. Themistra. Drink. Please—just drink—” His voice dragged me back, hook and line, through the layers of dream and delirium. The scent of pine was gone. The blood-iron tang of godhood faded. And I was left with sweat-soaked linen, a trembling hand cupping the back of my head, and the rim of a cup pressed to my cracked lips.

 I coughed. Swallowed. Gagged. “Easy,” Telemachus said, breathless with relief. “It’s only water. Only water.”

 It wasn’t. It was river-cold. Moon-silver. The kind that remembered rain. Artemis had touched me. That memory clung like oil. Not a vision. Not a dream. A visitation. The kind that scars.

 “I saw her,” I croaked, the words splintering as they left me. “The huntress.” He didn’t laugh. Didn’t even blink.

 He adjusted the cup so I could take another sip, his hands steady, face taut with something between fear and awe. “I believe you.” A small, strange thing. But I held it close.

 “I hate her,” I whispered. 

“I know.” 

“She let it happen.” 

“I know.” 

“And still—” My voice broke again, weaker now, threadbare. “Still I’m hers.”

 Silence. Then: “You don’t have to forgive her.” I blinked at him, slowly. 

“I think… I think I’d rather burn than kneel.” Telemachus looked at me like I was something sacred. Or cursed. Or both.

 “You already are,” he said quietly. “But you’re not kneeling.” His hand—cool now—brushed my brow. My skin flinched from it, heat still rippling through me in waves. I was not cold. But I was shivering. 

“She said I’m not meant for peace,” I said. “I know,” he said again. A mantra now. “But maybe you can have a little anyway. For now.” I didn’t answer. Just let the hush fold over us, breath and heartbeat and the sharp taste of god-light still fading from my tongue. 

Through the haze, I thought I heard Artemis again. Not in words. In pulse. In bone. 

You asked for fire. Let me show you how to wield it . 

My eyes closed. Sleep took me then, slow and deep as the sea—but not alone. Not quite. I felt the ghost of antlers watching. The scent of thyme and blood. And somewhere, far away, a bowstring hummed.

When I woke again, the room no longer swayed. The world was not fixed—but it held still. Mostly. I breathed in, slow. The air didn’t taste like rot or brimstone. No ghost of smoke or copper. Just linen. Bread. Rain on old stones. I blinked up at the ceiling and felt…myself. Not wholly. But enough to know my name. Themistra.

 Themistra. Not prophet. Not prize. Just… girl. Just the girl who survived.

My limbs ached like I’d walked from Troy to Ithaca on my knees. But the heaviness had lessened. The ache was clean now. No more fever-rattle behind my eyes, no more gods whispering in my blood—only the memory of them, etched behind my ribs like the residue of lightning.

I turned my head. The window was cracked open, and the wind kissed my temple like an apology. Outside, I heard gulls. A cartwheel creaking. Life.

And Telemachus, of course.

Slumped in a chair beside my bed, chin tucked to his chest, cloak draped haphazardly over one shoulder, like sleep had wrestled him into stillness against his will.

His hand was still curled around the cup on the table beside me.

My chest twisted. I hated him for staying. And…appreciated him for it, too. He had not tried to fix me. He had not flinched when I called down the goddess with venom on my tongue. He hadn’t demanded piety or poetry. Only water.

I shifted—groaned—and that was enough. His eyes opened. Not with a jolt. Just the slow, wary blink of someone who never truly slept. He saw me. Sat straighter. But didn’t speak.

Neither did I. Not yet.

I stared at him. At the way his hair curled more when he was exhausted. At the faint bruise under his eye—I don’t know who gave it to him. I doubted he remembered either.

He stared back.

“I’m not dead,” I said finally. My voice was hoarse but human. Almost.

His lip twitched. “No. But I was starting to think you were trying to be.”

I winced. “Dramatic of me.”

He snorted. “Oh, incredibly.”

Silence again, but a different kind now. Like sun filtering through a stormcloud.

I pushed myself upright—slow, hissing through my teeth, but I managed it. My head didn’t spin. My stomach didn’t rebel. Victory.

Telemachus stood, coming to my side like he thought I might tip over again, but I waved him off. My hand trembled. He didn’t comment.

Instead, he said softly, “You spoke of Artemis.”

I nodded. My tongue felt thick, but I remembered.

“She came.”

Telemachus didn’t scoff. Gods bless him, he didn’t even blink.

“I believe you,” he said again. Same as before. Like a promise.

I licked my lips. “She said I asked for fire.”

“And?”

“She’ll teach me to wield it.”

A pause.

“That sounds,” he said carefully, “like something I should be worried about.”

I smiled. Just barely. “You should.”

Then, softer, “But I think I need it.”

Telemachus sat again, the distance between us now thick with unspoken things. His fingers tapped against his knee once. Twice.

“She scares you,” he said, not as a question.

“No,” I murmured. “She terrifies me.”

Another pause.

“But she saw me,” I added. “All of me. Even the parts I don’t speak aloud.”

“Gods tend to do that,” he said.

“She didn’t demand worship. Just fire.”

We were quiet for a long while.

Then he rose, as if remembering something. “Come,” he said. “If you can walk, I want to show you something.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Peace. Just a little.”
He hesitated. “Or at least...a breath of it.”

I swung my legs over the side of the bed. They felt like hollow reeds, but they held. The huntress had not given me strength. Not yet. But she had given me something else. A promise. A weight. A bowstring humming in my bones.

I took Telemachus’s hand— and he led me into the light.

“You look like you’d eat me if I offered to fetch you a fig.”

“I am not in the habit of eating boys,” I snapped. “Even foolish ones.” 

He laughed. Loudly. The sound echoed off the stone and into the quiet hollows of my ribcage, where my heart had once been soft. “Good,” he said. “Because I’m rather fond of staying whole.”

I turned away, biting down on the sharp edge of a smile. 

I expected sun. Or sky. Or some great secret, glimmering and gilt. Instead, Telemachus took me to the kitchens.

Not the perfumed halls where suitors gorged and groped, but the deeper hearth—quiet, dark, and lined with old pots whose bellies bore soot like battle scars. Smoke had painted every beam in shades of ash. And bread—warm and rising—made the air soft with comfort.

The cook glanced up, frowned at Telemachus, and then, with a long-suffering sigh, tossed him a small, dappled apple from her apron.

"Finally, she eats," the cook muttered. "And if she throws up on my floor, you clean it."

He caught the fruit one-handed, graceful as a hawk. Then turned to me.

“For your sins,” he said solemnly, placing the apple in my hand. It was cold from storage. Still blushed with dew. My fingers curled around it like they remembered Eden.

“You think I’m strong enough to chew?” I asked.

“You’re strong enough to walk,” he said. “So yes. Barely.”

I bit it. It cracked. Sweet as honey, tart as memory. I nearly wept. He watched me eat in silence, arms crossed, an almost-smile tugging at his mouth.

“Better?” he asked.

I wiped juice from my chin with the back of my hand. “I’ll allow your continued presence.”

“Praise Olympus,” he deadpanned. “Come on.”

I followed. We climbed narrow stairs. Passed faded frescoes. The walls here were old. Older than any suitor. Older than even the scent of Troy. These stones remembered gods. At the top, he pushed open a small door—rough wood, weathered iron latch. It groaned like a secret being told.

The room was simple. Round. Bare except for one thing: a shrine.

Not grand. Not gilded. Just a niche in the stone, really, carved by unsure hands. There was a small owl etched above it—uneven, crude. A bundle of olive branches tied with blue thread. A wax-spattered dish of oil. A figurine, chipped at the wing. Athena.

He lit the oil with a twist of flint.

And then—only then—did he speak.

“I used to come here every day,” he said. Voice low. Reverent. I stood beside him, letting the quiet settle like dust.

“Say what you will about the gods,” he continued, eyes fixed on the flame, “but he was hers . Always. Athena followed Odysseus like a shadow. Whispered to him. Hid him. Guided him. He should’ve died a thousand times, but he didn’t. Because of her.”

I said nothing. Because what was there to say?

“I begged her to protect him,” he said. “When I was small. When I didn’t even know what war really meant.”

He exhaled, slow. Shaky.

“I still come sometimes. When I can bear it. But…”
He shook his head. “It’s been seventeen years. And she’s said nothing. Nothing.”

His voice cracked.

“She was our goddess. And I’m afraid she left us.”

I reached out. Touched the altar with the tips of my fingers. The stone was warm. The flame flickered.

“She hasn’t left,” I said quietly, and I hadn’t realized the words were slipping from me. “She’s waiting.”

He turned to me, brows drawn. “Waiting for what?”

I didn’t know. Not really. But something stirred in me—like a whisper from the marrow. A god’s hands pulling words from my lips like a string. “For someone who sees her not as a savior,” I said, throat tightening. “but as a mirror.”

Telemachus didn’t answer. Just watched me. As if I’d peeled myself open again. As if I might speak riddles even now, in this raw light. I pressed the apple core into the bowl beside the flame. An offering, simple as breath.

“She’s listening,” I said, more firmly now. 

Maybe he didn’t believe me. But he wanted to. Telemachus turned, brow furrowed.

“You said you hate them,” he murmured. “All of them.”

I blinked. My throat went dry again—not from thirst this time, but from a strange, rattling shame. A tremor in my own honesty.

“I do,” I said. “I meant it.”

He stared at me. “Then why—?”

“That wasn’t me.”

The silence thickened. Even the flame stilled, as if the goddess in the room had paused to listen. Telemachus’s mouth parted slightly. “Then who?”

I looked at the statue of Athena. Cracked, lopsided, humbled by time.“Who do you think?” I said. “She put the words in me. Not in thought, not in will—but in voice. Like a hand, inside my ribs, playing puppet.” I stepped back, arms folding across my stomach like I could guard something sacred there. Or cursed.

“I don’t always speak as myself,” I whispered. “I know it when it happens. I feel it. My mouth moves, but the meaning runs ahead of me, dragging me behind like a prisoner to prophecy.”

His gaze softened. But it didn’t pity.

“She used you,” he said. “Just now.”

“Well,” I murmured. “She spoke . There’s a difference.”

He didn’t flinch. Not this time.

“That’s worse,” he said.

I laughed. Low. Bitter. “Isn’t it?”

The flame gave a little sigh, flickering sideways. Telemachus stepped closer—not to the altar, but to me . His presence was not heat, but gravity. The kind that could anchor.

“Tell me something only you believe,” he said. “Something no god would bother to say.”

I looked at him. Really looked. The darkened blue in his eyes, not divine—but human. Raw and storm-tempered. The kind of gaze that hadn’t been gifted by Athena, but earned through absence, through ache.

“I believe in ruin,” I said. He nodded, like he already knew. “But I also believe in choice,” I went on. “Even after everything. Even if it’s not enough to change the end.”

His eyes did not waver.

“That,” he said with a growing smile, “sounds like you.” 

Telemachus’s gaze lingered on mine, as if weighing the words still hovering between us. Then, quietly, he turned toward the low shelf beside the shrine—cluttered with stubby candle ends, a little dish of pressed olive oil, and a tarnished lamp shaped like an owl. 

He picked up a fresh wick.

“…Do you want to light something?” he asked. “For her.”

I blinked. “For Athena?”

He shook his head. “No. For Artemis.”

My mouth went dry. My shoulders tensed, instinctively.

“I…. I don’t want to be hers.” I whispered. “I’m afraid if I acknowledge her fully…”

He didn’t argue. But he held out the wick.

No pressure. No priest’s demand. Just a boy standing in the quiet, offering me flame.

“I know,” he said. “But still—if you wanted.”

I stared at the wick. At the space beside Athena’s flame, empty and waiting. An offering dish sat unused, as if no one had visited Artemis here in years. There was dust in the corners.

I hated the goddess. I feared her more. But I took the wick. Telemachus struck the flint, and together we caught the spark. The flame flickered to life in my hands—stubborn, gold as the ichor in a god’s blood—and I set it in the shallow bowl. It hissed a little as it touched the oil, then settled into a low, steady burn.

It didn’t feel like prayer. It felt like a warning.

“She watched me burn,” I said softly. “She lit the fire in my ribs, and then stood back to see what would survive the blaze.” Telemachus didn’t speak. He simply stood beside me, his arm brushing mine.

“But she also gave me teeth,” I whispered. “And fire. Maybe.” The flame crackled. I watched it a moment longer, then turned away.

“She’ll see it,” I said. “She sees everything in the dark.”

“And if she answers?” Telemachus asked, his voice gentler now, almost wry.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear her,” I said, already moving for the door. But the truth clung to me like smoke. I would always hear her.

 We left the shrine in silence. The corridor was narrow and half-lit, the torches lining it already thinning toward the kitchens and quarters. The stone beneath our feet held the day’s warmth, but the air had cooled. Not enough to chase gooseflesh to the skin—but enough to make me miss the fire. Not the one in the shrine. The one I’d carried inside me since Artemis touched me. That flame had eaten too deep to need heat.

Telemachus walked ahead, not speaking, as if afraid even the quiet between us might start to echo. I didn’t blame him. I was echoing, too. He led me through corridors that smelled of old cedar and ambition. We passed rooms draped in tapestries, stories of wars told by the victors. Rooms for sewing, for dining, for gods and men and the dull thrum of daily lies. He showed me his room too. He narrated like a boy rehearsing for war and courtship in the same breath.

Only one door he passed without a word.

“What lies there?” I asked.

He hesitated, shifting on his heel. “That’s my mother’s chamber.”

“Why not show me?”

“She… prefers privacy. Also—” he hesitated again “—for safety reasons.”

“Yours? Or hers?” I asked, voice smooth as olive oil left too long in the sun.

“She said… if your eyes held daggers, you’d have emptied your arsenal by now,” he said, laughing awkwardly. I snorted. She was right, of course. If I could have cut her down with a glance, I would have carved her name into the stone with it.

 The corridor yawned open to the east, and beyond it, Ithaca. Telemachus threw open the heavy door like a boy presenting a secret world he had no hand in shaping. Outside, the palace unfurled onto a high stone terrace that overlooked the sea—the sort of view they write songs about, though none of them have ever asked the waves what they remember. I stepped out like a prisoner blinking into the light of her own execution.

“I suppose you’ll want to see the courtyards,” he said, gesturing to the tiered gardens below. “Mother keeps them well. Better than she keeps company.”

I raised a brow but said nothing. We made our descent, stone steps winding like a question mark down the cliffside. The air shifted from the heavy hush of palace walls to the sharp scent of thyme and salt. Moonlight pressed upon my shoulders, and for the third time that day, I remembered the weight of my body—how hunger made it hollow.

He pointed to fig trees and pomegranate shrubs as though they were wonders. He spoke of olives and beeswax, the hum of trade ships, and the politics of honey. I walked in silence beside him, the soles of my feet burning in their sandals, my stomach curling tighter with each minute passed in fruitless admiration.

“I used to race goats through here,” he said suddenly, laughing at himself. “Mother hated it. Said I’d break my neck or their spirits.”

“You strike me as someone who breaks things,” I said plainly.

He blinked, the smile faltering. “I don’t mean to.”

“Doesn’t mean you didn’t.”

The moon and stars dappled his cheek, but his expression dimmed. He led me onward, toward a smaller courtyard shaded by cypress. The shadows there were deep and welcoming, and I sank onto a carved stone bench like a woman collapsing into a dream she hoped would devour her.

He stood before me a moment, uncertain. Then sat beside me.

“You never lie, do you?” he asked, with a boy’s foolish curiosity.

I turned to him then, slow as the tide rolling back to show the wreckage it had hidden.

“I cannot.” I repeated.

He swallowed hard, watching my face as though trying to decipher an omen.

Silence fell between us, thick as unripe fruit. He looked away first. He no longer asked if I disliked him. He knew. He wore it now like a cloak across his shoulders—ill-fitting, but there.

Instead, as we sat beneath the cypress' sway, his fingers twisted at the hem of his tunic like a boy pulling at thread to keep from unraveling.

“Why do you always speak as if everyone is out to get you?”

“Because they were,” I said simply. “And some still are. You ask why I wear armor? I ask why you think I should ever take it off.”

He didn’t answer, and so I went on, because silence, to me, was always an invitation.

“Shall I lay bare my throat, Prince? Offer you my neck like a lamb in a market stall? Perhaps you’d prefer I coo and curtsey—speak sweet as honey and smile while I’m caged?” 

 I laughed then. It was not kind.
“I’ve smiled before. It bought me nothing but a face full of teeth.”

“And now you are here.”

“And now I am in the belly of the beast.”

“Not all of us have teeth.” He said. 

I glanced at him sidelong. “You have yours. You just haven’t chosen what to bite.”

He spoke then, quieter than before, his voice still tinged with that stubbornness that mirrored his father's.

“I never asked for your throat, Themistra," he said, his gaze steady, not quite meeting mine, yet not avoiding it either. “I only wondered why you insist on wearing your anger, like a cloak that keeps you warm at the expense of everything else."

He leaned forward slightly, his fingers tapping lightly on the stone between them, almost as if measuring each word before it left his mouth.

"I know what it is to wear something heavy. But... wouldn’t you like to not bear so much?”

I stared at him, the words hanging between us like a fragile thread. I could feel the heat of his words—a quiet invitation to strip myself bare, to let go of the weight I’d carried for so long. But no matter how his gaze softened, no matter how his voice faltered, I wasn’t ready to trust him.

"To not bear so much?" I repeated, my voice low, more a challenge than a question. "Tell me, Telemachus, what would I be without my anger? Who would I be if I were not bound to it? You think I wear it for warmth, but it’s all I have to shield myself from the cold."

I paused, the sharpness in my tone softening, though only just.

"And if I take it off? What then? Do you promise me a world where I can be soft, where I can trust that no one will bite?"

My eyes locked with his then, searching for something—an answer, a crack, anything to make sense of his stubborn faith.

I held his gaze, waiting for some sign that he understood the weight of what I’d said. But there was only silence between us, thick and pulsing, like the air before a storm.

Then, just as I was about to speak again—perhaps to cut through the tension, perhaps to offer the next blow—he shifted, his posture softening. For a brief moment, I saw the flicker of something in his eyes. Not pity. Not arrogance. But something close to recognition.

"I don't know what it’s like to be you," he said, the words cautious, measured, as if he feared their weight. "I can't understand what you've been through, or why you cling to your anger. But I do know what it's like to carry something that feels like a curse. Something heavy... that you can't set down."

I nodded, as if to say, you know nothing . But he didn’t flinch. Instead, he reached out, offering his palm. “Let’s go back to the palace.” was all he said. 

I took his hand with the same reluctance I might accept a chain—something that could bind, something I would regret. My fingers closed around his warm skin. I studied it, as if its simple form might reveal some trick, some deeper meaning hidden beneath the surface. His gaze remained steady, but there was something in the way he watched me, as though waiting for some shift—waiting to see if this small gesture would bridge the gap between us. We both rose to our feet. 

