And then… that wicked grin. That infuriating, boyish, heart-stopping grin, as he added, “And that, I won long ago.”
Odysseus, King of Ithaca, dropped to his knee.
The room gasped.
Penelope swayed.
Before gods and men, before her cousin and her king, before Sparta itself, Odysseus took her hand and pressed his lips, once, twice, three times, to her knuckles, to her palm, to the inside of her wrist.
Unhurried. Unapologetic. A claim, yes. But also a devotion.
He rose, slow and sure. Letting go of her hand.
Penelope released a breath, trembling, uneven. Then, without thinking, she stepped forward. Her palm pressed against his chest, where Helen’s had been moments before.
His hand came up, their fingers intertwined.
The world had not yet restarted.
She gazed up at him. She did not see him as the King of Ithaca, as a war hero, but as her Odysseus.
“No thrones,” she whispered.
His fingers curled tighter around hers, a smile fighting through his composure. “No gods.”
“No history.”
And then she silenced whatever came next the only way she knew how.
By kissing her husband.
The hall gasped again. No royal woman, noqueen, would dare. Not in public. Not like this. But she didn’t care.
Let them watch.
Let them see.
The gods had tried to keep them apart. The sea had tried to keep them apart. No man, no throne, no force would ever come between them again.
She would allow no one, god or man, to question her devotion to the man before her.
The man who cradled her face so reverently.
The man who kissed her back as if she were his lifeline.
The man who had never stopped choosing her.
And when he kissed her back, it was not defiance.
It was not a claim.
It was truth.
He was hers.
And she was his.
33
