As we go inside, Melinoë guides me to the manor's vast cellar. And here I thought she had a lot of herbs in one of the main rooms, the place she goes in case she must make an emergency ungent or poultice to slather on a mortal's injury. I didn't know half of it.
Though the faint odor of mildew drifts in around the estate windows, the air is dry, and I wonder if Melinoë did a spell to keep it so. She didn't bother so much with lavishing the main floors of the manor with aesthetic flourish and precautions to keep the dampness away, but she did what she could to preserve her herbs. She directed her magic sparingly, on practical matters.
Many wooden shelves line the cellar, which is lit by candles attached to the bare walls. That, and ghosts who seem to carry blue fire inside them as they peer down curiously from the ceiling. Cobalt light dances on the wood. The candle flames are constant, and not a single glob of wax falls from the sticks. Alongside the old mildew comes the fragrance of smoke mingled with pungent herbs, some sweet and others earthy as we pass through the rows.
With a steady hand and voice, Melinoë shows me where and how she organized everything, and I listen closely to her low intonations, which caress my ear without touch.
My host positions everything by use. Fertility herbs, such as the chaste berry and evening primrose, are on the opposite side of the room from the abortifacients. There are a series of herbs for every ailment--colds, bone aches, menstrual cramps, sinus woes, unusual and unpleasant stomach excretions, and so on.
Melinoë inspects some golden stalks of turmeric, almost the same color as her cloak. "This induces menstruation."
"Ah. Can one menstruate in perpetuity?" I say my question with some humor, though something a little darker clouds my mind. Zeus isn't fond of moonblood. I wonder if he would catch on if I bled endlessly. No, what am I thinking? I shouldn't be so unkind. He loves me. This terrible purpose he's given me, it must be for a good reason. Because if not, what am I? Once again, I long for home.
Melinoë hums. "Not normally, and most wouldn't wish to, though the herbs can be magically altered for any desired effect."
After assisting with some organization, I briefly leave her to take care of our bounty. The day's still young, and after I set the basket of apples on my nightstand, I find Melinoë again in the study, illuminated by the burning hearth.
Our outing makes me bolder than before, though I have to be careful. Tactful, yes, that's how Mother would phrase it. Pushing Melinoë too far will only ruin what little progress we've made. Not only because she might withdraw, but because I might, too.
Approaching her side, as she sits by the fire, I say, "I've wanted to ask. What was . . ." I stop when I keep looking into the hearth. "Is that a baby alligator?" True enough, one lounges inside the fireplace, and it looks like it's smiling.
"Yes," she says, voice a breezy sigh with a hint of amusement, "that's Icarus. He likes getting a little too close to the fire. Anyway, what were you going to ask?"
"What was it like living in the Underworld? The stories make it sound so gloomy, and yet things grow there."
She sets two fingers on her chin. "For me, it was home. It never felt especially strange or overwhelming. When I was very little, Mother, Father, and Hecate would take turns holding my hand and teaching me the curve of every river." As if realizing the posture she's making as she's thinking, she stiffly assumes a proper sitting position. But now, it's hard for me to see her as so cold and iron.
She makes it sound so droll, almost pleasant. Not melancholy, not the place where Tartarus seethes with the bones and meat of defeated Titans and tortured souls.
It's endearing to think of Melinoë, the stoic daughter of Hades and Persephone, as an infant. Learning how to walk, hobbling along the Styx with someone holding her tiny hand. It was even more so to think of the King and Queen of the Underworld, adorned in ghostly regalia, guiding a child around the Underworld. In all the gloom and boredom after death, a family can bloom. Love can thrive.
Melinoë says, "In the Underworld. Father and Mother rule as equals."
That doesn't make much sense to me, though I'd like to believe it. If anyone wants to desperately be a romantic, to believe in the poems and songs and tapestries, it's me. And yet I know that often the truth isn't always as pretty as what's etched on an amphora. A poet will say the man and woman are in a consensual chase, where she is teasing him, enticing him. But the truth often isn't so.
How can you be equals with the man who kidnapped you?
"I see," I say.
A shrewd light flits across her eyes. She can tell I'm unconvinced. "What do you know about Hades and Persephone?" She stands and goes over to examine a shelf of scrolls.