“You think this changes things?” I asked, my voice a bit sharper than I intended. “A gesture? You think your little kindnesses will erase what I’ve seen? What I lived?”

He didn’t answer immediately, and I could see the faintest flicker of doubt cross his face. Still, he didn’t withdraw the offering. I snorted. “I don’t want your pity, Telemachus.”

Telemachus looked away. As though he’d expected the moment to break open into grace, and instead it had simply settled into silence. His fingers tightened around my hand, white-knuckled. He was still learning what to do with a woman who did not weep when he thought she would, who did not offer softness on command.

“You don’t have to keep fighting,” he said after a pause, though the words felt rehearsed, borrowed from another man’s tongue.

I turned my face to the garden, where the wind tugged the leaves like a lover asking for attention. The sun had shifted, and the shadows crawled longer across the stones, reaching toward us like old debts come calling.

“That’s the thing about war,” I said softly, voice threading between the cypress limbs. “It teaches you to strike first. Even when the only enemy left is your own shadow.”

He didn’t respond. Perhaps he knew better now than to challenge a well-versed cynic. He simply began to lead me back to the palace. 

“You said you never asked for my throat,” I murmured as we walked. “But Telemachus, your people… they are all the men who did.”

His jaw clenched at that, a flicker of shame rippling across his face like a crack through marble. And good—he should feel it. If he wished to carry his father’s name like a banner, let him know what it meant to those of us trampled beneath it.

He chewed on his inner cheek.“I’m not them,” he said.

“No,” I said coolly. “You’re still dulled at the corners. But even stone can be honed.”

Silence again. We rounded the corner into a low-ceilinged passage that smelled of thyme and old onions. The scent of hearth again. Of cooked things. Of living. The anger I had felt coursing through me slipped away at the sight of something familiar.

“You should eat,” he said, stopping just outside the doorway. It wasn’t a command. Not even a request. Just a threadbare truth, held out between us like a cloak I could choose to wear.

I nodded, slow. “...Okay.”

The room we stepped into was tucked away from the usual path of feasting. A servant’s nook, maybe, or some childhood refuge for a boy who never liked the noise of the great hall. A table sat low and plain beneath a crooked beam, and there were no chairs—just a wide bench worn smooth from use.

He arched an eyebrow. “Okay? Just like that?”

He gestured for me to sit. I did. He tilted his head, mock-considering. “It would feel more familiar.”

“I can still curse at the bread if that helps,” I offered, deadpan. He cracked a smile—a real one this time, not just a corner twitch or a politeness. “Please do. It’ll make the cheese feel more appreciated.”

He moved to the cupboard and returned with a platter—cheese, figs, a small bowl of barley porridge, and a crust of dark bread. It was not royal food. It was not even guest food. It was food for staying alive.

He sat across from me, elbows braced on his knees. His posture was all wrong for a prince. Or maybe exactly right for one raised on absence and ache. “Go on,” he said. “Before the cheese realizes no one’s singing hymns in its honor and turns to stone.”

I reached for a bit of bread, tore it in half, and dipped it into the porridge. “Is that something Ithacan cheese is known for?”

“It has a tragic streak,” he said solemnly. “Born from goats who stare into the sea too long.”

I snorted, then bit into the bread. It was coarse but good. Honest. Salt and honey. Something real. He watched me eat—not staring, but glancing. Like he was making sure I didn’t vanish between one bite and the next.

“I didn’t expect that,” he said softly.

I swallowed. “What?”

“That you’d take the wick. Light it.”

I looked down at the crumbs on the plate. “Neither did I.”

He picked up an olive, turned it over between his fingers. “You were trembling.”

“I still am.”

He nodded. “But you still did it. You were very brave.”

I leaned back a little, the wall pressing firm behind me. I swallowed. “I wasn’t brave. I was furious.”

“That counts.”

We ate a while longer in silence. The kind of silence that doesn’t press, but settles. Like ash after fire. Like something sacred, cooled and held. He reached for a fig, tore it, and offered half to me. I took it.

“My mother used to say figs were the food of prophecy,” he said absently. “But I think she just didn’t like sharing them.”

I smirked. “She’s not wrong. They taste like secrets.”

He looked at me. Not sharply. Not searching. Just seeing.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” he said. “But I want to know. What it felt like—when she spoke through you.”

I stared at the torn fig in my hand, sticky with juice. “It felt like drowning. But also like... being emptied. As if my ribs opened. And something else stepped inside.”

“Did it hurt?”

“No,” I said slowly. “Well, yes. But… not in the physical sense.”

He nodded once. A long silence passed. Then:

“Can I ask you something strange?”

“Stranger than usual?”

He gave a small huff. “If the gods do speak through people like that—through you—do you think they… feel us back? Do you think they hear us when we’re not shrines or prayers or offerings?”

I looked at him. The flicker of gold from the firelight painted his face in amber edges. His hands resting, quiet, palms up on his knees. As if he were still offering something.

“Yes,” I said, softly. “But only sometimes. Only when they want to.” 

He frowned. “That’s cruel.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “It is.”

He reached for the last bit of bread and broke it in half again. “Then tonight,” he said, “if you felt her words in you, maybe she felt your fear too.”

I blinked. My mouth opened. Then closed again.

“I don’t know what to do with that,” I admitted.

He leaned back against the opposite wall, mirroring me. “Neither do I. But we’re not done eating, so you’re stuck with me.”

The corner of my mouth twitched. “Pity.”

He smiled. “Isn’t it?”

And so we sat. The gods quiet now. The food dwindled. The oil lamp on the table guttered slightly, then held. And in that small, flickering light, I let myself feel what I hadn’t dared before:

Not just seen. But accompanied.

But the warmth was dangerous. I felt it blooming somewhere behind my ribs—no longer the divine burn of Artemis’s fire, but something smaller, quieter. More human. A steady heat, kindled by fig juice and gentleness. By the way he was looking at me, not like a prophetess or a cursed girl or even a mystery, but—

Like someone. Like someone worth sitting beside. And that was when the panic slipped in. Not loud, not sudden. But crawling. I shifted on the bench, the wood pressing hard beneath me. My mouth tasted too sweet. My skin too thin. There was air between us, but not enough. My chest felt tight. His eyes were still on me—soft, steady—and that made it worse.

“No,” I said, too sharply.

He blinked. “What?”

“No,” I said again, backing up as far as the wall would let me, like the word itself was something to stand behind. “I—I can’t. Don’t look at me like that. Don’t—don’t be like this.”

His brows knit, the gentleness on his face giving way to something more alert. “Themistra, what’s—?”

“No,” I repeated, and now the word broke, cracking at the edges. “You don’t get to make me feel safe. You don’t—” My breath hitched. “You don’t know what you’re doing. This is a game to you. It’s not—it’s not fair.”

“I’m not playing a game,” he said quietly.

“Then stop acting like this is—like I’m someone you can just sit next to and fix. ” I stood up so fast the bench scraped. “I’m not some puzzle that snaps back together just because someone’s kind. I’m not…” My voice wavered. “I’m not ready for this.”

He stood, too, slower. Arms slightly outstretched—not reaching, not touching. Just… ready.

“Okay,” he said. Just that. A single word, steady as a hand held out in the dark.

But I was already shaking my head. Fever or not, the heat in me was rising again—but this time it wasn’t holy. It was terror. It was the cold knowing in my marrow: I had let him in too far. I had let myself slip through the cracks. And now—

Now I was soft. Soft enough to bruise.

“I need—I need to go,” I said.

“You’re still recovering—”

“Exactly.” I looked at him, the edges of him blurring a little from the way my pulse pounded. “I’m not thinking clearly. I don’t want to feel anything. Or think about anything. Not now.” 

He didn’t stop me. He just stood there, as if he knew that trying to hold me would only push me faster out the door. But as I turned, stumbling toward the corridor, I heard his voice—low, sure, unshaken. “You don’t have to be okay with this, Themistra. But I’m not going anywhere. I meant what I said. You don’t have to keep fighting me.”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. The corridor met me like a wave of cold air. The scent of onions, thyme, and ash. I pressed a hand to the wall to steady myself.

And I walked.

Not toward anything. Just away. Away from the warmth. Away from the boy with kind hands and dangerous patience. Away from the terrifying possibility that I was no longer alone. My feet slapped the stone faster than I meant them to. I wasn’t running.

Not exactly. But the hall twisted around me like a tunnel in a bad dream—flickering torchlight, weaving shadows, the faint scent of smoke and thyme following me like a question I didn’t want to answer. My breath scraped at my ribs, shallow and loud. My heart thudded like it was trying to make a break for it ahead of me.

I turned one corner, then another. A servant startled at the sight of me and pressed back against the wall. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. The corridor narrowed, grew familiar. The door at the end was mine—or at least the one I’d been given. I threw it open with more force than I meant, slammed it shut behind me, and leaned hard against it, palms braced.

The room was dark. Good. 

No moonlight leaked in through the shutters. No lamp flickered. The walls didn’t ask questions. The floor didn’t look at me like I was some rare thing worth understanding.

My knees gave first. I sank to the ground, shoulders pressing hard into the wood behind me, as if I could disappear into it—become splinters and grain and vanish into the bones of the palace.

My hands shook. Not with cold. Not with fever. With something far more dangerous. I curled inward, pulling my knees up, wrapping my arms around them like a dam against the breach. My hair stuck to the back of my neck—damp with sweat, or tears, or both. I couldn’t tell anymore. I didn’t want to.

There was too much. Too much inside me, too much outside me. The air felt thick, crowded with ghosts. Every breath caught on the edge of memory.

I had let him in. Not far. But far enough. Far enough to taste sweetness and safety. Far enough to remember what it felt like to be seen—not watched, not measured, not feared. Just… seen. Held, even, with the gentleness of words and figs and quiet company.

And that was dangerous. Gods, it was dangerous. Because if I remembered what it felt like… I might start wanting it again.

And want was the first step toward ruin.

The Greeks had taken everything from me. They had burned my city to its foundations. Their looters had carted girls my age into chariots like spoils. My mother had been given like a jewel to Agamemnon. They had left my people scattered, starved, enslaved. Left me with a voice stolen by divinity and no map back to anything I’d called home. And now—

Now this Greek boy with his tired eyes and hesitant kindness and fingers that broke bread before offering it… He was doing something worse than conquering. He was making me feel safe.

I curled tighter, as if I could protect something in me before it cracked. I tried to summon the fire again—not the human warmth, but the Artemis-flame. The one that burned clean through longing. The one that left no room for softness or figs or boys with steady hands.

But it wouldn’t come.

It flickered somewhere deep, like a hearth left to embers. It hadn’t left me. Not completely. But it wasn’t enough, now, to drown the ache. Not enough to cauterize what had opened.

And gods, I hated that. Tears sprung at the corners of my eyes without permission. Silent. Hot. I didn’t sob. I didn’t wail. I just… leaked. Like a cracked amphora no one had bothered to mend.

I had been trained to be a vessel. For prophecy. For power. For pain. I had not been trained for this. For hunger.

Not for food. That, I could bear. But for touch. For trust. For something—someone—who looked at me and didn’t flinch or avert their gaze or kneel. I thought of his voice, low and steady, threading through the air like a rope he was offering me.

You don’t have to be okay with this, Themistra. But I’m not going anywhere. I covered my ears with my hands.

“No,” I said aloud, hoarse. “No, no, no.”

I didn’t ask for him to stay. And I wasn’t ready for what it meant if he did. Wasn’t ready to admit that he’d been careful. So careful. Like I was a bird with singed wings and he didn’t want to scare me back into flight. He hadn’t tried to hurt me. Not once. Just sat there, near enough to be warm, far enough not to trap. And offered me fig halves like they were peace treaties.

But peace with him would mean war with something else. With Troy. With memory. With the oath I’d made—not aloud, because oaths from me could become prophecy, but in my marrow. That I would never forget. That I would never forgive.

And yet—

Here I was. Shaking. Confused. Hollowed.

I didn’t know what to do.

What do you do when the enemy stops being a shape you can stab? When he becomes a quiet presence at your side? When he offers not war, but bread? My fingers dug into the floorboards. My breath sawed in and out. My mind raced back through every story I had ever been told—of heroism, of vengeance, of justice. Of gods who spoke through girls and girls who didn’t get to speak at all.

None of them had answers for this.

For what to do when your heart betrayed your bloodline.

Was it betrayal? Was it weakness?

Or was it something worse—

Hope.

I didn’t know what I was feeling. I didn’t want to. Because if I named it, it would grow teeth. I sat there until the sky outside began to gray. I hadn’t slept. My body still ached from fever, and my mind was sore with unraveling. But I was calmer now. Or at least number. Enough to peel myself off the floor, crawl onto the bed, and curl into its cold linen silence.

I did not dream. And in the morning, he was gone from my heart. No word. No knock. No voice trailing behind the door, asking if I’d eaten.

At first, I felt relief.

Then I felt cold.

Days passed.

He did not come. He did not sit silently in my room. 

Once, I caught a glimpse of him crossing the courtyard, head down, his steps too quick for idleness. The palace whispered that he had thrown himself into duties, taken up old tasks with new fervor. Training. Patrolling. Sparring.

Avoiding.

Good. Let him.

I told myself that, over and over, each time his absence settled around me like a draft.

Penelope noticed, of course. She was too sharp not to. She didn’t ask right away. Just watched me with those eyes that didn’t miss much, and even less when they pretended to. It was two days later, in the herb garden, that she said:

“He’s not eating.”

I didn’t look up from the mint leaves I was pretending to pluck. “Who?”

“Telemachus.”

A pause.

Then: “That doesn’t concern me.”

“No,” she said mildly. “I suppose not.”

Another silence passed between us. The kind that didn’t need to be filled to be heard.

“He’s throwing himself into every task,” she said after a moment. “Even the ones he used to loathe.”

“Maybe he’s finally growing up,” I muttered.

“Maybe,” she said. But her voice was too knowing.

I crushed a leaf between my fingers, let the scent sting my nose. Sharp. Honest. Penelope didn’t press. She never did. That was her trick—her patience. She simply planted seeds and waited for them to root.

That night, I found myself standing by the shuttered window, looking out over the empty training yard.

Waiting.

I hated it.

I hated how much space his silence took up. How his absence rang louder than most people’s presence.

He was giving me distance. Exactly what I’d demanded. And it was unbearable. I didn't want him near. But I didn’t want him gone either. And I had no words for the ache blooming between those truths. I wasn’t supposed to feel this way. I wasn’t supposed to feel at all. I was supposed to be a flame. Not a girl who missed someone.

Not a girl. A vessel. A mouthpiece. A fury in mortal skin. But Themistra the Fury had faltered. And the girl she’d buried was stirring. 

The fire in my room had been lit earlier by a servant I never saw. I hadn’t asked for it. I hadn’t asked for anything. But there it was: small, banked, flickering low in the brazier. As if someone expected me to need the warmth. I sat curled near it, legs folded beneath me, hair unbound. The silence had weight to it tonight—less like peace and more like pressure. Like the moment before a storm breaks, when the air tastes like metal and regret.

I hadn’t eaten much. A fig, half a crust of bread, water with lemon steeped in it to fool my tongue into thinking I wasn’t sick of it.

The shadows moved like they were listening. And I—like a fool, like a girl—listened for him too. There was a sound in the corridor.

Not loud. Not deliberate. Just… footsteps. Familiar weight. A tread I’d learned by accident, not by wanting.

It was him. It had to be. Telemachus didn’t stomp like the others. He walked like someone used to being ignored, or afraid to wake something sleeping.

My heart caught against my ribs like a rabbit in a snare. He was coming back. He’d sit on the floor again, close but not too close. He’d bring olives or wine or that barley porridge I’d secretly begun to like. And he’d say nothing, not at first. He’d just be there.

He was coming back.

The footsteps slowed.

Paused.

My breath held. The door creaked open. I looked up.

And it wasn’t him. 

It was Penelope.

Her silhouette was gentler than her son’s—slighter, though somehow more formidable in stillness. She didn’t step fully inside, only leaned against the threshold, the hem of her robe whispering against the stone.

“Oh,” I said, too quickly, too stupidly. “It’s— I thought—”

“You thought I was Telemachus,” she finished, voice even. Not accusing. I hated how much the words stung. I looked back at the fire. “He hasn’t come.” 

“No,” she said softly. “He hasn’t.” I didn’t respond. My throat had gone tight. Penelope entered, silent as a memory, and took the low stool beside the hearth. The firelight picked out the silver in her dark hair, made her look ancient and young all at once.

“He’s giving you space,” she said.

“I didn’t ask him to.”

“You didn’t have to.”

I was quiet for a long time. She didn’t fill the silence. She never did. Finally, I murmured, “I thought… he might come anyway.”

Penelope tilted her head, just slightly. “Would you have let him stay?”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Looked at the fire.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know anything anymore.” 

She was quiet again, then spoke with the kind of softness that cuts sharper than cruelty. 

“I know what it is to want something that feels like treason.”

My gaze snapped to her. Penelope met it without flinching. “Troy was your home. I know that. You don’t need to say it aloud.” Something ugly twisted in my chest. “Then why are you here?”

“Because I also know what it is to feel torn in two,” she said. “To carry grief in one hand and longing in the other.”

My throat burned. “He’s Greek.”

“He’s mine,” she said with a small smile, “but not the same way Odysseus is.” Penelope looked at the marriage ring on her finger wistfully, lashes fluttering her cheek. She closed her hand over the jewelry, as if she could capture the love and keep it there. “Telemachus was born into the ruins of war. You were born from them.”

I said nothing.

“I don’t want to make you choose,” Penelope said. “But I will not lie to you either. He’s hurting. Quietly. As he always does.”

“I didn’t ask him to.”

“No,” she said. “You didn’t.”

We sat in silence again. This one throbbed.

At last, I said, “I don’t know what I’m feeling.”

“That’s allowed.”

“I shouldn’t want to see him. But I do. And I shouldn’t want to tell him to stay away. But I do.”

She nodded. “That’s the rub of it.”

I let out a breath, shaking.

“I hate the Greeks,” I whispered, furrowing my eyebrows and staring hard into the fire.

Penelope’s voice was soft.“I know.”

“But not him. Not like that.”

“I know,” she said again. “It’s all right, Themistra. You don’t have to be ready. You only have to be honest.” She smiled. “And I think you know how to do that.” 

I looked at the fire until my eyes blurred. He hadn’t come.

But for a moment, I’d hoped he had.

And the ache that was left behind… was worse than any blade. The door clicked softly behind Penelope when she left. I didn’t say goodbye. I didn’t move. The fire had burned lower. The shadows in the corners breathed heavier. I could hear the crackling of the last dry wood, the soft hush of the sea beyond Ithaca’s cliffs. Even the island itself seemed to exhale.

But I couldn’t. I stayed near the hearth, curled like some child left too long beside the coals. The silence settled again. Not comforting this time—but full. Full of all the things I wasn’t saying.

