The words rose from nowhere, chilling the waters and stilling the air. Her arms locked around him, clinging as though he might vanish into the night itself. The sea beneath them seemed to deepen, darkening with shadows, and from its depths came the sound of laughter, low, cold, and unending.
21
SHE BLINKED. ONCE. TWICE. Three times. Her vision remained unfocused, the world around her hazy. Her arms, where her husband had stood mere moments before, were empty.
Her pulse rang in her ears, drowning out all other noises. “Odysseus!” She cried, grasping at the nothingness in front of her. The water around her stilled, chilled her to the bone. Wrapping her arms around herself in an attempt to banish the cold, Penelope tried to catch her breath.
“Spartan Princess,” a voice came, light and airy. It was a woman’s voice, gentle and coaxing. The words were everywhere, all around her. “I have been watching you.”
Penelope twisted, her bare feet slipping against the sea floor as the tide darkened around her. It stretched into a vast, inky black that swallowed the horizon, endless and starless. A fog clung to her senses, thick and impenetrable, and her breath grew shallow as she strained to see.
“Who are you?” Her voice cracked with disbelief and rising fear.
The air around her stirred, heavy and fragrant, the faintest scent of soil reaching her nose.
The sea opened.
She felt it before she saw it, a presence, regal and calm as death itself. A figure emerged from the darkness, more shadow than substance, her steps unmaking the water beneath her. The woman’s hair was dark as midnight, twined with something that glittered like frost. Her gown flowed like silk woven from night, her bare feet gliding over the impossible stillness of the sea.
Penelope’s breath caught.
The woman’s eyes held her still, black as the river Styx, endless and unknowable. Yet something flickered within them, an ache that mirrored the kind of sorrow Penelope had lived with for twenty years.
“I am Persephone,” the goddess murmured, her lips curling faintly, “and you, Queen of Ithaca, have caught my attention.”
“Oh good,” Penelope muttered, “Another goddess, come to bless my suffering? I’m honored. Truly.” Her hands trembled, from cold or from fear. She was unsure, but they shook. “What torment will you weave this time? Will it be curses or riddles? Should I expect my husband to disappear again before my very eyes?”
The goddess queen in front of her smiled. It was an unnerving sight. “You have steel in you, Spartan. I can see why he loves you.
“I come with a warning, queen. Your king stands in the shadow of my husband,” Persephone murmured. “Hades has offered him peace. A sacrifice of one man for the salvation of many. For your safety.” She hesitated, and a flicker of something, pain, perhaps, darkened her face. “The choice is his… unless you act first.”
“You think I would let him die for your justice?” Penelope spat, her chest heaving. “I will burn the very gates of your husband’s kingdom before I lose him again. You dare come tome with warnings… why? To watch me suffer? You gods feed on our pain.”
The goddess laughed, a sound that would haunt Penelope until she crossed Styx herself. It sent a chill down her spine, settling deep inside her bones. “I am not your enemy, Spartan,” Her voice was quiet, unshaken. “I know the pain of loving a man shaped by war. A man bound by fate. I am no stranger to sharing my lover with the calls of the dead. I come to you, because I see myself in you, Penelope.”
Her words thundered in the queen’s ears, causing her heart to race. If Penelope had learned anything from her husband’s absences… She knew being under the god’s scrutiny was not where she wanted to be.
22
WHEN SHE NEXT OPENED HER EYES, she was under the water. She clamped her mouth shut, kicking her feet, forcing herself upwards. She pushed away her fear, focusing on breaking out of the ocean.
Penelope surfaced, gasping for air as the evening breeze surrounded her. Her heart beat wildly in her chest, terror seizing her. She was deeper in the water than she had been moments before. With an attempt to calm her breathing, she closed her eyes, centering herself.
“Penelope!” The shout came before she had time to breathe. Her eyes shot open, her husband rushing through the water to get to her. In an effort to appear calm, she choked down her anxieties, and swam to where he was wading out.
It wasn’t long before her feet touched the sandy sea floor, and she could feel her pulse bottoming out. Odysseus was still a ways away from her, but she could see the panic in his eyes.
He reached her with a furious tide of strength and desperation. His arms enveloped her, clinging to her amidst the ocean waves. “Penelope…” He muttered into her salt-kissed hair, “I thought-”
“I’m here, king.” She assured him, pulling back to cup his cheek. “Do you think I would let the gods steal you from me again?” The words hung between them, echoing a sentiment neither one had dared utter. “Come, let’s get out of this awful cove and find a warm hearth to speak, husband.”
Penelope’s emotions threatened to reach a boiling point when she looked into her husband’s eyes. The galaxies of grief and fear that swirled in his gaze tore her heart in two. “Ody, we are safe.” She said to him, taking his hand and pressing it against her heart, against her racing pulse. “We are alive, together, and whole.”
His breath quickened, chest heaving as if the waves were drowning him. “Look at me, Odysseus,” she whispered, clinging to his arm, “Feel me.” She held him close as the waves crashed around them, willing him to steady, to let her heartbeat anchor him where the sea could not.
His gaze remained unfocused, eyes filled with too many ghosts. “You are not on the sea, husband. You arehome.”
He released a sharp breath, fingers clutching at her as if she was the last fragment in a broken world. The tremors that racked his body ceased, His breaths came deeper, steadier, in time with her own.