Following, I say to her, "He kidnapped her in a meadow and took her to the Underworld. And then he tricked her into eating six pomegranate seeds, so she must stay with him in autumn and winter." Persephone must be with her mother now, and that is some consolation. How terrible it'd be, I thought once, to be separated from my parents. And then some years, I yearned to break away. To forge my own name, where I'm more than a postscript of their love story.
She tells me, "According to the laws of the gods, my mother wasn't kidnapped. Zeus gave Hades permission to capture and marry her."
Again, that sleight of hand. "What did she want?" I can't imagine Persephone wanted to be captured.
"The stories didn't say," Melinoë says. "Many times, they don't."
With a huff, I shake my head. "I'm not asking about the stories. You must've talked about it." I worry I ask too much, but it's unlike me not to ask many questions. In being authentic, I can be convincing.
"I suppose she wanted an escape. I'm unsure if she received it." She shrugs. "My mother and I weren't especially personable."
An escape? An escape from her own mother, Demeter?
"Were you closer to your father?"
Clasping her hands behind her back, Melinoë says, "Not especially."
With a hint of teasing, I ask, "Do you look more like him or your mother?" I could never ask my parents much about the Underworld, and not many speak of what the king and queen look like, as if just a mental image might strike terror in any heart.
She faces me. "My mother. But that wasn't my point, about not being personable." It can be intense to hold her gaze for a long while, with how little she blinks, but I take the challenge.
"Ah. What is your point?"
Melinoë replies, "We don't weep over one another. There's no use in weeping. It's a waste of energy."
I don't like weeping, but I wouldn't say it's useless. Mother said crying could be a relief, though she never cried in my presence. It's unfathomable to me to imagine Melinoë not missing her own mother; I missed mine every second I breathe.
All the same, whenever my face grows hot and wet with tears and a headache pulses behind my eyes, my sobs remind me of how much I like to avoid weeping at all costs. I never feel respite, catharsis. I become small and too aware of myself.
Humiliation, despair, those all come from tears; like the ouroboros, what causes tears only feeds them more, so when I try to stop them, the negative emotions only intensify because I remember how stupid I'm being. Father, Eros, isn't hot recklessness. Passion can be cold and calculating.
Realizing our closeness, I step back and murmur, "But you must miss them."
If Melinoë detects my state of mind, she doesn't show it. "Who?"
"Your parents. Or at least, you must miss your home." I hope it doesn't sound so demanding. She must do this, she must do that. We are truly different.
But are we? I hide from my emotions, my true potential for empathy. I could do good. I could've done that for centuries, but I stayed on my little island of paradise. And she, we are the same, in ways. Sheltered for most of our lives, tentative to be completely vulnerable.
One side of Melinoë's mouth tightens. "'Miss' is a strong word."
"For a strong emotion." There are harsher words. For me, "homesick" is one of the most forlorn words conceived.
"Do you know who I miss?" Melinoë asks.
"Who, no one?"
Melinoë makes a sound like a laugh. Humor dips into her voice, velvet and like honey. "Cerberus."
I blink. "The scary three-headed dog who eats souls?" Then again, she lives among alligators and underhounds, so I suppose that shouldn't be a shock. This life isn't so terrible.
"He doesn't eat souls," she says. "He keeps them from leaving the Underworld."
That doesn't sit right with me. "Is that the right thing to do?"
That strikes a mark. As if on guard, Melinoë crosses her arms over herself. I worry I've ruined things, that she'll tell me to go. She doesn't. The look we share is earnest, more intimate than some kisses I've had.
She confesses to me: "I argued for letting the souls roam where they wanted. It would be a vast change to the way things are, might frighten the mortals. But then again, everyone knows where souls go. And they mourn those they lose."
Wistfully, I say, "You want people to be with their loved ones." Perhaps I'm not the only romantic.
She taps her chin. "There's that, but that wasn't my main reason."
"Oh?" I ask, as the flames play white in the pools of her eyes, turning them rheumy, "What is the reason?"
"It'd give the souls autonomy. Freedom. Not an eternity of nothing." She drops her arms. "Unfortunately, that didn't make me popular with the other chthonic gods. Or my parents. And I imagine all the other gods wouldn't appreciate it." Damn them, I think. There are too many chains in life already. "They think it would be chaos, but the souls in the Underworld, the ones who aren't in Tartarus, don't become more malevolent. They're the same people as when they died."