I wasn’t supposed to feel like this.

He was supposed to be a Greek. A son of the enemy. A boy fed on stories of how we fell, how the gates burned, how Hector died choking blood. His name should have sickened me. His kindness should’ve felt like mockery. But he wasn’t like the others. No oil-slick tongue. No grinning hunger in his gaze. No reaching hands.

He never touched me without permission. Not even when I leaned, unthinking, toward him. 

And gods help me, I almost wanted him to.

I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes.

This wasn’t who I was. This wasn’t what I’d trained to be.

I was a symbol of Artemis. The last flame of a fallen people. Not a girl to blush over figs and shared silences.

I was fire. And I was flickering. The room felt too hot suddenly. Too tight. My skin prickled with something between sickness and shame. I moved to the window, threw the shutters wide.

The wind slapped my face clean. The sky was ink-dark, and the moon hung low and bloated—like a throat holding back weeping. Below, the olive trees trembled in their groves, branches silvering in the breeze. The sea muttered somewhere out of sight.

And I remembered Troy. 

I didn’t mean to. But the memory came. 

Like blood from a reopened wound.

The scent of smoke always meant feast or funeral in Troy. I’d learned to tell the difference by the pitch of my mother’s voice. That night, it was low. Mourning-shaped. One of the priests had died—a spear through the belly at the western wall. Not in battle. After. When the Greeks had already overrun us and looters crawled like flies through the wreckage.

I’d watched them through the crack in the temple door. My mother had pressed her hand over my mouth to keep me from crying out. “You will speak only when the goddess wills it,” she’d whispered. “Not before. Never before.”

I didn’t cry. Not even when I saw what they did to her after.

She told me later, in the dark, while her mouth bled against the edge of her sleeve, “You are flame, Themistra. You will burn so bright they cannot bear to touch you.” But I’d been touched already.

With words. With looks. With hands. Only a little. Only enough to understand what hate tasted like. Only enough to promise myself: never again. Not even kindness. Especially not kindness.

Because kindness is a doorway. 

And I was raised to bar every door.

The wind stirred my hair as I stood there, trembling. I’d sworn to my mother’s face I would not forget. I’d sworn to Artemis I would not soften. And yet.

Telemachus hadn’t asked anything of me. No vows. No flattery. Just food. Quiet. That awful barley porridge. His dumb goat cheese and his shy, almost smiles. A boy with sea-eyes who sat on the floor like he didn’t know how to be a prince.

A boy who waited until I said “okay” before offering bread. He hadn’t done anything wrong. But he was still wrong.

Wasn’t he?

I closed my eyes. I turned away from the window and slid down the wall. My knees hit stone. 

I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t. I just couldn’t breathe right.

I pressed my face into the crook of my elbow. The cloth was damp from earlier. Fever sweat, maybe. Or maybe it was just grief I’d never wrung dry.

Somewhere above me, the ceiling creaked. Wind again. Or a footstep. I didn’t look. I didn’t hope. I stayed there, shaking, half-praying the gods would return to me—burn me, break me, possess me. Make me feel righteous again.

But there was only me.

Me, and the dark, and the memory of a boy who hadn’t done anything wrong. And that was the worst part.

I could’ve hated him.

Instead, I just hated myself—for not knowing what to feel.

For not knowing if my fire had gone out…

or if it had just changed shape.

Chapter Text

The halls were quieter than usual. Not hushed like reverence, not stilled like mourning—but that dragging, heavy quiet that wraps a house when the weight of feeling becomes too great for words. The kind that made torchlight seem dimmer, footsteps seem louder, every little sound ripple with the threat of memory. I walked slowly, my fingers brushing the stone as I passed. It was warm again, this corridor—like it remembered the sun. Like it remembered me. Like it knew where I was going before I did.

And I hated that. Hated that my feet took the turns without thinking. That I remembered where his door was—though I’d never been inside it. Though I’d never meant to care. But it was the kind of memory that lodged in the bones, not the brain. The kind your body keeps for you, even when your pride wants it forgotten. 

I’d tried, gods help me. I’d stayed in my room. I’d fasted. Prayed. I’d laid flat on the stone and begged for Artemis’s voice to return to me, for the burn to take hold again, to cauterize the strange ache blooming in my ribs. But the goddess had been quiet. The gods had all been quiet.

Only one voice lingered.

I’m not going anywhere. 

I clenched my jaw. What was I doing? Going to him like this. After fleeing like a startled animal. After pushing him away, again and again. But something in me—stubborn, exhausted, afraid—had begun to rot in the silence. And something else, smaller and sadder, had begun to bloom. The need not to be seen. Not to be held. Just to be near.

It was a dangerous thing.

But I was tired of running from dangerous things. I’d been born into a ruin, raised in the ash of war and the shadow of prophecy. There was no safe place for me. Not really. Not on this island, not on any. And so, like a daughter of ruin should, I walked toward the thing I could not name.

Each step closer to his room was a betrayal—of myself, of my discipline, of everything I had vowed to my mother. I was no longer the fury of Troy and the remains of its city. I was no longer the sacred tongue of the gods bound in veils and riddles. I was a girl with a bruised heart and a sleepless body, following the memory of warmth like a moth to a dying flame.

The corridor curved—one last turn—and there it was. His door. It wasn’t ornate. Just wood and iron, sturdy and plain. A door that had been opened too many times in fury and closed too many times in exhaustion. I imagined him behind it now, sprawled across some too-small cot. He was someone who had been left behind too long and asked to grow into the shape of a man before the boy had finished falling apart.

My hand rose before I could think. I knocked. Lightly. Like I was afraid the sound would turn me to stone.

There was a pause.

Then: “Come in.”

His voice—casual, roughened with disuse, the syllables stretched like he was expecting Penelope. I stood there for half a breath longer, heart snarling in my chest, and then I pushed the door open.

His eyes met mine—and something in them stilled.

Telemachus was half-sitting, half-reclining on a stool by the window, a lyre in his lap. The posture didn’t suit him. He was too tense to play. His fingers were still curved awkwardly across the strings, like they were afraid of making music. A soldier trying to learn softness, fumbling the tune. We stared at each other, both too startled to speak. And then, without a word, I crossed the room and sat. Not on the bed. Not on the stool beside him. On the floor.

I pulled my knees to my chest and let my head rest lightly on them, watching him.

And he—

He went back to plucking.

It was almost pitiful. The strings buzzed and faltered. His fingers stumbled, started again. He was pretending I wasn’t here, or maybe pretending he was brave enough not to care that I was. But his jaw was too tight, and his shoulders too stiff.

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything.

If I opened my mouth, I feared I’d say something too real. Too close. I’d tell him about the shape of his name in my chest. About the ache I couldn’t burn away. About the stupid little memory that kept blooming against my will—how his eyes looked when he spoke of Athena, not like a warrior blessed, but like a child who had finally been told he was wanted. Of us splitting a bowl of fruit and porridge. 

And what right had I to carry that? 

What right had I to ache for something so simple?

 His fingers missed a chord again. He muttered something under his breath—not words, just a soft exhale of frustration, like the wind trying to apologize.

He wasn’t looking at me. I was grateful for that.

Because I didn’t know what I would’ve done if he had. I wasn’t sure I could’ve held myself together under the weight of being truly seen. Already I felt stretched thin—like parchment pressed too close to flame, ready to scorch. I had crossed too many thresholds tonight. One more, and I feared I would unravel.

Telemachus made a show of adjusting the lyre’s tuning peg, though it didn’t need adjusting. His hands were shaking slightly. I could see it now, from this low place on the floor. The fragile human twitch beneath his callused calm.

He didn’t know what to do with me.

I didn’t know what to do with myself.

A long silence settled between us, not heavy, but awkward, like we were both trying to sit on the same invisible thing and refusing to acknowledge it was there.

“I thought you’d want spacet,” he said finally, eyes still fixed out the window.

My throat tightened. “I did.”

A pause. Then, quieter: “But you came back.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

His head tilted. “Then why did you?”

I almost laughed. But there was nothing funny in me. Only the echo of a hundred things I couldn’t explain.

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

Another beat passed. I heard the shift of his weight, the faint creak of floorboards beneath him. I could feel him looking now—finally looking.

“It’s okay,” he said, so gently I hated him for it. “You don’t have to know.”

I didn’t answer. I was afraid I might break.

He set the lyre aside. Its absence left a ringing in the room, like something had been removed that we hadn’t realized was anchoring us.

I wrapped my arms tighter around my knees, the stone of the floor cool against my legs. My body wanted to curl inward. Make myself small. Make myself safe.

But it was too late for that, wasn’t it?

“I’m not trying to push,” he said, carefully, like he was placing stones across a river and praying they’d hold his weight. “I just… I want to understand you. Even if I can’t.”

I looked up, startled. No one had ever said that to me before. Men had wanted things from me. Words. Prophecies. Mysteries to unpeel like overripe fruit. They had wanted to use me, or prove themselves through me, or claim me like a piece of a larger game. But understand ? No. That was new.

And terrifying. “You can’t,” I said, sharper than I meant. “No one can. Not even me.” 

He frowned, but didn’t rise to meet the edge in my voice. “Then maybe I’ll just stay beside you. Until you figure it out.”

“Why?” I asked. Because I’m not worth it. Because I’m broken and cursed and bleeding god-light from every crack. Because being close to me only ends one way.

“Because I don’t want you to be alone,” he said.

I flinched. The words struck something in me I hadn’t braced for. Loneliness had always been a given. An accepted thing. Like hunger. Like cold. Something I carried like a second skin, never questioned. Never resisted. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to say thank you without surrendering, or don’t be kind to me, or please don’t stop.

So I looked down at my hands. They were shaking too.

“I’m not good at this,” he said.

I almost smiled. “Neither am I.”

His voice was a little warmer now, like the edge of a fire catching kindling. “We could be bad at it together.”

The words hung there—half-joke, half-offering. And maybe something else, hidden deep under the ashes. Something neither of us was ready to look at directly. I swallowed hard. “Is that what you want?”

“To be your friend?” he asked. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t add anything coy or clever. Just held the words between us like a cup of water offered in a drought.

“Yes,” he said. “I think I do.”

I blinked. And felt something ache inside me—not in the sharp, unbearable way I was used to. But soft. Familiar. Like the way a scab peels back and the skin beneath is no longer raw.

Friend. I could live with that.

I nodded slowly. “All right.”

And for a moment—just one—there was peace. Not the kind that lasted. Not the kind that saved. But the kind that sits gently between two people, and says: Here. Rest a while.

Telemachus smiled. And the quiet, at last, began to feel like something we shared. He shifted, sliding down from the stool until he was seated across from me on the floor. The lyre lay forgotten, its strings catching the torchlight like spider silk. He didn’t stretch his legs out or sprawl in comfort—he sat cross-legged, careful, unsure of the rules in this new quiet.

I mirrored him, still hugging my knees, but my body was softer now. Looser. My cheek rested against my forearm. We said nothing for a while. Let the hush settle between us like dust. Let the fire in the wall-brackets hiss and flicker, casting us as silhouettes on stone. Then, softly: “Do you remember it?” Telemachus asked.

I blinked. “What?”

“Troy.”

The name hit like an arrow, clean and cold. I looked away. 

“I remember…” I trailed off. What did I remember? The smoke. The way the sky turned the color of blood at dusk. My mother’s voice, hard as flint. The way prayers stuck in the throat when there were too many dead to bury.

“I remember the taste of ash,” I said finally. “It got into everything. Bread, water, even the wind. I remember being told not to cry because it wasted the body’s salt. And I remember the statues—all the gods broken. Even the ones who were supposed to protect us.”

Telemachus didn’t speak, but his gaze was steady.

“I was too young to understand what we lost,” I said. “But not too young to feel it. I knew something had been torn out of the world. Like a string in a loom snapping, and the rest of the pattern unraveling with it.”

He nodded slowly. “People still talk about Troy like it was a story. A glorious end. Heroes, fate, the will of the gods.”

I snorted. “There’s nothing glorious in burning.”

He didn’t flinch. “I know.”

And I believed him.

His fingers traced a crack in the stone between us, idle. “When I was a child, I thought war was something that happened in faraway places. My mother didn’t speak of it much. I think she didn’t want me to grow up with blood in my mouth.”

I looked at him. “And yet?”

He smiled—small and crooked. “And yet I grew up in a house full of men who only spoke in hunger. The suitors were always here. Drinking, shouting, boasting. I learned early how to disappear. How to be furniture. A thing no one looked at too closely.”

That surprised me. “You don’t seem invisible.”

“No,” he said. “Not anymore. But I was. To them, I was just a boy with too many questions and not enough power. I’d ask about my father and they’d laugh. Or lie.” 

“What did they say?”

“That he was dead. That he’d abandoned us. That he’d never existed at all—just a story my mother told to keep from unraveling.”

My chest tightened.

“She used to sit at the loom for hours,” he said. “Weaving and unweaving, weaving and unweaving. I didn’t understand, then. I thought it was just something women did. A game. Now I know it was a battle. Her way of fighting without swords.”

I glanced toward the door, as if Penelope’s quiet shadow might appear there. “She’s strong.” I admitted.

“She had to be,” he said. “She was alone. And so was I.”

Something in the way he said it—so matter-of-fact—made me ache. “You’re not alone now,” I said before I could stop myself.

His eyes met mine. Something flickered there. Not hope. Not yet. But something.

“I used to dream he’d come back,” Telemachus said, his voice quieter. “That he’d walk through the door and everything would be right again. The suitors gone. My mother smiling. Me—enough.”

I watched his hands. They were clenched now. Tension coiled under his skin like thread on a spindle.

“But that was a child’s dream,” he said. “Even if he came back, it wouldn’t undo the years. He’s still a stranger to me.”

I hesitated. Then asked, “Do you want to know him?”

Telemachus exhaled. “Yes. And no. I want to understand him. Why he left. Why he stayed away. But I think…” He looked up at me, and there was something raw in his face. “I think I’m afraid that if I know him, I won’t like what I find.”

I nodded. I understood that more than I wanted to.

“You said something when you were sick,” he said after a moment. I froze. “You kept calling for your mother.” 

My throat closed. 

“You said her name. And you asked her not to go.”

I pressed my forehead to my knees. The stone felt cooler now. Too cool.

“She was a priestess,” I said. “For Apollo, mostly. As well as Artemis. But when the city fell, it didn’t matter what gods we prayed to. None of them answered.” 

Telemachus was silent, listening.

“She… she tried to save me. She fought for as long as she could. She told me that I had to survive. That I had a purpose. ” I almost spat the word. “We were taken to Mycenae. And then I came here. I… I hope she’s still alive.”

I couldn’t finish. The fire popped. A crackle of red-orange light. It sounded like bones.

“She believed in fate,” I whispered. “Even when it broke her. She believed that everything meant something. That the gods had plans for us, sometimes.”

“And you don’t?” he asked.

I looked up. “I think the gods leave plans half-finished. I think they get distracted.” 

He smiled faintly, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I think they break things and call it prophecy.”

That startled a laugh out of me. Soft. Bitter. But real.

“She would have liked you,” I said.

He blinked. “Your mother?”

I nodded. “She liked people who asked questions.”

“I like people who answer them,” he said.

Another long pause. Then, quietly: “Would you tell me more about her?” I swallowed. That old ache rose up again, but this time it wasn’t sharp. It was slow and steady. A candle-flame kind of grief.

“She had a laugh like honey left in the sun too long. Sweet, but a little strange. She braided my hair too tight and said it was to make me strong. She knew how to read the flight of birds and the bones of fish. But she never once told me how to be happy.”

He was quiet.

I looked down. “I don’t think she knew how.”

“That’s not her fault,” Telemachus said softly.

“No,” I agreed. “It’s the world’s.”

We sat like that a long time. Two shadows on stone. No longer quite strangers. Not quite friends. And yet.

I reached for the silence between us. Felt it shift. Soften.

He reached, too.

“I meant what I said earlier,” he said. “About being your friend.”

“I know.”

He hesitated. “Do you still want that?”

I thought of the gods. The riddles. The burden of knowing too much and still never enough. I thought of the warmth in this room.

The kindness in his voice.

The way he didn’t flinch from the broken parts of me.

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

He smiled again. The kind of smile you don’t see in battle. The kind that belongs in kitchens and gardens. In laughter shared with no one else watching. Then he leaned back on his palms, stared up at the ceiling, and sighed like he hadn’t in years. “I’ve never had a friend who knew what ash tasted like,” he said. 

“And I’ve never had one who grew up among dogs.”

“Perfect match, then.”

I looked at him sideways. “I thought we were bad at this.”

“We are,” he said. “But maybe bad is better than alone.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. The silence between us deepened, but it was no longer the sharp-edged quiet of strangers. It was slower now. Heavy in a gentler way. Like the hush of a storm that’s passed, when the leaves are still trembling and the air still smells of lightning.

Neither of us moved. The fire in the hearth had dwindled to embers, red and pulsing like the last heartbeat of something once wild. Outside the shutters, the wind curled and whispered. The kind of night wind that didn’t carry omens, just time. Thick and patient and long.

“I don’t want to go back to my room,” I said, softly.

It slipped out before I meant it to, and I flinched. I wasn’t sure if I meant I was afraid to be alone, or afraid of what I might feel if I was.

Telemachus didn’t look surprised. He just nodded, like he understood.

“You can stay,” he said. I shifted. The floor was cold stone, and my hips were beginning to ache from sitting so still, but I didn’t want to move to the bed. That felt… too much. Too close to something neither of us had asked for.

But neither did he offer it. He just pulled his blanket off the cot and dropped it between us.

“You’ll freeze,” he said, by way of explanation. His voice was easy, but not careless.I took the corner he offered and folded it around my legs, grateful. It still smelled like the outside—sun and wool and the faint metallic scent of laurel oil. A strange comfort.

“You’re not going to sleep either?” I asked.

He leaned back on his elbows, watching the embers blink. “I don’t sleep much lately. Something about knowing people want to kill you makes it hard to relax.”

A rueful smile ghosted across his mouth.

“Comforting,” I murmured.

We sat like that a while, side by side but not touching, the blanket a thin bridge between us. It felt like a line drawn in the sand—neither of us crossing it, but neither stepping away either. “Do you ever feel it?” he asked, after some time.

“Feel what?”

“The moment the night changes. Like something’s shifted. Like the world’s holding its breath.”

I turned my face toward him. “Yes.”

He glanced at me, and something in his expression softened. “I thought maybe I was imagining it.”

“No,” I said. “That hour is real. The gods turn their eyes away, just for a moment. The veil between things goes thin.”

He tilted his head. “Between what things?”

“Hope and regret. Death and dreams. The dead and the not-quite-living.”

His brow furrowed. “Which are we?”

I looked back at the fire. “I don’t know. I think we’re somewhere in between.” 

