With a final push, there was nothing that stood between them any longer.
Twenty years apart were finally over.
“Tell me, stranger, what should I call you? Husband - or phantom?”
2
SHE STOOD ON A PRECIPICE.
If her heart were to be trusted, her husband was just on the other side of the door. She heard the shattering of glass, and the screaming of men, and her intuition gave way to a feeling she had lost over a decade ago.
Hope.
It fluttered like a butterfly within her chest, fragile yet insistent.
Even with the sounds of her palace crumbling beneath her, she thought of him.
Had he come home?
Had he saved her?
And yet - as quickly as the feeling emerged, she beat it down. She was the Ithacan Queen, even the smallest falter, the lightest weakness and — if she was wrong — the 108 men that desecrated her palace would take the opportunity to eat her alive.
Penelope was not allowed hope, not after this long. Hope led to trickery, to debasement, and to naivety.
Hope had no place in the fortress she had built around her heart.
She rose slowly from her seat, the knocking at the door synchronized with her fluttering pulse. Unraveled weavings fell all around her, but she spared the shroud no second glances as she steadied herself with a deep breath.
Try as she might, she could not taper the rising feelings of joy in her chest.
For a moment, her stomach lurched, remembering all the times she convinced herself she saw his ship on the horizon or heard his footfalls in the hall. All the times she cried herself into a fitful sleep, praying the gods would be kind enough to allow him into her dreams, if only for one night.
For the moment after that, she steadied herself. She had taught herself how to swallow such dangerous feelings whole.
“Come in,” she said, her voice strong. No matter who she was about to greet, she would do so with the same stoicism that she had led this island with for the last twenty years.
The door creaked open, and a man stood before her. A man that only partially resembled the man she had fallen in love with. War had not been kind to him.
She swallowed hard, holding her ground. “Tell me, stranger, what should I call you? Husband - or phantom?”
Her voice betrayed nothing. Not her strength or the storm of emotions raging underneath her skin.
The weapons that she hadn’t seen in his hands clattered to the floor, droplets of blood speckling around where they lay. As her eyes traveled back up the body of the man in her doorway, she noticed the blood that was caked on him, telling stories of numerous ended lives.
She would not weep for the deaths of the men that had invaded her home, the men that had brought shame upon her, and put her son’s life in danger. But… to see such massacre written on one man’s skin sent a shiver down her spine.
A tired grin crossed the face of the man before her as he took a few cautious steps into the room. Penelope’s heartbeat quickened as she watched him draw nearer to her. The ever-present fear that lay beneath her skin was screaming at her to move.
But he stopped, just beyond where she could touch him. The two of them stood there as though time itself had stopped. Neither one moved. Neither one dared to shatter the silence that enveloped them.
And then, as if collapsing under the weight of time lost, he dropped to his knees, shoulders shaking with unheard sobs.
“I know not what you should call me.” Was his reply, his voice thick with anguish. “I’m not sure I know what to call myself anymore.”
How many times had she prayed, had shebeggedthe gods to bring him home to her, only to wonder if she would even recognize him?
Would he recognize her?