My eyelids droop in thought. "Would something like that end all grief?"
"No, I don't think so. Death offers new choices for everyone. If souls could do as they wished, perhaps some would be spared grief, but other souls may choose to stay or go elsewhere. As is anyone's right. I must admit, I don't know what it would be like without these rigid presets and hierarchies."
Neither do I. It sounds like a dangerous thought. But rebellion against Zeus? I don't know. "I'm not sure, either."
As intrigued as I am by Melinoë's ideas, it scares me to think of radically changing anything. A dark thought curdles in my mind: Perhaps it is better for the good of the whole that some exploitation slips by, even exploitation against me, if it means peace for everyone else.
A thought, of course, that benefits the Olympians most of all.
Yet. The structures that control the universe exist for a reason; the gods know what they are doing. Mostly. Even their accidents have purpose. Ever since I was young enough to read, that was what I heard.
Mother, though—Mother was more critical, and yet even when she interfered in Father's work to make it less harsh, she didn't outright end it.
Melinoë breaks me out of my daze. "However, Cerberus does what is commanded of him by his king."
Hedone isn't sure if the king was Hades or Zeus. "He sounds like any other subject."
"A good deal hairier, to be sure." Melinoë shrugs. "He's a little more than a very big dog. He's the son of Typhon. He may not be one for philosophical discussions, or any discussions at all, but he knows much. Outside of his work, he was really quite sweet. My mother stole his affections from right out under Father." Her last words are a touch sad, I think.
"Really?"
"Yes. I think Hecate helped. It was when my mother was pregnant with me. Hecate spent a lot of time with her, and one of the things they did was play with Cerberus." The corners of her mouth twitch in what might be a brief, restrained smile. "Hecate was always fond of dogs."
As she speaks to me by the shelves, Penelope pads across the room and curiously sniffs my hand, looking up expectantly with her burning red eyes.
Tentatively, I lower a hand and place it behind the hound's ears, coaxing my hand up and down. Her tail wags, thumping the floor.
Going back over to her chair, Melinoë says, "I conduct myself in ways that keep me inconspicuous from Olympus' prying eyes." You've failed. "Of course, given the past, it sometimes seems impossible to do so."
"Have you ever met Zeus?" As I sit across from her, and Penelope follows, I search for a change in Melinoë's expression.
There is none. "No. I never had the chance. Or the inclination."
"Do you trust him," I ask, "as your king?" My stomach churns.
She looks away from me, and her jaw twitches. Her voice is barely a whisper. "I didn't say that. I respect him because he is my king. The gods act as they do, and I do what I can to adhere to his laws. I know what happens to those who transgress against him and those in his favor. Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Athena, Artemis—even those who've dared defy Zeus himself have their own motives. I keep to myself. What I do in this corner of the Earth doesn't concern them because I've done nothing to transgress their laws."
Before, I thought Melinoë's voice was harsh, unpleasant, but I was wrong. It's low and constant like the tides, whalesong, complemented by the crackling fire.
After some silence passes, I mutter, "This corner . . . it's peaceful, but sad."
"How is it sad?" Melinoë asks. And it is then I wonder if Melinoë ever feels grief, understands the pained numbness, that expanding, heavy emptiness at the bottom of my ribs.
"It must be lonely." At home. Home, the word is salt on my tongue. At home, while I sometimes felt like I was going mad from isolation, I had Mother and Father. In the meadows, I could listen to the songs and games of the nymphs, dryads, and satyrs. "Perhaps I don't like seeing someone lonely."
Contemplatively, Melinoë asks, "Are you speaking of myself or yourself?"
Because I can think of nothing else to say, I reply with the truth. "Yes."
"Yes?"
"Both, perhaps."
I can't imagine living as Melinoë does with only the hounds, alligators, and ghosts. For an extended time, even if now it doesn't feel as strange. I've always liked having someone to talk to. Maybe she does, with the two men she seemingly has here, under circumstances that have yet to have been revealed.
The hounds are affectionate, and the alligators make themselves at home under the trees or even on the hearthstones, where they draw warmth.
And I liked pets, such as the horses I would ride. But none of them are much for conversation. They did assuage my loneliness when Father would be off on one of his duties and Mother needed time to herself.