Telemachus shifted again, sitting cross-legged beside me now. He reached for a piece of kindling and nudged the embers, watching sparks flicker up like fireflies. “I think I spent more years waiting than living.”

I didn’t speak. There was nothing I could offer to soften that kind of wound. Only the shared knowledge of it.

He went on, quieter now, “I’ve started to wonder if maybe I’ve been wrong. Maybe he doesn’t come back. Maybe I have to be the one to become him.”

I turned toward him, my voice barely above a whisper. “Do you want to be him?”

His gaze found mine. Steady. Wary. “I don’t know who he is.”

I nodded. That was the cruelest part, wasn’t it? Loving a shadow. Measuring yourself against a myth.

“I thought my mother was unbreakable,” I said. “Until I watched her break. And even then, some part of me believed she’d rise again.”

Telemachus was quiet.

“I think… I think when you grow up with absence, you start filling it with stories. You have to. Otherwise it devours you.”

His jaw tensed. “I used to pretend my father was a lion.”

“A lion?”

He gave a crooked smile. “My mother would tell me he could wrestle storms and talk to gods. That he could turn into mist and slip through any net. That his mind was sharper than any spear.”

I smiled too, faintly. “And?”

“And now I think maybe he was just a man who made hard choices. And ran out of time.”

Silence again. But not an empty one. The wind rose, rattling the shutters. Telemachus stood, crossed the room, and secured the latch. Then he surprised me by crouching beside the hearth, adding more kindling to the embers. He worked quietly, the light shining on his freckled tan skin. His fingers moved carefully, coaxing the flame instead of commanding it.

“I didn’t think you knew how to tend a fire,” I said.

He glanced back, amused. “Why? Because I’m a prince?”

“No,” I said. “Because you nearly murdered your lyre earlier. I assumed you had no gentleness left.”

He huffed a laugh, returned to the blanket, and sat a little closer than before. Not touching. But near enough that I could feel his warmth.

“I know how to do a few things,” he said. “Fire’s one. Fishing. Saddlework. Picking locks.”

“Locks?”

He grinned. “When your house is full of men who steal everything not nailed down, you learn to be resourceful.”

I let out a soft, genuine laugh. It startled me.

“You’re strange,” I said.

“I get that a lot.”

We lapsed into silence again, but this time it felt companionable. The kind you could lean against. I stretched my legs, tucked one under the other, and let my shoulders slope toward his without quite resting there.

“I used to try and speak to Artemis,” I murmured. “Not as a prophetess. Just… as a girl. I’d sit in the garden and ask her to make me like the moon. Distant. Bright. Untouched.”

He didn’t laugh. Just listened. “She never answered,” I said. “But sometimes the wind would shift. Or a fox would stop and stare at me. And I’d pretend that was enough.”

“I think it was,” he said.

I blinked. “Why?”

“Because you’re here. And I think you’ve kept more of yourself than most would have.” That silenced me.

He leaned back again, arms braced behind him. “I asked Athena once, in a dream, why she abandoned us.”

“Did she answer?”

“Not with words. She just looked at me. Like I was a map she’d drawn badly, and now regretted.”

That pulled a laugh from me, rough and real. “Gods,” I muttered. “They love their regrets.”

“Do you ever wish you could forget them?” he asked.

“The gods?”

“No. The memories.”

I hesitated. My mother’s hand on my forehead. The blood on the temple steps. The sound of waves crashing as the city burned behind me.

“I used to,” I admitted. “But forgetting costs more than remembering.”

He nodded. “Sometimes I wish I remembered more. My father’s voice. My mother when she used to laugh.”

I glanced at him. “She laughed?”

“Once,” he said. “When I was little, she’d chase me through the olive groves. Pretend she couldn’t catch me. Then scoop me up when I wasn’t looking.”

“That sounds… almost soft.”

He smiled. “It was. Before the waiting hardened her.”

We both stared into the fire again. The logs had caught now, their light painting flickers across his face. In that shifting glow, he looked older. And younger. Like the boy he must have been and the man he was still becoming were sitting side by side.

“Do you think we’ll survive this?” I asked.

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I don’t know.”

“I’m tired of surviving.”

“I know,” he said.

Then, after a moment: “But I’m not tired of you. ”

I looked at him. And for a breath, I thought he might reach for me. Might cup the side of my face, or brush his hand against mine. But he didn’t. He just let the words sit there. Open. Honest.

I turned back to the fire. “I don’t think I know how to be close to people.”

“Then stay close to me,” he said. “Just for tonight.”

That broke something in me.

Not a sharp break.

But the kind that lets something new begin. I didn’t move. But I let myself lean. Just a little. Let my shoulder brush his. Let our warmth blend.

And he didn’t pull away.

The vigil stretched on. The fire sighed and murmured. Somewhere in the rafters, a bird rustled in its sleep. We didn’t speak again, not for a long while. But the silence was no longer something to fear. When my eyes finally slipped shut, I wasn’t alone.

And I wasn’t afraid.

 The first thing I noticed was the light. 

It crept through the shutters in faint gold slats, threading across the floor like spilled honey. Soft, patient. The kind of light that waited to be noticed. The kind that warmed your skin before your thoughts had caught up.

I shifted slightly and immediately felt the brush of wool.

The blanket. The stone beneath. And beside me—

Telemachus.

Still here. Still asleep.

My breath caught in my throat, quiet and sharp. His head was tilted toward me, chin tucked down, a line between his brows even in rest. A corner of his lip tugged downwards towards the mole that rested on his chin. One arm slung loosely over his stomach, the other resting beside mine—so close that if I twitched, we’d touch.

I didn’t move. I didn’t dare.

Because moving would mean remembering. And remembering meant confronting the fact that I had stayed. That I had fallen asleep not in solitude or vigil or sacrifice—but beside him. No prayers. No riddles. Just warmth and silence. And now I was awake, and I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I swallowed. Shifted my gaze to the fire—burned low, just ashes now, no more sparks to distract me. Just the two of us. The room. The morning creeping in like a secret.

Gods.

I had fallen asleep beside him.

It felt dangerous. Reckless. Stupid. 

And—worse than all that—it felt nice.

That was the part I didn’t know how to live with.

A soft noise from the corridor made my spine go rigid. Footsteps. Light. Quick. Familiar. Telemachus stirred beside me. His lips parted, a slow inhale. He blinked once. Twice.

Then turned his head—and saw me.

And froze.

It was, for a moment, comical. He stared like he wasn’t sure if I was real or some hallucination conjured by sleep and embers. His hair was slightly rumpled, his tunic wrinkled from the stone, and his eyes still soft with sleep. I gave him a look that I hoped translated to: Don’t say anything loud or meaningful. I am already dying.

He, to his credit, nodded slightly. Barely a breath. His throat bobbed as he swallowed.

But then the door creaked open.

And the moment shattered.

“Good morning, Telemachus—”

Melantho.

Of course it was her. Carrying a tray, eyes sharp with judgment before she’d even seen what there was to judge.

She entered mid-sentence, not yet looking up—and then she did.

And stopped dead in the doorway.

Her gaze went straight to me, crouched like a guilty animal beside Telemachus, wrapped in a half-shared blanket, my legs folded neatly beneath me, hands resting in my lap like I could will myself into appearing less… intimate.

A silence bloomed, fast and mortifying.

Melantho’s eyes narrowed. Not in confusion—no, she understood exactly what this looked like. She just didn’t like it.

Her lips parted like she was about to say something cutting.

I beat her to it.

“Good morning,” I said, with the sweetest smile I could muster. The kind of smile that begged her not to speak. She ignored it entirely.

“My lady,” she said flatly. “I didn’t know you were in the habit of keeping the prince company through the night.”

“It was unplanned,” I said smoothly, trying not to sound defensive. “We were speaking. The fire burned low. The hours got away from us.”

“Mm.” A noncommittal sound. She didn’t believe me. Or worse—she did, and still didn’t approve. She stepped farther into the room, placing the tray down on the small table beside the bed with a force just shy of passive-aggressive.

Telemachus, to his eternal shame or credit, just rubbed the sleep from his eyes and said, “Melantho. You’re up early.”

“I serve your mother,” she said pointedly.

A pause.

“And I serve you,” she added, after a moment too long.

Telemachus raised a brow. “And how lucky I am.” 

I glanced at him, surprised. His tone was dry, but not sharp. Light, even. Like he was used to dancing this particular dance. Melantho turned her gaze to him now, and I saw something pass between them—an old thread pulled taut. “I suppose your mother would want to know you had company,” she said, eyes flicking to me again.

“I suppose she might,” he replied. “But she also once told me that you have a… particular liking for me. So I’m not sure your report would be entirely impartial.”

The air snapped.

Melantho’s cheeks went hot, but not with embarrassment—with fury. She didn’t deny it. Just stood there, seething in silence, mouth a thin line. Then, with a little nod, she turned on her heel.

“Breakfast is on the table,” she said curtly. “I’ll let the lady decide whether she’s staying long enough to share it.”

The door clicked shut behind her.

And I exhaled for the first time in what felt like an hour.

Telemachus was quiet for a long moment. Then:

“Well. That went poorly.”

I gave him a look. “You think?”

He scrubbed a hand over his face, groaning. “Gods. I should have said something else. I just—she’s always so pointed. And she has this way of looking at me like I’m something she found under a wine jug.”

“She likes you,” I said, adjusting the blanket around my shoulders.

“Apparently.”

I raised a brow. “Did you know?”

“Not at first,” he admitted. “I thought she was just… intense. But then my mother mentioned it in that off-hand, twist-the-knife sort of way she’s perfected.”

I snorted. “Penelope would know.”

“Oh, my mother always knows.”

We sat there for a moment, both still awkwardly cocooned in the blanket, the tray of breakfast steaming between us—bread, olives, soft cheese, two figs, and a bit of fish, still warm from the fire downstairs.

Neither of us moved.

“Are we… going to talk about this?” He asked.

I tilted my head. “About Melantho?”

“No.” He gave me a pointed look. “About us.”

I sobered. Then nodded. I unwrapped myself from the blanket, set it aside, and crossed my legs again. I folded my hands in my lap, because they wanted to fidget. My heartbeat was too loud in my chest.

Telemachus turned toward me slightly.

“I meant what I said last night,” he began. “That I’m not tired of you.”

I looked down. “And I meant it when I said I don’t know how to be close to people.”

“I know.”

“But I want to try,” I said, the words barely audible. “Slowly.”

His eyes searched mine. “Slow is good.”

Then, a small smile. “I’m a terrible lyre player. That’s already something you know. You’re not running yet.”

I laughed under my breath.

“Not yet,” I echoed. He reached for the tray and broke off a piece of bread, handing half to me without ceremony. I took it, still a little shell-shocked by how ordinary this all felt.

“How long do you think Melantho will hold this against me?” I asked.

“Oh, eternity. At least.”

“Fantastic.”

“But she’ll get over it,” he added. “She has pride. But she also has good sense. And you weren’t wrong—last night was… unplanned.”

“But not unwanted,” I said.

His gaze flicked to mine. And stayed there.

“No,” he said softly. “Not unwanted.”

We sat in that warmth a while longer. Quiet, simple. Fig between my fingers. His knee brushing mine by accident, or maybe not. And the sun rising over Ithaca like it didn’t care what we were becoming—just that we were, in fact, becoming something.

Something delicate. Something real.

Chapter Text

 Eventually, the moment had to end. He looked at me like he wanted to say more—but didn’t. I looked back like I might let him. 

I stood first. My knees ached from sitting too long on cold stone, and I stretched without grace, brushing crumbs from my skirt as if that could distract from how raw I felt. He stood with me, slower, more hesitant.

“I should go,” I said, and it felt like a strange parallel to the words I had once said to him. He nodded, but didn’t step back. Neither did I. For a breath, we just stood there, toe to toe, like a spell hadn’t quite broken yet. The fire was long dead, the tray half-eaten, the room filled with sunlight, and still—there was a hush between us.

“I’ll walk you back,” he offered.

I shifted uncomfortably. Even though I had said I was ready to try and be friends, it just…

“Themistra,” Telemachus sighed with a smile, and it caught me off guard. “Please. I want to.”

His voice was steady. Like he meant it. Like it wasn’t about chivalry or caution or anyone seeing us—it was just… care. And I didn’t know what to do with that.

I sighed, closing my eyes. “Alright,” I murmured.

So we stepped out into the corridor together. Not too close, not too far. Our shoulders didn’t touch. Our hands didn’t graze. But something still felt tethered between us, invisible and real.

The halls were brighter now. Fully morning. Sunlight sliced across the stone in bold slants, gilding every worn crack and seam with warmth. The palace was beginning to stir—quiet footsteps in distant halls, a voice murmuring from the kitchens, the low clatter of pottery somewhere below.

We walked in silence for a few paces.

Then he said, “I thought you might leave sometime in the night. I’m surprised you didn’t.”

I didn’t look at him. “I did too.”

“And now?”

I exhaled slowly. “Now I’m just… walking. One step at a time.”

He nodded. “I can understand that.”

I gave him a sidelong glance. “Can you?”

A small smile flickered at his mouth. The dimples on his cheeks stretched. “Ithaca doesn’t leave much room for grand certainty. I’ve spent most of my life not knowing where I stood. In this house. In this story.”

There was a quiet in his voice when he said it—not pitying, not dramatic. 

“Is that why you play the lyre?” I asked softly. “To feel like something’s yours?”

He gave me a look, surprised. “Yes. That’s exactly it.”

He chuckled. “Although I’m not very good.”

A small smile made its way onto my face, and we kept walking. The stone was cool beneath our feet, despite the growing sun.

A servant passed us at a distance—too far to see clearly, but close enough to notice. Their head turned, briefly. I felt the weight of it. I kept my eyes forward. Telemachus didn’t break stride. “They’ll talk.”

“Of course they will.”

“You don’t mind?”

“I mind,” I said. “But I’ve lived through worse than gossip.”

He chuckled, low and wry. “Good. Because this house is fueled by it.”

We reached the hallway that led to my room, tucked in the quieter wing of the palace. The stone here was darker, cooler. A bit of shadow clung to the corners, as if night hadn’t fully released its grip.

I paused outside my door. He did too. It would have been so easy to say nothing. To slip inside. To end the moment gently and let the silence carry the meaning.

But I turned to face him instead.

“Thank you,” I said. “For last night. For this morning.”

His brow furrowed slightly. “You don’t have to thank me.”

“I know.” I hesitated, finding the words. “But I wanted to.”

This seemed to surprise him. He looked at me a moment longer, then inclined his head. Another grin made his dimples appear. “Then you’re welcome.”

For a breath, we stood there. Neither reaching. Neither retreating.

“Sleep,” he said at last, voice quiet. “You look like you haven’t in weeks.”

“Gee, thanks.” I snorted, too tired to say much else. But he still laughed. 

“You’re welcome,” he replied with a smile.

And then—finally—I turned and slipped into my room. The door closed softly behind me.

The air inside was still. A little stale. My bed looked untouched. My things were all as I left them, scattered in that way you forget you live—like you expect not to return.

I stood there for a moment, swaying slightly. My shoulders slumped. My hands hung uselessly at my sides. The moment with him clung to me like smoke in my hair.

And now it was just me. Again.

The fire was gone. The words had all been said.

And I was tired. So unbelievably tired. I didn’t even bother undressing. I didn’t light a lamp. I didn’t even pull the cover back. I crossed the room on aching legs and dropped into the bed like something undone. My body curled in on itself without thought. My cheek pressed against the pillow. And sleep came—this time not like falling, but like being taken . Like a tide. Like a breath I’d been holding finally let go. The linen was cool. Familiar.

And sleep came—not like a vision, not like a prophecy, but like a kindness.

No riddles. No gods. No voices.

Just the quiet that follows something real. And the faint warmth of the sun, still lingering on my skin.

When I woke again, I felt... wrong.

Not in the way that warned of prophecy—no pressure behind the eyes, no heat gathering in the chest. But in the small, human ways. My mouth was dry. My skin felt stretched and strange. My hair clung to the back of my neck in knots slick with old sweat. Something under my fingernails itched. The inside of me felt coated, clotted, stale.

I shifted slowly, and the sheet peeled away from me like second skin.

Gods. I was disgusting.

I had slept in my clothes—clothes that still smelled faintly of smoke and wine and stone floors. My knees were sore from the night before. My back ached from the walk back. My body felt like something leftover, something picked over and abandoned. And my scalp—

I ran a hand through my hair and immediately regretted it. Tangles. Oil. A bit of dried something I didn’t want to identify. Dirt, maybe. Blood, maybe. Time, certainly.

The warmth I had woken to before was gone. Or maybe I’d imagined it. Either way, what remained was the sour closeness of my own skin and the way it clung to me like a punishment.

I sat up, pressing my palms to my face and watched the moonlight stretch across the floor. 

I needed water. Not to drink—to drown. To scrub myself clean until the feeling of being a body again felt bearable.

The baths.

The palace had them—I remembered overhearing it, half-said in passing by some suitor, probably in mockery. But I hadn’t asked. Hadn’t dared. Hadn’t needed to. I wasn’t here to be cared for. I was here to serve some divine whim I no longer understood.

But I couldn’t stay like this. Not another hour.

I forced my legs under me, wincing. My body creaked like a house after storm. I pulled on my sandals, the straps stiff, and pushed open the door.

The hallway was quieter now, the hush of mid-morning. Sunlight slanted warmly across the stone. Somewhere, someone was singing low to themselves—perhaps in the kitchens. I followed the sound of life without thinking, half-hoping someone would stop me. Half-hoping I wouldn’t find what I was looking for.

Instead, I found Eurycleia.

She was walking from the storeroom with a basket of linen tucked in the crook of her arm, her pace steady, sure-footed even with age. Her braid was tight against her scalp. Her face was lined, but not with weakness—with years. With remembering.

She saw me before I could speak and halted mid-step, her eyes softening.

“Child,” she said, her voice low, surprised but not unkind. “You’re up finally.”

I nodded, swallowing. “I... I’m sorry to bother. I just—”

Her head tilted. “Tell me what you need.”

“I—” I stopped. I couldn’t meet her eyes. “I want to go to the baths.”

Something flickered through her face, but she only nodded. “Of course. Come.”

She didn’t ask why I hadn’t gone before. She didn’t ask why I looked like I hadn’t bathed properly in weeks. She didn’t ask anything. Just turned and started down the hall, and I followed her like a shadow.

The path twisted through quieter wings of the palace, past tall doors and shuttered windows. The air grew cooler. I noticed the faint scent of herbs—lavender, crushed rosemary, sweetbay—and then, beneath it, the breath of steam.

When she opened the door, the warmth spilled out at once.

The bathing room was stone, but kind. Moonlight filtered in through a high window, gilding the air. A small fire crackled gently in the corner hearth, keeping the chamber warm. The main bath was recessed, its edges smooth and pale. Steam curled up from the surface, delicate as incense smoke. There were shelves carved into the walls, lined with neat cloths, brushes, little jars of oil, bars of pale, perfumed soap. A stack of towels sat folded beside a small basin, and a comb of bone glinted in a tray.

It was too much.

Too soft. Too generous. Too far from what I remembered.

My feet stayed just over the threshold, suddenly unsure.

Eurycleia turned to me and smiled—quiet, knowing. She set the basket of linens aside and gestured gently toward the wall. “You can take your time. There’s rosemary in the water. It’ll help with soreness.”

I didn’t move.

She watched me for a long moment. Then walked to the shelf and began setting out things I might need—simple, practiced movements. Soap, oil, cloth. She turned back and gestured to a bench beside the tub.

“You sit,” she said firmly. “You don’t need to do everything at once. I’ll help.”

I blinked. “You don’t have to—”

But she was already moving toward me, slow and warm as a hearth. “I’ve tended girls older than you, and girls younger than you. You’re not the first to forget how to care for yourself.”

My throat went tight.

I couldn’t speak.

And in the end, I didn’t have it in me to refuse her.

I sat on the bench and let her untangle my hair first, her fingers careful, the comb steady. She hummed something under her breath—old, foreign. I didn’t ask the words. I didn’t need to. It was a mother’s sound.

She handed me a cloth. I washed my arms. My legs. Slowly. Like learning how to be in a body again. She showed me how to scrub gently with salt. How to rinse with warm water from the basin. She poured it for me without comment when my hands shook.

When I finally lowered myself into the bath, the heat burned. But I didn’t move away. I let it sting. Let it seep. Eurycleia sat beside the edge, brushing the damp hair from my brow.

“I can wash it for you,” she said.

I nodded slowly. She did. And I closed my eyes. 

Not because I was tired. But because I couldn’t bear how kind it felt to be clean.

After a little while the bathwater had begun to cool. I could feel it clinging to my skin now instead of seeping in, the steam no longer rising in steady curls but sinking, soft and slow, into the stone.

Eurycleia dipped the cloth one last time, wrung it out, and pressed it gently to the back of my neck. She was quiet, save for the light clink of the basin and the occasional soft creak of her joints as she moved.

Then, as she poured a final rinse of water through my hair, she said—almost too casually:

“Melantho looked like she’d bitten a lemon this morning.”

I froze.

She smiled faintly. “Walked into the prince’s room, found you curled up beside him like a cat in the sun.”

Heat rushed up the back of my neck, faster than the bath ever could.

“It wasn’t like that,” I said quickly, sitting straighter. “We—there was no curling . There was sitting. And talking. And then sleep. Not on purpose.”

“Of course not,” she said, dabbing gently at my temple. “Forgive an old woman for her jokes. But it was the talk of the servants’ wing for a few hours. You don’t need to explain to me. I wiped his bottom when he was two. If he wants to spend time with someone who doesn’t throw olives at his head, I count that as growth.” 

I sank a little lower in the water. “I didn’t mean for it to be anything. I didn’t even mean to stay. I just… didn’t want to leave.”

Eurycleia’s brow lifted slightly, but not in judgment. “Do you plan to pursue him?”

I looked down at the surface of the water. My reflection was warped—hair clinging in ropes to my shoulders, collarbones visible again after weeks of poor sleep and no appetite. The person staring back didn’t look anything like the one I had been before Troy. Or during. Or even in the days just after. She looked… softer, somehow. Still jagged and scared but… real. I let the quiet stretch. Let the thought sit.

“No,” I said, and meant it. “He’s my friend.”

I tasted the word like wine left too long in the sun. Bitter, sweet, sharp. But it was real. 

“My first real friend,” I added, quieter now. “In a long time.” Eurycleia didn’t respond right away. She simply leaned back, wiping her hands dry on a linen cloth, and regarded me with an expression I couldn’t quite read.

Approval. Maybe. Or pride. Or simply understanding.

“Well,” she said, her voice gentler than before, “then I’d say that’s something worth keeping warm.”

My throat felt tight, but not with tears. Just something unfamiliar. Something new blooming in the hollowed places.

Friend. The word rang clearer than any prophecy. Truer than any vision. And for once, the gods could keep their riddles. This—I understood.

When the bath was done and the last drops of water had left my skin, Eurycleia handed me a towel and a bundle of fresh linens. I expected to be left alone—surely, this was the part where dignity returned, where one was given space to tie their own belt, find their own shape again.

But she lingered.

“I’ll help you dress,” she said, gently. “If that’s alright.”

I should’ve refused. Should’ve said something curt and clipped, the kind of line that kept people at a distance. But the truth was, I was tired. Not the kind of tired sleep could fix—bone-tired. Spirit-tired. My limbs still felt strange under me, like borrowed things, and her presence wasn’t unwelcome.

So I just nodded.

The chiton she brought was short—mid-thigh—and dyed a deep, pomegranate red. I stared at it as she unfolded it.

“Too bold?” she asked.

I shook my head, brushing my fingers over the cloth. “No. I like it.”

“Red suits you,” she said, with a small, satisfied smile.

“It always has,” I murmured. “It’s been my favorite since I was small.”

She helped me pull it over my shoulders and pin it at the collarbone with a golden clasp. The fabric was light, easy, far less ceremonial than the robes I had worn in Mycenae—and somehow, that made it feel more powerful. I caught a glimpse of myself in the polished bronze near the wall. Bare legs, straight shoulders, lips still pink from heat. I looked like a girl who could bite.

Eurycleia placed a hand on my back and nodded, approving. “Now,” she said, voice warm, “you’re ready.”

“For what?”

She hesitated.

“Follow me,” she said at last, with a touch of guilt behind the smile.

And because she had helped me, because she had not asked questions, because she had not flinched at my silences—I did. We walked through the side corridors, her steps sure and mine echoing just slightly behind. The air was cool against my wet hair. I didn’t ask where we were going. I didn’t need to. If I had learned anything in this house, it was that kindness always had direction. And I owed her enough to be led.

As we crossed into the broader hallways, the sounds of the palace grew louder—conversation, footsteps, the occasional shout from the courtyard. The smell of olives and smoke drifted from the kitchen wing. Life had returned to the stone.

And so had the suitors.

We passed three of them in the north corridor—half-dressed, wine-sour, reeking of entitlement and cheap oil. One of them— with teeth too white and eyes too far apart—let out a long whistle when he saw me.

“By the gods,” he drawled. “Is it festival day already? Look at her. Doll in a red ribbon.”

I didn’t stop. Didn’t speak.

But as he passed—too close, too smug—I stuck out my foot and hooked it clean behind his ankle.

He hit the ground hard.

Eurycleia gasped once, softly, like a laugh caught in a cough. The suitor groaned, cursing, but I was already walking on. I didn’t even look back. Eurycleia caught up beside me, eyes dancing. “Secure in yourself, aren’t you?”

I didn’t answer.

But my chin stayed high.

When we reached the upper passage, my stomach turned slightly. I recognized the turn. The light. The shape of the doorway ahead.

Penelope’s chamber.

Of course.

I paused, narrowing my eyes, the warmth from the bath already fading from my skin. My arms crossed over my chest of their own accord. Eurycleia stepped beside me, brushing her knuckles against mine in that soft motherly way she so often moved. 

“I’m sorry,” she said in a low whisper. “She asked me this morning to find you, when you were ready.”

I looked at her—really looked—and saw the apology in her eyes. Not guilt. Just regret. The kind of regret that comes from playing messenger to two women who don’t speak the same language. I took a breath. Then another. The scent of rosemary still clung faintly to my arms.

“I’ll go,” I said finally. “For you.” 

She smiled, soft with relief.

“Don’t let her fancy way of talking confuse you.” she said as she knocked on the door. “She likes to seem clever, but she respects people who don’t let her lead the dance.”

I gave her a look. “You could’ve told me that earlier.”

She winked. “Wouldn’t have believed me.”

The door creaked open.

And Penelope waited.

The room smelled of beeswax and pomegranates. Not the fruit itself—just the memory of it. The seed-slick scent of something once ripe, long since reduced to perfume. A brazier burned low in the corner, and Penelope sat beside it, her robe gathered neatly at her knees, a piece of pale embroidery pooled in her lap like an afterthought. The needle between her fingers glinted in the shifting light.

She looked up as I entered, and the faintest smile touched her mouth.

“You look well,” she said, setting the needle aside. “Clean. Composed.”

“I’m not used to either,” I replied honestly.

“And yet you wear both beautifully.” She gestured to a chair across from her. “Sit. Please.”

I considered standing out of spite, but my legs were still tired from the bath and the walk and the weight of Eurycleia’s kindness. So I sat, spine straight, arms crossed lightly over my lap.

Penelope studied me for a beat too long. Not as a queen weighs a guest—but as a mother appraises a stormcloud: with patience, suspicion, and the quiet hope it will pass without flooding the house.

“I asked for you because I wanted to speak plainly,” she said at last. “No riddles. No diplomacy.”

I tilted my head. “That’s new from you.”

The smile returned—faint, edged. “Don’t mistake stillness for deceit. I’ve had to master many forms of silence.”

“And I’ve had mine forced on me,” I said, soft but steady.

Penelope inclined her head. Not apology. Acknowledgment.

“I’m glad to see you well-kept,” she said after a pause. “Ithaca is a hard place to feel whole in. I know that. But it can be a place of return. Of choosing the self, not just surviving it.”

I said nothing.

“I want you to find yourself here,” she continued. “Not forget yourself.”

“I don’t intend to.”

That earned a real nod. She appreciated precision. I could tell. Then her tone shifted, light as gauze. “Melantho came to me this morning, fuming.”

Of course she did. Lately, it seemed the palace was aflame with gossip sent straight from her lips. 

“She said she found you in Telemachus’s room. Asleep. On the floor.” Her brow lifted with the kind of amusement that could slice if you weren’t careful. “She was… colorful in her recounting.”

I didn’t flinch.

“I wasn’t exactly sleeping,” I said. “I was just—there. It was quiet. That was all.”

Penelope’s smile deepened, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I wasn’t accusing you of anything.”

“No,” I said, dry. “But Melantho was.”

“Melantho accuses the moon of flirting with the sea. I don’t put much stock in her moods.”

I almost smiled at that.

Then, too tired for subtlety, I added, “Telemachus was right. You do know everything.”

The sarcasm slipped out before I could smooth it, but I didn’t regret it.

Penelope’s eyes glittered. “I like to keep informed. This palace runs on whispers. I prefer mine early.”

I leaned back in the chair, my arms looser now. “Is that why you summoned me? To discuss rumors?”

She shook her head. “No. I summoned you because I’ve lived long enough to know that when a girl walks into a prince’s room and chooses the floor instead of his bed, she’s not there for seduction. She’s there for safety.”

That hit harder than I meant it to. My throat went tight. Penelope’s gaze softened—just slightly. “I think you’re braver than you believe, Themistra. And I think you may have more allies here than you know.”

“I don’t need allies,” I said, but the words felt hollow. Even to me. “No,” she said. “But maybe you need a friend.”

I blinked.

Not at the offer—but at the echo.

Friend.

It was different from Penelope’s mouth. Measured. Offered with the understanding that it might be refused. I looked away. Toward the window, where light stretched itself thin across the sill like a cat at rest.

“I have one already,” I murmured. Penelope said nothing. But when I looked back, she was still smiling. Not smug. Not superior. Just… knowing. Then, softly, she said, “I envy you.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

She looked down at the embroidery in her lap, running her fingers absently over a line of golden thread. “You know what you are. You walk through these halls like a creature the gods dreamed up and set loose—sharp, certain, untamed. Even when you doubt yourself, it’s a full-bodied kind of doubt. You live in it.”

I didn’t know what to say. Flattery? A trap? Something in between? She didn’t wait for my reply.

“I’ve been playing roles since I was younger than you,” she said. “Daughter. Bride. Queen. Widow—though that one never stuck. Not officially. And always I had to perform a kind of grief I wasn’t allowed to feel fully, because the island needed hope, and my son needed strength.”

I stared at her. “So you wore a mask.”

Penelope’s eyes flicked up. “I became the mask. That’s what happens when you wear one too long.”

The silence between us thickened. The fire cracked once. I could smell rosemary from the braid in my hair. The room felt heavier now—not with tension, but with the slow collapse of something neither of us had the energy to keep holding up.

She looked toward the window, her voice quieter when she spoke again. “They say he’s dead. That the sea took him. That he chose to disappear. But I don’t believe that. I never have.” 

I realized she meant Odysseus, but I didn’t interrupt.

Penelope went on, not quite looking at me. “I’ve loved him since I was fifteen. Not the myth—him. The man who spoke softly when others shouted. Who asked questions no one thought to ask. Who made me laugh, even when I was trying not to. That love didn’t fade when he left. It just changed shape.”

Her hands smoothed the fabric in her lap. “And they expect me to mourn a man whose voice I still hear. Whose steps I still half-turn for when the wind shifts. Do you know how that feels?”

I said nothing. My throat had gone tight. Angry as I was at the Greek, the love that Penelope held for him… it was clear to see. 

She met my gaze at last. “I don’t want to believe he’s dead. Because if he is, then part of me is, too. And I’ve fought too long, too hard, to survive what others wrote off as waiting.”

“You still love him,” I said.

Her answer was immediate. “Yes. Without apology.”

And gods help me, I believed her.

I breathed in slowly, feeling the shape of her words settle into the room.

“What is it you want from me?” I asked.

She tilted her head. “What makes you think I want anything?”

“Because everyone does.”

Penelope smiled again, but this time it wasn’t edged. “Then maybe I just want you not to lose yourself here. Ithaca is small. It reshapes things. People. It dulls blades. I’ve seen it happen.”

I sat back in my chair. “Don’t worry. The gods didn’t make me for peace.”

“I know,” she said. “But still. There are worse things than finding pieces of yourself in quiet places.”

I didn’t answer. And after a long moment, she rose. Crossed the room. Took a small jar from the shelf and pressed it into my hands—pomegranate oil, by the scent.

“For your hair,” she said. “Eurycleia tended to it today, I’m guessing?”

“She insisted.”

“She always does.”

I stood slowly, fingers tight around the jar. “You surprise me,” I said. Penelope raised an eyebrow. “Because I care?”

“Because you’re kind,” I said. “But only when no one’s watching.”

To my surprise, she didn’t deny it.

“Kindness is dangerous,” she said. “Especially when it’s mistaken for weakness.”

And with that, she turned away and went back to her embroidery. I left the room with the scent of pomegranate still clinging to my palms and the echo of her words thrumming in my ribs.

Kindness is dangerous.

But I’d learned that long before Ithaca.

I left her chambers with the weight of that phrase still pressing against my ribs—like something wrapped in silk but hiding a blade. My feet felt heavier than before, though the hall was the same. Still warm from the hearth, still echoing faintly with footsteps and whispered laughter from some distant corridor. The palace breathed around me, old and watchful.

I didn’t want to speak to anyone else. Not Melantho. Not Eurycleia. Not Telemachus, gods know I’d talked enough about him today already. I needed stillness—real stillness, the kind where I could let my spine uncurl and not feel like I owed anything to anyone.

I reached my door and shut it behind me, leaning against it for a moment. Just breathing. 

I stripped off the red chiton with slow hands. Folded it. Set it carefully at the foot of the bed. Pulled over a sleek sleeping tunic. Then I crawled up onto the mattress—rough linens, a thin wool coverlet, the faint smell of dust and sea salt—and let myself collapse.

The stone wall beside the bed was cool against my temple. I let my arm drape across the edge, fingers grazing the floor, as if I could feel the island’s pulse through the stone itself.

I closed my eyes. There was no firelight. No riddles pressing at the edge of my thoughts. No divine whisper winding itself through my throat like ivy. Just the slow, steady drum of my heartbeat. Just the memory of Penelope’s voice, quiet and full of things I hadn’t expected.

I think you may have more allies here than you know.

I wasn’t ready to believe her. But I wasn’t ready to dismiss her either. Sleep came slowly. I felt it arrive in pieces—the unraveling of thought, the softening of breath. My body surrendered long before my mind did. I tried not to think of anything. Not Telemachus’s knee brushing mine. Not the strange peace of sitting on his floor. Not the way I’d smiled when Eurycleia teased me, or the way Penelope had pressed that jar into my hands like she was passing down something sacred.

I didn’t want to feel those things. And yet—

My last waking thought was simple.

I think I’m changing.

Then darkness pulled me under, gradually and quietly. 

I didn’t dream. No riddles unraveled behind my eyes. No visions. No flickering scenes of temples or fire or bone. Just a long, thick silence—sleep that felt less like drifting and more like sinking to the bottom of something cool and clean.

When I stirred, it was slow. The kind of waking that takes time, as if each muscle is remembering its own name. My mouth was dry. My limbs, sore in that oddly pleasant way that comes only after true rest. The pillow still smelled faintly of oil and salt, and the breeze slipping through the shutter cracked open at the window brought with it the scent of figs and hearthsmoke.

And then—three quiet knocks.

I jolted upright.

Not from fear. From disbelief.

No one had ever knocked on my door before. Not once. Not here. Not in Mycenae. Not in the years between. I was used to intrusions. To footsteps that didn’t pause. To voices that called out and expected me to rise. The sound of knuckles on wood—measured, respectful—was foreign.

I rose, heart thudding, and padded barefoot across the stone.

When I opened the door, it was Telemachus.

Of course it was.

He stood there, not leaning or fidgeting, not performing for me. Just… standing. Tunic freshly belted, hair still damp at the ends like he’d bathed early. He looked wide awake in the way I rarely was—like sunlight had finally decided to inhabit a person.

“Good morning,” he said simply, and those dimples appeared like a ray of light.

I blinked at him. “You knocked.”

He nodded, a little sheepish. “Didn’t want to barge in. Figured you might throw something.”

“I might have.”

A small smile twitched at his mouth.

We stood there for a beat—him in the hall, me in the doorway, the space between us thick with something new and difficult to name. Not romance. Not awkwardness. Just… consideration. Like he saw me clearly enough to wait.

“Did you sleep?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Dreams?”

“No.”

“Good,” he said, and meant it. “I was going to get breakfast. Thought I’d ask.”

I blinked again. “Ask?”

Another nod. “Only if you want to. No obligations. I just thought—after the other night—it might be nice to share something ordinary again.”

I stared at him. The invitation wasn’t grand. It wasn’t wrapped in metaphor or command. It was as simple and quiet as his knock had been.

And for once, I didn’t overthink.

“I’ll come.”

He stepped back to let me close the door and gather myself, and I did—fastening the red chiton again with quick fingers, combing through my sleep-mussed hair with a carved ivory comb Penelope had put over the jar of oil. I didn’t try to look a certain way. Just to be clean. Present. Awake. When I stepped back out into the corridor, he offered no comment on my appearance. Only held out a hand—not to take mine, just to gesture forward.

“Come on,” he said with a smile. “The figs are sweeter in the morning.” And together, we walked toward the scent of honey and bread and the hush of a palace still waking up.

Chapter Text

The dining hall was already alive with noise when we stepped inside—more alive than any morning had a right to be. The scent of honeyed bread, olive oil, and roasting meat rolled out to meet us like it had teeth.

And at the center of it all: the suitors. A mess of them.

They lounged across benches and furs, some with wine cups already sloshing dangerously in their hands, laughing too loud for a breakfast that had barely begun. One of the younger ones was throwing grapes into another’s open mouth. Another was trying to coax a servant girl to sit on his lap, giggling as she dodged him with practiced grace.

Across the table, Eurymachus raised a cup and bellowed, “Morning, Ithaca’s Prince! You’ve brought our little oracle to join the feast, have you?”

I felt my eyes narrow before I even registered the motion.

Telemachus didn’t respond. He just walked calmly to the table, sat, and began spooning honey onto a slice of bread like he was trying to butter his way out of an assassination.

I followed, sitting across from him.

There was a fig on my plate. I focused on it.

A suitor to my left belched.

A servant girl yelped, and another giggled in that high, nervous way that wasn’t really amusement—it was survival. One of the men near the head of the table was singing something obscene under his breath. I looked up.

Telemachus looked up.

Our eyes met.

And in perfect, silent, sleepy unison, we shared a look that said:

It’s too early in the morning for this.

We didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. He stood, bread still in one hand. I mirrored him, fig and all. Without a word, we walked away from the table.

Behind us, the room continued its descent into chaos—more laughter, a splash of wine, the beginnings of an argument over who'd eaten the last olive.

“I forgot what mornings were like with them,” Telemachus muttered as we crossed the courtyard.

“They start drunk and end louder,” I replied. “A miracle none of them have burned the place down.”

He chuckled under his breath. “Don’t tempt them.”

We passed through a narrow archway, then followed a little path that curved up a gentle slope behind the stables. The grass here was soft and trampled in places, a favorite resting spot for goats during the hotter hours. No one was there now—just the two of us and the sea breeze that had finally remembered how to be cool.

We reached the crest of the hill and sat.

The palace was visible behind us, its tiled roof gleaming in the light. Below, the olive trees rustled like gossiping old women, and the faint sound of the suitors' revelry carried just far enough to be ignorable.

Telemachus took another bite of his bread. I bit into my fig.

We chewed.

Silence.

Then—simultaneously:

“What was that?” he asked.

“What just happened?” I asked. We paused. Laughed. Ate a little more. “Why are they always like that?” I groaned eventually.

“I don’t know. I think it’s fear. Or boredom. Or some special blend of entitlement and fermented grapes.”

“Good blend,” I said. “Terrible aftertaste.”

He glanced over at me. “I’m sorry Eurymachus brought you here.” I shrugged. “You didn’t know what he planned.”

“No. But still.” He kicked at a pebble, sending it tumbling downhill. “It’s not the welcome you deserved.”

I looked out toward the sea. “I don’t know what I deserved. But this... at least the figs are good.”

He smiled.

The breeze tugged at his tunic, at the ends of my hair. The grass pressed cool against my bare legs. The sun had risen higher now, but it wasn’t cruel yet. And in that quiet, strange morning—after stolen glances, spilled wine, and one perfectly-timed escape—I realized something: There was no great purpose to this moment. No prophecy hiding behind it. No lesson. It was just the two of us. Bread. Figs. A hill. My friend.

And that, somehow, was enough.

We didn’t speak for a few minutes.

Just the breeze and the bees and the gentle rustle of leaves overhead, as if the olive trees were gossiping about us too. I pulled my legs in, crossed them, and looked sideways at him. He’d finished his bread and was now idly tossing olive pits down the hill like offerings to the soil.

“They asked me about it, you know,” I said.

He blinked. “About what?”

“Falling asleep. In your room.”

Telemachus groaned. “Of course they did.”

“Eurycleia was subtle. A joke here. A smile there. But Penelope—” I gave a snort. “She said Melantho came to her fuming. ”

“Gods,” he muttered, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “That girl moves faster than Hermes when she has something to complain about.”

“She must’ve sprinted straight from the hall. Probably shoved a servant out of the way to get there first.”

He looked at me, wry. “What did you say?”

“That I wasn’t exactly sleeping. That I was just… there. Because it was quiet. And I needed that.”

He was quiet a moment.

Then he said, “It was quiet.”

I nodded. “The good kind.”

“I’m sorry they made you answer for it.”

I shrugged, plucking a blade of grass and twisting it between my fingers. “It wasn’t the worst interrogation I’ve ever faced. Penelope didn’t even break out the ceremonial dagger.”

That made him laugh, low and soft.

“Still,” he said. “I hate that it’s something you had to explain. It wasn’t anyone’s business.”

“I think Melantho made it everyone’s business. She probably illustrated it on a scroll.”

“She’s always had an eye for drama.”

“I could tell,” I muttered.

We sat again in silence. A more thoughtful one now.

“She said… when a girl walks into a prince’s room and chooses the floor instead of his bed, she’s not there for seduction. She’s there for safety.” I murmured. 

Telemachus tilted his head. “Melantho?”

“No.”

Telemachus glanced over. “My mother?”

I nodded, twirling the stem of the fig between my fingers. His mouth opened a little, then closed. I saw the understanding pass across his face like a shadow moving across sunlit stone.

“She said that?” he asked quietly.

I nodded again, watching the way a nearby leaf danced in the breeze. “She didn’t accuse me of anything. Just… saw me. Too clearly, maybe.”

He was silent for a beat, but then he said, “She would know. About safety. About pretending to be something else just to keep breathing.”

I glanced sideways at him.

“Does that bother you?” I asked. “That I took the floor?”

“No,” he said without hesitation. “What bothers me is that you’ve lived a life where the floor felt safer than the person in the room.”

That stopped me. Completely.

Because he didn’t say it for pity. He didn’t say it to win something from me. He just… said it.

And gods help me, I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had done that.

“I’ve slept in temples,” I murmured. “In ruins. On ships that stank of fish and rust. The floor didn’t scare me.”

He tilted his head. “But trusting someone does.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to.

We sat with that truth, side by side, with our breakfast more than half-eaten and the whole world beginning to soften at the edges.

Telemachus didn’t press me. He just let me be. And in that quiet, unspoken understanding, something in me breathed out for the first time in years.

 “I don’t like people knowing things about me,” I said eventually, after watching an ant struggle heroically up the side of his boot. Telemachus leaned back on his elbows. “Oh, trust me, I know the feeling. Last week one of the suitors cornered me just to ask if I always cry during thunderstorms.”

My brow lifted. “Do you?”

“That’s not the point,” he muttered, then grinned. “I was six. And the roof was leaking directly onto my bed.”

I let out a reluctant laugh.

“I just mean,” he said, stretching his legs out, “this place loves to talk. It gnaws on details. You give it one scrap of truth and by sunset it’s grown teeth and a tragic backstory.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

“Oh, it is.” He sighed theatrically. “Every time I so much as sneeze, Melantho writes a new verse about my fragile temperament.”

“She doesn’t write poetry.”

“No, but I bet she thinks she does.”

I snorted and shook my head.

He nudged my foot with his. “See? You can smile. It doesn’t summon a curse or lightning bolt or divine horse.”

“Not yet,” I said. “Give it a minute.”

We were quiet again, but this time it was less fragile. More like a held breath before a joke. I didn’t feel like I was balancing on a cliff’s edge anymore. Just… perched. Temporary. But safe.

“You know,” he said, shifting the grass with his fingers, “you’re not exactly what I expected, either.”

I looked at him sidelong. “What did you expect?”

He gave a sheepish shrug. “More… I don’t know. Doom? Flames? Prophecies shouted in tongues while your eyes rolled back?”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“Oh, no. The silent glaring is much worse. I like a slow death.”

I elbowed him lightly, and he fake-wheezed, clutching his side. “She strikes! The Oracle has violence in her!”

“I only trip people I don’t like,” I said primly.

“Then I’ll keep an eye on my ankles.”

We sat like that for a while. Teasing. Teetering. Not flirting, exactly. Just orbiting one another in this strange, soft space. 

“I can’t decide if I like being your friend,” I murmured, plucking a blade of grass and tying it into a knot.

Telemachus gasped like I’d stabbed him. “Only now you’re deciding?”

“I like to be thorough,” I said, tilting my head. “Gather evidence. Build a case.”

“And?”

I held up the little knotted grass, a mock-offering. “Inconclusive.”

He took it solemnly and tucked it behind his ear like a laurel crown. “I’ll treasure this insult forever.”

I gave him a look. “Don’t make me regret it.”

“You already do.”

“Fair.”

He flopped back into the grass again, hands behind his head, squinting up at the sky. “You ever think about leaving?” he asked.

I blinked. “What, Ithaca?”

“Yeah. Just… walking off the cliff and not stopping.”

“Sounds dramatic.”

“Thank you. I am seventeen.”

I smiled without meaning to. “Do you want to leave?”

He didn’t answer right away. His eyes followed something overhead—probably a gull or a god in a lazy disguise—and then he said, “Sometimes. It’s hard to be the son of a myth. Harder to live in the ruins of him.”

I turned toward him slowly. “You think he’s a ruin?”

Telemachus hesitated. “I think I’ve only ever known the echo. And you can’t inherit an echo. It’s just noise.”

I lay back beside him, arms folded beneath my head, the sky a heavy blue above us. “I never knew mine either. My father.”

He glanced over, brows faintly lifted.

“My mother was a priestess. High in the temples. Beautiful, terrifying. She never spoke his name. Said he was a soldier. Or a sailor. Or a mistake.” I exhaled through my nose. “Though between you and me, I think that was her way of not lying.”

Telemachus didn’t interrupt.

“I’ve always wondered,” I went on. “The timing. The silences. And Hera’s curse. She doesn’t waste her wrath on fishermen.”

There was a pause.

“You think it was Zeus?” he asked quietly.

“I suspect it was Zeus,” I said. “Which is worse.”

He waited.

“I mean, what do you do with that?” I asked, turning my face away. “You’re born, and the sky might belong to you a little—but it never asks if you want it. You get silence. And storms. And curses flung at you by the queen of Olympus herself because her husband couldn’t keep his godhood to himself.”

Telemachus looked like he wanted to say something. But I didn’t let him.

“My mother never needed him.” I said with finality. And I knew it was true. Lysandra— she was a force. “She had the gods. She had me. And she had fury . Most days, that was enough.”

He was quiet. And I was grateful for it. The wind kicked up, warm and salt-laced. Somewhere below, a pot shattered, followed by drunken cheering. The suitors, probably arm-wrestling over who got to ruin breakfast.

“I think this is the first time in a while I’ve had a conversation that didn’t feel like a performance,” I said, not looking at him.

“I’m not that interesting to perform for,” he said, trying for lightness.

“You’re kind,” I admitted, because it needed to be said. “And you try.”

He went still beside me. I turned to look at him, and found him already watching me. “I think,” he said, “you’re the only person who sees me as something other than a disappointment waiting to happen.”

“That’s a lot of pressure,” I said quietly.

“Good thing you’re strong,” he replied, just as soft.

And there it was again— that . That thread pulled taut between us. Not romantic, not yet. Not even sweet. Just true . Something unnameable and terribly human.

I sat up. The moment felt too big, and I was still learning how not to run.

Telemachus didn’t stop me. He just sat up too, brushing grass from his sleeve. “Should we head back before the suitors try to light the tapestries on fire again?”

“Will they?”

“They’ve done it before.”

“Gods.” I made a disgusted expression.

The dimples on his cheeks stretched. “Exactly.”

We stood. And for a second, we just stood there—two strange souls blinking in the sunlight, still figuring out how to be real.

He gestured toward the path. “Walk with me?”

I nodded. And this time, it wasn’t hesitation. It was choice. We reached the courtyard steps, the stone warm beneath our feet, and I thought he might turn back toward the hall.

Instead, he paused. “Want to see the beach?”

I blinked. “Now?”

He nodded, hopeful. “It’s just past the olive grove. Hardly anyone goes there this early. It’s quiet. And the tide’s been low this week—you can walk straight out onto the flats if you’re careful.”

The idea of it—sand and salt and something open—hit like a breeze through my ribs. After the closeness of the palace, the scent of oil and sweat and whispers trailing me like hounds, it sounded like another world.

I opened my mouth to say yes—

And then the shout came.

“Prince! Prince Telemachus!”

A herald, breathless, trotting up the path with a wax tablet clutched to his chest like it might flee.

Telemachus winced.

The herald didn’t even slow. “Your mother requests your presence in the upper hall. The elders are gathering early—there’s been word from the westward watch. Something about raiders—maybe Cretans. They need decisions before the feast tonight.”

The sigh Telemachus let out was half-hearted at best. “Of course they do.”

He turned to me, looking sheepish. “I’m sorry. I really did want to take you there.”

“I believe you,” I said.

And I did. He studied me, maybe expecting me to sulk or sigh or disappear back into my shadows like I always had before. But I didn’t. 

“You can go rest in your room, if you’d rather,” he said gently. “You’ve had a long morning already. And yesterday.”

“I’ve had a long week ,” I corrected.

He gave a guilty little laugh.

I shook my head. “No more rooms. No more lying on stone floors pretending I’m whole. I’ll come with you.”

His brows lifted. “To council?”

“To whatever this is. I’m not saying I’ll be useful. But I’m not hiding anymore.”

He grinned, soft and startled. “Gods,” he said. “You sound like my mother.”

“Oh no,” I deadpanned. “Is it contagious?”

“Just don’t get interested in weaving shrouds.”

We walked on, side by side again, toward the heavy wooden doors that led to Ithaca’s waiting halls and all the nonsense inside them. He didn’t offer me his arm. I didn’t need it. But his shoulder brushed mine once as we turned the corner, and neither of us stepped away.

The beach would wait. But this—this feeling of motion, of choice —this was something I could carry with me for a long time. 

Even into the rooms I once feared.

The doors groaned open, spilling sunlight into the hall like gold spilled from a cracked amphora. Dust swirled in the beams, catching in the air like tiny omens, and I felt my shoulders tense as we crossed the threshold. Telemachus walked just ahead of me—shoulders drawn back, jaw set in that way he wore when he remembered he was supposed to be a prince. But when I stepped in beside him, I saw the flicker of something else in his eyes: relief. Or maybe resolve.

Penelope looked up from where she stood near the council table, already surrounded by parchment, wine-dark maps, and men shifting with the weight of bad news. Her gaze swept over us—and something softened.

“I see you brought her,” she said, to her son, but looking at me.

“I didn’t bring her,” he said. “She chose to come.”

That, strangely, made her smile.

We took our seats—Telemachus beside her, and I across the table, beside a weather-worn man with a scar running across his scalp. The moment I sat, I felt all eyes on me, like I was a sword no one had seen drawn yet.

The herald stepped forward, nodding to the queen.

“My lady. My lords. The runner has come from the eastern straits—direct from Nauplia. He bears news from the mainland.”

The hall hushed. At that name, something in my stomach turned. Nauplia was too close to Mycenae.

Penelope folded her hands. “What kind of news?”

The herald cleared his throat. “Not from the Cretans, as we feared. It’s worse.”

A silence bloomed, dark and still.

The herald went on. “Clytemnestra—Queen of Mycenae—has fled. Reports differ. But what they agree on is this: she killed her husband, Agamemnon. Slaughtered him in his bath. His blood still stained the marble when the servants found him.”

A ripple passed through the gathered elders, like wind through tall grass.

“She murdered him?” Penelope whispered. 

The herald nodded grimly. “With her own hands. They say her lover aided her—a man called Aegisthus. But when the people rose against them, she vanished. The kingdom is in chaos. Her son, Orestes, and daughter, Elektra, have taken refuge in Argos and are calling for her capture. They send word to all surrounding lands and islands: be vigilant. Shelter no traitor. Watch every harbor. For justice must be served.”

Penelope sank into her chair, visibly trying to absorb the weight of the message. “This changes things.”

Telemachus was still, jaw tight. Penelope’s brow furrowed as if she were trying to look beyond the walls of the hall, to see into the wide world where queens were bleeding their kings and children wished to raise swords against their mothers.

And me—

I could barely breathe. My voice, when it came, was not prophetic or divine. Just small. Just mine.

“Did the messenger say anything else?” I asked.

The herald turned to me, blinking.

“About the palace?” I clarified. “About the others still in Mycenae?”

“Only what I’ve said,” he replied, puzzled. “Why?”

“My mother,” I said. “She was still there. A priestess… once. Then a concubine. She served under Clytemnestra’s reign. Her name is Lysanndra.”

The hall shifted again. This time not with outrage—but with a kind of wary discomfort. They didn’t know what to do with a girl asking after a woman like that.

The herald shook his head. “No such name was given. I’m sorry.”

Of course it wasn’t. Names like Lysandra’s didn’t make it onto royal scrolls. Her story would be told in hushes, if at all. Or buried beneath rubble. I nodded, slowly, and folded my hands in my lap before they could shake.

I could feel Telemachus glance at me—feel the shape of his concern—but I didn’t meet his gaze. Penelope’s expression shifted again—concern now mingling with something more private. Memory, perhaps.

“I knew Clytemnestra,” she said softly. “Before. When we were girls, before our fathers bartered us to kings. She had fire even then. But not cruelty. That came later.”

“She was cruel enough to murder her husband,” an elder muttered.

Penelope didn’t flinch. “So was he cruel enough to sacrifice their daughter.” The room tensed, but no one corrected her. The old blood still stained their legends.

“Still,” she continued, voice steady, “if she is loose on the seas, and her enemies seek her… we must decide what we would do if she comes to Ithaca.”

“She won’t,” Telemachus said. “We’re too small. There’s nothing here for her.”

But I wasn’t so sure. Sometimes the desperate came precisely to the places that offered nothing. Because nothing could be hidden there. Nothing could be taken again. I said nothing, though. Not yet.

The council resumed its deliberations—on patrols and messages, on which ships to watch. But my mind had drifted already, out to the wide blue sea and the crumbling marble halls of Mycenae, where my mother might still be, alive or not, waiting or buried.

I sat straighter in my chair and listened. Not just to the words. But to the way the room had shifted when I spoke. The way I was being counted, now, as something more than prophecy. As someone who could ask. As someone who might act.

I could feel the weight of their glances even after the moment had passed—those sitting near me, wondering what business a girl like me had speaking at all, let alone on matters of royalty and murder. But I didn’t care. I had spoken. I would again.

Penelope’s voice pulled me back into the room. “Then it’s agreed,” she said, cool and clear as a mountain spring. “We remain watchful. But we do not raise alarm unless alarm comes to us.”

The others nodded. Some reluctantly. Some because it was easier than arguing with her. One of the older men—a thin-lipped councilor with a name I hadn’t caught—grumbled something about traitors hiding in the robes of priestesses. Penelope gave him a look that could’ve split stone.

And Telemachus? He rose slowly, scraping his chair back with calm finality.

“If there’s nothing more,” he said, “Themistra and I have had enough smoke and salt for one morning.”

Penelope tilted her head slightly, curious. “You’ve something else planned?”

He nodded. “A walk. We meant to see the beach before duty found us.”

She didn’t stop us. Just gave a small, almost imperceptible nod, her hands folding once more over her embroidery like she hadn’t just presided over a council where justice and blood had shared the same sentence. I walked ahead of Telemachus and stepped out the doors, waiting as yet another herald pulled him aside. 

He stepped into the corridor. The doors groaned shut behind us like old lungs exhaling secrets, and for a heartbeat, neither of us moved. It was quieter out here—cooler too, though the sun outside still painted the marble in molten streaks. A stillness had settled over the hall, one that felt like aftermath.

Telemachus exhaled slowly. “Gods,” he said. “What a morning.”

“That’s one word for it.”

We walked for a moment without speaking, our footsteps echoing off stone. Somewhere deeper in the palace, I could hear the muffled clatter of servants beginning the noon chores, the shifting weight of another day. But here, it was just us, the hall, and a silence that didn’t demand anything of me.

“I was going to take you to the beach,” he said after a moment, his voice a touch sheepish. “Thought you might like the quiet.”

I raised a brow. “I was promised crashing waves and isolation. Don’t tell me you’re about to disappoint me.”

“Sadly,” he said, with mock gravity, “my princely duties have mounted a coup. The herald caught me just as we left the meeting—he’s got a list long enough to wrap twice around the palace and still slap me in the face.”

I snorted. “And you’re going to do them?”

“Alas,” he said, pressing a dramatic hand to his chest. “Such is the burden of royalty. Come back tomorrow, maybe I’ll have abdicated.”

I smiled, and something in his shoulders eased. “Then I’ll come with you,” I said. “Your island calls.”

His brow arched. “You sure?”

I nodded. “Yes. You said it’d be boring. I could use boring.”

A beat passed. Then he grinned—wry, surprised, pleased. “Well then. Come on, Oracle. Let’s go count barrels.”

The grin lingered, a brief spark lighting his eyes that felt like a secret shared in a crowded room. We turned, steps echoing again, and as we made our way back through the palace halls, the weight of the morning slowly untangled between us.

Outside, the breeze teased stray curls from my hair and carried the salt scent of the sea—a promise, at last, of something beyond scrolls, whispers, and shadows. Telemachus moved with a lighter step now, the day’s gravity momentarily forgotten.

“You know,” he said, “I never thought I’d want company counting barrels.”

I laughed, the sound light but genuine. “Well, if it’s with you, I’m willing to reconsider a lot of things.”

His eyes caught mine, a flicker of something unspoken—hope, maybe, or just the relief of finding someone who doesn’t expect you to carry the whole world on your shoulders.

We paused where the palace walls opened to the sky, the path curling down toward the beach like a ribbon unwinding from the earth.

“Tomorrow,” he said softly, “we’ll see the waves.”

And for once, it felt like the future wasn’t just another weight to bear. I nodded. “Tomorrow.”

The sea waited. And so did we.

Chapter Text

 The storerooms smelled like dust and olives. And sweat. And the faint, underlying tang of something that had once been a fish and was now, arguably, still haunting the premises.

“I take it back,” I said, sidestepping a crate of amphorae stacked precariously like the gods had taken up sculpture. “This isn’t boring. This is tragic.”

Telemachus squinted at the scroll he’d unrolled, clearly trying to decipher the inventory with the air of a man debating whether he was reading a casual paper or a list of deaths. “We were supposed to have six jars of oil. We have five and a very slippery patch on the floor.”

I gave him a mock salute. “I’ve located the missing one.”

“You’re hired,” he said. “First task: interrogate the fish ghosts.”

We spent the next hour sorting supplies, arguing over whether the cracked amphora should be repaired or repurposed, and discovering that one of the grain sacks had been cleverly replaced with a sack of river pebbles. Telemachus stared at it like he could will it into becoming edible.

“Suitors,” he muttered darkly. “They think if they don’t see the famine, it doesn’t exist.”

“Pebbles do have a certain crunch,” I offered.

He laughed, quick and surprised, and I liked that. I liked that I could make him laugh.

By the time we reached the armory, my braid had come loose and his scroll was smudged with oil. There was something strangely satisfying about it—this quiet labor, these shared glances and muttered frustrations over misplaced spears and moldy grain. It felt like living, not surviving. And I had done so much surviving lately.

“You know,” Telemachus said as we finally left the echoing dark of the storerooms, “you’re better at this than half the men on the council.”

“I’m flattered.”

“I’m serious. You ask questions. You think. You don’t panic when you find something absurd, like a sword tucked inside a basket of bread.”

I fixed my gaze on the mole beside his lips before I looked up at him. “I take it that’s happened?”

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Twice.”

We paused at a small fountain tucked in the shade of the courtyard. He bent to splash water on his face, and I watched the way the light caught on his cheekbones, how it softened the furrow of his brow.

“You were good in there,” he said, straightening. “In the hall.”

I blinked. “With the council?”

He nodded. “You spoke like someone who had the right to.”

“I wasn’t sure I did.”

“You did,” he said firmly, drying his hands on his tunic. “And you do.”

For a moment, I didn’t answer. The wind lifted, brushing the warmth from my skin. Then I said, “That’s the first time someone’s told me that. Without trying to use me.”

He looked at me for a long moment. “I’m not trying to use you.”

“I know.”

And I did. 

I cleared my throat. “So? What next?”

Telemachus let out a hearty groan and unrolled the stained scroll. A soft giggle escaped my lips and I took a seat on the edge of the fountain. He sat beside me as he read out our next task. 

“Looks like we have to help some of the servant women pick the fruits.”

I nodded, toying at the end of my braid. “That’s not horrible.” I mused. Telemachus turned slowly with an expression that could only be described as utter dread. He let himself fall sideways and lay on the edge of the fountain. 

“Oh Themistra… sweet… innocent Themistra…” he whispered to himself, and I couldn’t help the laughter that escaped me. 

“Oh gods,” I replied, my cheeks beginning to ache from smiling. “What is it?”

“One of the elderly servant women,” he began, letting an arm flop over the side of the fountain, “is absolutely horrid .” 

I blinked. “Horrid?”

“She once threw a peach pit at my head because I sneezed too close to her orchard basket.”

“She sounds like a hero.”

“She is a menace,” he declared, sitting up dramatically. “I think her name is Hegestra. Or maybe Herostrata. Either way, she could assassinate a man with a pear if she really set her mind to it.”

I giggled again, shaking my head. “I’m sure we’ll survive.”

“That makes one of us.”

He rolled the scroll back up with a mournful sigh and stood. I followed him through the colonnade and into the back gardens, where the sun hung golden and slanting through the olive branches. The scent of warm figs and sun-drenched soil wrapped around us like a story we hadn’t read the ending of.

The orchard bloomed around a stone wall in lazy spirals of vines and tangled green, where trees hunched with the weight of their own ripeness. I could hear the rustling chatter of servant women, the clink of baskets being set down, and the soft thuds of fruit dropping into linen.

When they saw us, a few of the younger girls smiled. A few of the older ones simply snorted and kept plucking.

Telemachus grabbed a woven basket and handed me one with an elaborate little bow that he exaggerated deeply. “For you, my lady. So that when you are inevitably attacked by rogue peaches, you may shield yourself.”

“You’re in rare form today.”

“Possibly delirious.”

We stepped beneath the branches, and the air changed—cooler, hushed by the canopy. Bees hummed between us like tiny arrows, and I reached up toward a low-hanging plum just as he made a small noise of triumph.

“Found one,” he announced. “Perfectly ripe. Look at this.”

I turned. He held a fig in his hand, split slightly from its own sweetness. He pressed a finger into it, and juice bled down his knuckle.

He licked it off with a delighted hum. “Gods. Better than the palace cooks.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Disgusting. Now it’s finger-fig.”

“I could share,” he said, wiggling his sticky finger in my direction. I shrieked—properly shrieked—and ducked behind a branch.

“Telemachus, don’t you dare—”

“Oh, now I must.”

He lunged. I dodged. A half-split pear flew from a nearby basket and smacked his arm with a soft thunk .

“ Traitor! ” he gasped at the fruit.

“Justice,” I declared.

“You’ve declared war.”

A moment later, a small, wrinkled plum hit the back of my neck and burst.

“ You monster! ” I shrieked. He was already laughing—boyish and unrestrained—as I retaliated with a handful of grapes. They sailed over the fig tree like a holy volley. He dodged one and caught another in his mouth with theatrical flair.

“You’re deranged,” I said through a laugh.

“You started it!”

“You licked a perfectly good fruit!”

“ Historically justified!”

Another fig missed him by inches. The baskets were long forgotten. We were ducking behind trees, throwing whatever wouldn’t bruise too badly, breathless with laughter, until—

“AHEM.”

It wasn’t thunder. It was worse.

An elderly woman stood at the edge of the row, hands on hips, one brow lifted so high it might’ve joined the gods. She had a smear of dirt on one cheek and the commanding aura of someone who’d spent her life terrifying goats and kitchen boys alike.

Hegestra. (Or maybe Herostrata.)

She stood with her arms folded, a half-filled basket cradled like a sleeping child, her eyes narrowed into withering, grandmotherly knives.

I swallowed. Telemachus straightened slowly, a plum leaf stuck to his collar. Her voice was gravel and judgment. “If you two are quite done turning Dionysus’s bounty into a tavern brawl…”

Telemachus cleared his throat. “We were just—”

“You were wasting fruit, bruising it, and acting like unsupervised sheep.” She sniffed. “I expect better from royalty.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Telemachus said instantly, straightening like he’d just remembered he was a prince and not a feral child covered in plum innards.

“You’ll help pick twice as much now,” she declared, turning on her heel. “And no more shrieking.”

We got to work. Fast.

I glanced at him sidelong and bit my finger to stop myself from laughing. I lip synced “Yes ma’am! ” to him and he rolled his eyes at me. I still caught him sneaking a fig. But neither of us threw another fruit. 

We didn’t speak right away as we carried the baskets back through the winding paths—only the sound of our footsteps on stone, the soft creak of wicker shifting with weight, the lull of bees still circling the air like golden prayers.

The orchard was behind us now. The sun too, dipping lower behind the olive hills, letting shadows stretch long across the courtyard tiles. That honeyed light made everything look softened, like a story slipping into its final chapter.

My hands still smelled of juice and bark. My braid had come undone entirely now, curling damp at my neck. I could feel plum skin stuck to my elbow, and my tunic clung in places where fruit juice had soaked through. I didn’t mind. I was used to being ruined. But this was the first time I’d been ruined laughing .

That unsettled me in the strangest, gentlest way. Beside me, Telemachus shifted the weight of his basket with a grunt.

“We survived,” he said eventually, exhaling like it had been a real war.

“Barely,” I replied. “You still have apricot on your face.”

He rubbed his jaw, missing it entirely. “Where?”

“Cheekbone. Other side. There. No—still there. Honestly, it’s easier if you just accept your fate as the prince of plums.”

“That sounds sticky and undignified.”

“You earned it.”

He gave me a side-eye glare as we stepped into the shadow of a colonnade. “I hope you know, you’ve been officially conscripted.”

“Conscripted?”

“To help with storerooms again next week. You’re too good at it. You ask the right questions. You find the missing oil jars. You identify suspicious sacks of pebbles.”

“And all I get in return is unpaid labor and fruit-based assault?” I said, mock-horrified.

“Oh, I’ll throw in a title. Guardian of the Amphorae. Slayer of Phantom Fishes.”

“That,” I said, “is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“You’re welcome.”

I snorted and looked down at the basket in my arms. This one was filled mostly with late figs and a few soft pears. A good haul. Herostrata—or Hegestra, whatever her name was—would hopefully be pleased enough not to curse me with a root vegetable next time we crossed paths.

“I actually liked it,” I admitted after a moment.

He glanced at me, and a large impish grin spread across his face.“Being pelted with plums?”

“No! No. I mean…” I chewed on my words. “Sorting things. Having something to do. Something simple. No riddles. No omens. Just… baskets and scrolls and—gods help us—pebble sacks.”

His grin subsided into something more wistful. “It feels like living, doesn’t it? Not performing. Not surviving. Just… doing things that need doing.”

I exhaled. “Exactly.”

It felt strange, how easy that was to admit. Like my voice had been walking around in a too-small tunic and was only now shrugging into something that fit.

By the time we reached the edge of the garden, both of us were flushed and smudged with the day. He dropped his basket beside the fountain and stretched with a groan, his back cracking in three distinct places.

“Gods,” he muttered. “That old woman could probably lift a chariot.”

“She’s terrifying,” I said. “Like some kind of orchard spirit who’ll steal your youth if you bruise her apricots.”

“She threw a quince at me once for ‘laziness of posture.’”

“Did she hit you?”

“Dead center of my spine.”

“She is an orchard spirit.”

He laughed, and I watched him shake his head in that loose, unguarded way I was beginning to love—not for any romantic reason, but because it was his. Because it meant he was happy. Because it meant I had helped put something like joy into the world, if only for a minute. 

I glanced sideways at him. His hair was hopelessly mussed, his cheeks still faintly flushed, a smear of apricot across one jawbone like a banner. He looked… human. Not a prince. Not a myth. Just him . And something about that tugged at my chest.

But not in the way other girls must have felt it. Not the way Melantho seemed to. Not the way Penelope probably feared her son would eventually grow vulnerable to.

No—I didn’t think about kissing him.

I thought about shielding him.

I caught myself smiling and looked quickly away. We lingered near the fountain for a while, baskets at our feet, the scent of warm figs rising in the air like an offering. I watched the wind toy with his sleeve, the way a bit of olive leaf had gotten caught in the folds of his tunic. I wanted to reach out and pluck it off.

I didn’t.

Instead, I said, “So what’s left today? Any more scrolls of doom? More rogue swords tucked in bread baskets?”

He chuckled. “No swords today. We’re due to check the south storeroom for wool inventory—mother says it keeps vanishing.”

“Suitors again?”

“Always. They think they’re clever. Hiding stolen bolts of cloth in wine barrels. Once, one of them tried to smuggle out a silver comb in his shoe.”

“Did it work?”

“It didn’t even fit. He limped through the whole hall and then claimed ‘a divine cramp’ struck him.”

I laughed. “You didn’t believe him?”

“I threw a fig at him.”

“You’re learning from the orchard spirit.”

He gave me a crooked grin, and for a moment, we just sat in the setting sun like two people who had forgotten the world had teeth. 

“You should tell your mother,” I said at last, “about the suitors hiding cloth in barrels. Maybe if she knew the shape of their thefts, she’d have more reason to cast them out.”

“I have,” he replied, dragging a thumb across his lip, smudging the apricot further. “She listens. But she also waits. She plays the long game.”

“And you don’t?”

“I try. But I wasn’t raised to wait. I was raised in the noise.”

He leaned back on the rim of the fountain, elbows propped behind him. “They’ve always been there. Since I can remember. Drinking in my father’s chairs. Taking the olives meant for our table. Laughing like they owned the stones of this place.”

His voice didn’t break. It didn’t even crack. But there was something stretched thin beneath it. Not grief—he was used to grief. Something closer to weariness. That bone-deep kind.

“They used to call me Γιος φάντασμα (Gios fántasma) — Ghost-son.” he said. “Because I was the son of a ghost. Fatherless. Powerless.”

I was quiet. I didn’t trust my voice.

“They said my father was dead,” he went on, “but not mourned. Just missing. A problem, not a person. A throne waiting to be warm again.”

He turned to look at me then. “You’ve had enough of ghosts, haven’t you?”

I blinked. “All my life.”

He nodded once, like he knew better than to press. Like he knew I would tell him more when I was ready, if ever. And the grace of that nearly undid me.

I looked down at my fingers. “You’re not a ghost.”

“No?”

“You’re too loud when you fall into baskets,” I said.

That earned a real laugh—short and surprised. “And here I thought I was subtle.”

I risked another glance at him, and I saw it again—the olive leaf still clinging to the fold of his tunic. This time, I reached out and gently brushed it away.

He stilled. Just for a breath.

There was no meaning in the touch, I told myself. Not like that. But it felt like something ancient and precious had passed between us—a promise, unspoken: I will be here. I will see you, and not flinch.

He brought a hand to his mouth and cleared his throat softly. “We’ll check the wool. Then probably another council meeting.”

I groaned.

He smirked. “Oh yes. Endless scrolls. Endless squabbling. There’s a man named Thersippos who once argued for half an hour about the proper placement of a statue.”

“Gods,” I muttered. “Did it matter?”

“It was a goat.”

“A statue of a goat?”

“No. A literal goat. He said it was sacred.”

I stared at him. “Was it?”

“He said it spoke to him.”

“What did it say?”

“ ‘Maaa .’”

I choked on a laugh and he looked far too pleased with himself. The sun caught the edge of his grin like it was made for lighting him gently, not gloriously. Human light. Earth-warm.

“I think I’d rather be pelted with fruit again than attend another council,” I said, brushing fig juice from my wrist.

“Duly noted. I’ll schedule that.”

“And after that?”

His expression softened. “After that… I don’t know. Depends on the day. Depends on you, too. You’re welcome to join me. Or not. As you choose.”

There was no pressure in the offer. No laced edge of duty or debt. Just… an open door.

“I’d like to,” I said, before I could think better of it.

“Good.”

He stood and offered me a hand, and I hesitated for only a second before taking it. His palm was rough from swordwork and stained from fruit—but warm. Real. Steady.

We started walking again, slower now, steps matching as if we’d done this a dozen times. My arm brushed his once, and neither of us pulled away.

“I never had a friend before,” I said, when the silence felt full enough to hold it.

He looked over, eyebrows lifted.

“Never?” he asked, not unkindly. Just surprised.

I shook my head. “There were people who feared me. People who wanted things from me. Or pitied me. But none who…” I swallowed. “None who stayed. Not like this.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then, quietly: “Well. You have one now.” 

I bit my lip. “You’ll get nothing from me, you know. No secrets. No prophecies. No soft, weeping confessions.”

“I don’t want any of that,” he said. “I just want… this. You. As you are.”

I looked up at him. “Sticky with apricot and accused of plum-related war crimes?”

“Exactly.”

A breeze passed between us, tugging at my unruly hair and his tunic. I let the wind carry something from me—some old fear, some slivered doubt. I watched it go. I didn’t want it back. 

We reached the edge of the corridor that led to our rooms, the late gold of the sun spilling in low, thick strands across the stone.

“I should wash,” I said.

“And I should scrub out that amphora before the fish smell makes it sentient.”

I gave him a crooked smile. “Good luck.”

“You too.”

He lingered just a breath longer, like he might say something else. But then he only nodded, turned, and walked back toward the storerooms, shoulders rolling in a stretch, whistling something low under his breath.

I watched him go.

I didn’t feel alone. I didn’t feel useful. Or cursed. Or necessary.

I felt chosen. Not by a god. Not by fate. Just by someone who wanted nothing more than to sit beside me, throw fruit at me, and laugh.

And that?

That was enough to carry me all the way back to my room.

The door shut behind me with a soft snick, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

My room was quiet, save for the faint rustling of wind beyond the shutters. The kind of stillness that felt earned. The kind of quiet that seeped into your bones and settled there like warm water.

I peeled the fig-stained linen from my skin, and went to the basin. The water was lukewarm, but I didn’t mind. I scrubbed at the stickiness across my arms, the juice on my neck, the apricot smear that had somehow ended up behind my ear. My fingers pruned under the effort, and still I kept scrubbing, as if I could wash away the golden blur of the day—but I didn’t want to.

Not really.

I thought of Telemachus laughing. Of his expression when he held up that fig like it was a treasure. Of the stupid goat statue. Of the ridiculous, impossible fig war.

I thought of him saying, You have one now.

Friend. I had a friend.

The idea felt foreign in my mouth. Alien and sacred. Like a borrowed cloak I was afraid to wrinkle. But it was mine. This strange, sudden thing. This warmth.

I dried off slowly, changed into clean linen, and climbed into bed. I didn’t light the lamp. I didn’t pull the shutters. I let the last threads of sunlight slip through and curl around my ankles like cats.

I lay there, arm thrown over my eyes, and told myself I would just rest. Not sleep. Just breathe. Just let my muscles melt.

Sleep took me anyway.

And I dreamed.

I was standing in a forest.

The trees loomed tall and silver, moonlit bark gleaming like spears. Everything was hushed, save for the sound of leaves shifting above me, like breath. I was barefoot. Dressed in something white and soft, finer than anything I’d ever worn. And there, in the clearing ahead, was the goddess.

Artemis.

She stood with her bow slung across her back, her dark hair braided down her spine. Her eyes gleamed with the light of stars and something older. She was not beautiful the way mortals meant it. She was terrible. Sacred. Wild.

She said nothing at first. Just looked at me.

And I knew that she had always been watching.

Then:

“You have wandered far, little flame.”

I bowed my head. Not out of reverence. Out of instinct.

“You have touched something soft,” she said. “And mistaken it for safety.”

My mouth was dry. I tried to speak. “I—I didn’t mean to. He—”

“You think he is a haven,” she said, voice low and terrible. “You think he is a shore. He is not . He is a boy.”

My stomach curled. I took a step back.

Artemis stepped forward. Her shadow stretched over mine.

“You were not made to love, child.” Her voice was soft now. Almost kind. Almost. But she was angry.

“You were made to burn. And rise.”

I wanted to deny her. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cling to the warmth Telemachus had given me and say no, no, you are wrong, you are cruel, I am more than fire .

I shook my head. “I don’t love him. He’s just… he’s just my friend.”

“Now,” she said. “But love does not ask permission. Nor does it wait for readiness.”

I clenched my fists. “Then I’ll stop it.”

A flicker of pity passed through her face.

“You cannot,” she said simply. “And when it happens, another will see. She who has not yet entered his story. The gray-eyed one. The strategist.”

“Athena,” I breathed.

Artemis nodded. Slow and deliberate.

“She watches from afar. She waits to reclaim him. And she will not be kind when she sees your shadow near his heart.”

I felt hollowed out. Cold. “Then what do I do?”

“You become what you were forged to be,” she said, her voice suddenly sharp. “You do not twist yourself into a shape that pleases others. You do not lower your flame for fear of who it might blind.”

Her hand rose. She touched my cheek.

“He will not hurt you. But you will hurt him, if you ask him to hold something he was not forged to carry.”

I wanted to argue. To beg. To ask why I had been given a heart if I was not meant to use it.

But she was already stepping back, vanishing into the light.

“Beware the warmth that would keep you human,” she said.

And then, with a voice like smoke:

“It will be your undoing.”

The forest trembled. Light flared.

And I woke. My skin was cold. My mouth dry. The light in the room had changed. Sunset had gone, and the first blue hush of night had come in its place. My blanket was askew. My heart thudded like a war drum.

I sat up slowly. The fruit stains were gone. The warmth from earlier had faded. But the echo of her voice lingered in my skull like ash:

“You were made to burn. And rise.”

Chapter Text

I was still sitting upright, breathing through the chill on my skin, when the knock came. Three raps, soft but certain. I startled. A pause.

Then: “Themistra?”

Telemachus.

I pulled my blanket tight around my shoulders. "Yes?"

"Dinner’s ready," he said, his voice muffled through the door. “I thought you might want to join us.”

I hesitated. The dream still clung to me like smoke, thick and choking. Artemis’s warning burned behind my eyes. Love does not ask permission. Nor does it wait for readiness.

I opened the door. Forced a smile. “Thank you.”

He looked at me for a moment—longer than he should have. His brow furrowed slightly. “You okay?”

“Yes,” I said quickly. Too quickly. The smile fell before I could catch it.

He didn’t press. But he noticed. I could see it in the way his mouth tightened a little. The way he stepped aside so I could pass.

We walked side by side toward the dining hall. I kept a careful distance. No bumping shoulders. No idle teasing. When our hands swung close, I folded mine behind my back.

I didn’t mean to. But I couldn’t stop myself. I kept thinking of Artemis’s words. Of what love might become. Of the edges of something sharp hiding inside something warm.

At dinner, Penelope greeted us with a quiet nod. Her silver-streaked hair was pulled back, her spine a column of regal restraint. We sat down. I focused on my plate.

Telemachus tried to engage me—asked what I thought of the council scrolls, if the figs today had been sweeter than yesterday’s. I answered, but too carefully. I didn’t meet his eyes. I didn’t laugh.

He noticed.

So did Penelope.

She watched me across the table, her gaze like a needle sliding beneath the skin—silent and precise. She said nothing. But I knew she saw it. The stiffness. The restraint.

When Telemachus turned to speak to a steward, Penelope leaned in, just slightly.

“You look like someone being followed,” she murmured.

I blinked. “What?”

“Whatever it is, it’s chasing you.”

I didn’t answer. I just took another bite. My hands shook.

Telemachus turned back and offered me a fig from the platter. “Still sticky from earlier?”

I forced another smile. “Something like that.”

I took the fig, but didn’t eat it.

Later, as the servants cleared the dishes and the hall began to empty, I felt her gaze again—Penelope’s—resting on me like the weight of prophecy. Not cruel. But knowing.

She rose with the same measured grace she always had and excused herself with a nod toward us both. But before she turned fully away, she looked at me once more.

“My chamber is open,” she said softly, almost kindly. “Whatever haunts your dreams, I pray it will be gone.”

And then she was gone.

Across from me, Telemachus said something else—something simple, probably kind—but I only nodded.

I didn’t feel warm.

I felt like I was already stepping back. Into silence. Into distance. Because love might come. And when it did, it would burn.

I would not let it consume him.

Even if it meant turning away before the fire ever caught. 

The hall emptied. The laughter of others—distant, harmless—faded down the corridor like the last light bleeding from the day. I stayed seated. Staring at my plate. The fig sat untouched. It looked too much like something tender I didn’t deserve.

Telemachus shifted beside me. “You don’t have to pretend, you know.”

I blinked. “Pretend?”

“That you’re fine.”

I swallowed. The words stuck. He didn’t look at me. Just reached for the carafe and refilled his cup with grape juice. “You don’t owe me anything. Not joy. Not stories. Not even company.”

“I know.” My voice came out thinner than I meant it to. A thread of breath tangled in guilt.

“But I miss your laugh.” He said it so simply I could’ve wept.

I looked down. The fig blurred. I blinked hard.

He went on, softly: “You laugh like you’re surprised every time. Like it escapes you.”

I shook my head, trying to ward him off with a smile that wasn’t one. “I think I’ve run out.”

“That’s alright,” he said, “I’ll keep them until you want them back.”

Gods. I couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t bear the weight of that kind of kindness. That kind of waiting.

So I stood. Too fast. I held the fig. 

“I should sleep,” I said. “I’m tired.”

He stood too, but slower. Watching. Not chasing. Just watching.

“I’ll walk you,” he said.

“No—no need. I know the way.”

His jaw worked once. But he nodded. Let me have that scrap of space.

I stepped into the corridor alone. The torches sputtered against the breeze, shadows dancing like warning signs along the walls. My footsteps echoed too loudly. Or maybe it was just the thudding of something inside me—heart, regret, fear, I couldn’t tell.

At my door, I hesitated. The latch cold beneath my fingers.

I glanced back once. He hadn’t followed. But I could feel him behind me anyway—his gaze. His absence. His fig offered in silence. I held it in my grip even now. Dumb thing.

I pressed my forehead to the wood.

This was the beginning, I realized. The slow parting. The soft retreat. I hadn’t meant to start it tonight. But it had begun all the same.

And I didn’t know how to stop.

The door clicked shut behind me. A soft sound, but it landed like thunder in my chest.

I didn’t light the lamp. I didn’t need light to know this room. The quiet clung to it like dust in corners. Familiar now. A second skin. And tonight, it was too tight.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and pressed my fingers into the mattress like I could anchor myself here—into something, anything.

The fig was still in my hand.

I stared at it for a long time.

One stupid piece of fruit. That was all. That was nothing.

But it was warm from his hand. He had picked it out for me.

Still sticky from earlier?

I wanted to throw it. I wanted to bite into it and ruin it. I wanted to cry over it, scream into it, laugh until my ribs broke—but none of it would come. So I just…held it. Like it might tell me what to do.

My throat ached. My head was a war drum.

I rose and walked to the basin, cradling the fig like a secret. I thought I might wash it. Maybe eat it cold. Maybe let the water do what I couldn’t.

But when I reached the basin, I didn’t move.

I just stood there, staring at my reflection in the water’s surface. My own face, dim and trembling with every breath. My eyes too wide. My mouth set like I was waiting for something—like I was bracing for a blow.

I leaned down slowly and whispered to the water like it was a witness.

“I didn’t ask for any of this.”

It didn’t reply. It never did. But something in my voice cracked, and suddenly I was sliding down the wall, back to the ground, the fig still clutched in one hand like a lifeline.

And then I was crying.

Not the graceful kind. Not the tragic, poetic kind. The silent, shaking, ugly sort. Shoulders curled inward. Face pressed to my knees. Breath coming in tiny broken pieces, like I’d been shattered and scattered inside.

Everything felt too close.

The dream.

Penelope’s eyes.

His voice at my door.

Whatever it was that had followed me out of sleep had not stayed behind. It had crawled inside my skin. It was curling in my belly. It was waiting.

I wanted to tell someone. I wanted someone to pull me out, to know without me saying a word. But I’d already pushed him away at dinner. Already let the silence rise like a wall between us.

He’d smiled anyway.

That hurt the most.

He had still smiled.

And I… couldn’t let myself reach for it.

Not tonight.

I curled tighter. Pressed my forehead to the floorboards. Listened to the house settling around me like an old breath. The stone didn’t care. The fig began to bruise in my hand.

Eventually, I climbed into bed, still trembling. I didn’t eat. I didn’t wash the tears from my face.

I let the dark wrap around me like a shroud and whispered one last thing to the ceiling:

“Please let tomorrow be quieter.”

The quiet didn’t answer.

But it stayed.

He always noticed.

And tomorrow, I feared, he would notice this too.

But the knock didn’t come tomorrow. It came today. Right now. 

It was soft—softer than before—but faster, almost frantic. Like hesitation dressed in urgency.

I didn’t move.

 “Themistra?”

I shut my eyes. My ribs squeezed tight.

“I—” A pause. A breath. “I know it’s late. I just—I have to say this before I lose my nerve.”

I still didn’t move. But my pulse did. He kept going, the words tumbling like loose stones down a hill.

“The first time you pushed me away, when we first met—I told myself I wouldn’t stop trying. Not unless you told me, from your own mouth, that you didn’t want me near you.”

A beat.

“Because you can’t lie,” he added, more softly. “And I trust that. I trust you. Even when you’re sharp and strange and stubborn as a mule.”

A breath caught in my throat.

“I don’t care how many times you pull away,” he said. “As long as it’s not because you think I’m safer without you. That’s not your choice to make.”

That broke something.

The blanket slipped from my fingers. My feet found the floor.

I crossed the room like the air had changed weight, like gravity remembered me. When I opened the door, he was standing there—arms awkwardly crossed, face flushed with worry and frustration and something gentler underneath.

He looked up.

And then he saw me.

His mouth parted. “You’ve been crying.”

I blinked, and the tears threatened to rise again just from how gently he said it. How concerned he looked. How there he was.

He stepped forward instinctively.

I stepped back.

Not from him. From what it might mean if I let him hold me. He paused, hands half-raised, patient in the doorway of my hesitation.

“I’m not afraid of you,” he said quietly. “Or the gods. Or whatever it is you think you’re protecting me from.”

He stepped in, slowly this time, and reached out—not to grab, but to offer. His arms stayed open, waiting for me to decide.

I broke.

I stepped into him, chest-first, like I was diving off a cliff.

And he caught me. The sob was already rising by the time his arms wrapped around me. I clung to him, the fig forgotten on the floor, and buried my face in the warm curve of his shoulder. He smelled like cedar and salt and sun-warmed dust. Like safety. Like the thing I’d never had and didn’t dare hope for.

“It was a dream,” I gasped. “Artemis came to me.”

His hand moved slowly along my back. “What did she say?”

“That it would come. That I’d fall. That love doesn’t wait. That it burns. ” My voice cracked with every word. “And that I would bring ruin, Telemachus—I would bring ruin to you.”

His hold didn’t waver. Not even a flinch.

“Gods,” I whispered, “always gods, always meddling, always watching. And if I love you—if I dare —they’ll twist it. They’ll turn it into something cruel.”

His silence wasn’t uncertainty. It was waiting for the right words. Then he pulled back, just enough to see my face. His thumb brushed under my eye. He smiled—quiet and wicked and full of light.

“And when,” he asked, voice full of wonder, “have you ever cared what the gods thought?”

I blinked.

I stared.

I breathed. And then, despite everything—despite the wreckage, the fear, the divine warnings curdled in my chest—I laughed.

A stunned, breathless thing. More a hiccup of disbelief than humor. But it opened something in me. Like a gate.

He was right.

When had I ever bowed my head?

When had I ever swallowed my voice for the sake of Olympus?

To hell with the gods.

Let them sit in their clouds and clutch their pearls.

I would live.

Even if it was for one night, one heartbeat, one reckless, mortal choice—

I would live.

“I’ve always hated them,” I whispered, still pressed to his chest.

“Good,” he said. “Then we’ll make them furious.” 

The laugh faded slowly, like a song trailing off into the hills. It left the air warm. Whole. As if something sacred had cracked open inside me, and instead of fire, there was stillness.

Telemachus looked at me like I’d just performed a miracle.

Maybe I had.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. One of his hands was still on my back, steady and grounding. The other hovered like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to keep touching me. As if I were a trembling deer, made of glass and thunder.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, after a moment.

He tilted his head. “For what?”

“For pushing you away. For... everything. For being a storm.”

He smiled again, the soft kind, the rare kind that didn’t try to charm—it just was. “I like storms. Rain keeps the island alive.”

I wanted to fold. I wanted to spill everything out in a flood. Instead, I just nodded. My throat was a sea wall. My chest a lockbox. But I was tired— so tired —of being the only one holding the key.

He hesitated. “Do you want me to stay?”

It wasn’t heavy, the way he asked it. Not a demand. Not a request for anything other than presence.

I didn’t answer right away.

I turned from him, wiped at my face, and walked back toward the bed. My body felt hollowed out—scooped clean by the crying. The kind of exhaustion that comes not just from emotion, but from bracing for it. For hours. Days. A lifetime.

I sat on the edge of the mattress. The fig was still on the floor, bruised now. I didn’t reach for it.

I looked up at him, still standing in the doorway.

“Just... don’t go yet,” I said. “Please.”

He didn’t move like a man afraid of waking something. He moved like someone who’d already made peace with the ghosts.

He stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

The air felt different once he did. Not charged. Not tense. Just... full. Like the room had remembered itself. He came to sit beside me, and for a few seconds we were quiet. Our shoulders didn’t touch, but they could have. Our knees almost brushed.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said.

I turned my head. “Do you?”

He gave a little half-smile. “You’re thinking that if we lie down together, it will mean something.”

I opened my mouth—but the honesty in his tone made me close it again. I didn’t need to answer.

“It will,” he said. “But not the way you’re afraid of.”

He looked at me then, with eyes that didn’t waver.

“We can still be platonic,” he said simply. “I won’t ask anything from you. I never would. But I’m here, Themistra. I’ll keep being here. Until you tell me, truly , that you don’t want me near.”

The air caught between us like it was holding its breath.

“I don’t want to be alone tonight,” I admitted.

His hand found mine—not grasping, just resting. Warm.

“Then you won’t be.”

We moved slowly. There was no ceremony to it, no hush of harp strings or romantic sighs. Just quietness. Just understanding.

I lay back first, curling onto my side, facing the wall.

A moment later, the mattress dipped behind me. His presence was a gravity I couldn’t ignore.

We didn’t touch. Not really. His arm didn’t curl around me. Our hands didn’t tangle. But I knew— felt —that if I reached back, I’d find him there.

I closed my eyes.

The silence between us was not the silence of fear. It was not the silence of prophecy looming, or divine punishment creeping up from the edges. It was a lullaby kind of silence. The kind that holds you, that tells you the world can wait.

My breath slowed. My muscles, finally, let go.

Somewhere in the space between sleep and waking, I whispered:

“I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

He didn’t shift. Didn’t startle. But I heard his voice behind me, quiet and low:

“Then we’ll find out together.”

A pause.

“And whatever it is, I’ll still be here. Even if it’s terrifying. Even if it’s wrong by the gods’ standards.”

I opened my eyes again, stared at the wall as if it might answer. I thought of the dream. Of Artemis’s voice. Of all the fire and ruin I’d been promised.

Then I thought of this moment. Of him.

Of the heartbeat between his words.

Another silence passed.

Then I rolled—slowly, unsure—until I was facing him. The lamplight from the hallway, still slipping under the door, caught his features in gold and shadow.

“Why?” I asked.

It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t accusing. Just... lost.

He looked at me like it was the simplest thing in the world.

“Because you’re worth it.”

My chest ached.

I reached out—tentative, hesitant—and touched his sleeve. Just the edge. A fingertip on linen.

He didn’t move. He didn’t smile. He just watched me, steady as the moon.

We stayed like that.

Breath to breath.

Not lovers. Not yet.

But something quieter. Maybe stronger.

The ache softened. The terror dulled.

And for the first time in days, I felt like I might sleep without dreaming.