The ghosts, well, they aren't animals, but they don't seem to want to speak with me. I can't blame them. Maybe they only want to be left alone.
Melinoë squares her shoulders. "I'm not alone. I don't need pity."
"As you say." I expected the standard "don't pity me" line some time or another. These stoic types. Standard. I'm surprised it didn't come earlier.
Melinoë frowns. Her expressions are generally somber, so to frown, her bottom lip raises a little. It's somewhat adorable. "The ghosts keep me company."
"They don't speak very much." Not once, I've found.
Melinoë waves a hand toward the fire. "What does it matter? One doesn't need to speak to be heard." That's true enough. "They have minds like you and me, and they feel safe here. They don't need to communicate as we do. They spent years doing just that. Now, they can rest. They're untethered."
Leaning forward, I ask, "Aren't they meant to be in the Underworld?"
She settles her hands primly in her lap. "They chose to come with me. They're displaced like I am, willingly. So long as I don't create a mass departure, Father and Mother don't mind."
"Are they at rest?" I follow Melinoë's gaze and almost topple out of the chair in shock; behind us floats a faintly blue ghost in a silver chiton.
"All souls are immortal and go to the Underworld." Melinoë reaches a hand out, and the ghost steps forward, beckoned. "So, this is as close as it comes without standing in an endless field of white flowers."
I look on curiously.
"You've been listening," Melinoë says to the ghost.
"Do they listen throughout the manor?" I ask.
Still regarding the ghost, Melinoë replies, "In all parts that aren't forbidden." Emphasis on the middle syllable of the final word, forbidden. It sinks, deliberate and cold as a river stone. "But she is here, so you may speak to her directly."
Flustered, my cheeks grow warm. I always thought souls were speechless. In the stories, humans try to avoid or retrieve ghosts. They pity them, but little else. I can't recall Eurydice saying anything as Orpheus took her by the hand and looked forward. Or when he finally, guiltily turned his head. Before Eurydice became a smear of white lipstick against the dreary Styx bank. Before that, she had no voice in the poems; it wasn't important.
With a bowed head, the ghost says, "I am Carya." Her hair is light, though I can't tell the exact color, only that it's braided like a crown around her head. I've heard the father they are from the Underworld, the less fleshy the ghosts appear. I would've thought they'd be more spectral in the land of the dead.
"Oh, hello, dear. I'm Hedone." Of course, not well-known. I clarify: "Daughter of Eros and Psyche. It's a pleasure to meet you."
Carya clasps her hands together and straightens. "Hello. You're the first goddess besides Melinoë I've seen here." She drifts a little closer, and the air chills.
Warmly, I reply, "I'm merely a humble guest." I've tried to become stronger and remove herself from others' emotions, to avoid everything. But I can feel Carya's melancholy; it'd be easier to discount it by seeing her as another ghost, which is a shameful way to think. I truly have a long way to go.
Carya says, "As am I." A humble guest. "Melinoë un-treed me, so to speak."
"Yes," Melinoë replies.
Clasping my hands in her lap, my brow furrows. "What? Un-treed?" Ah yes, the eternal plight of women: dreading what happens if the gods catch you or, otherwise, being changed into a tree for eternity.
Melinoë tells Carya, "You don't need to say anything you don't want to talk about."
A bowed head. "In life, I was a princess. My father and mother worshiped the sun, Apollo, the most. So much so that Apollo bestowed blessings on their children, but with conditions. I laid with Dionysius, but Apollo had forbidden my sisters and I from pursuing forbidden love and that we should not betray gods."
Carya stares in the fire and continues, "My sisters, Lyco and Orphe, disapproved of the affair and tried to hide me away against my will, and Dionysius took that as a slight, a betrayal, so Apollo punished the three of us. He drove Lyco and Orphe mad, and Dionysius made me into a walnut tree to spare me."
My heart aches. I recall Mother telling her of her aunts' deaths, who had wept over their sister's alleged death, sobbed in relief when she returned to them alive, but resented her relationship with a god.
Before I left the island—my home for thousands of years—to do Zeus' will, Mother had set a hand on my shoulder and frowned. Her eyes were sad, bright with old grief. Though I led a charmed life, I learned how to see grief ferment like wine.
"Don't lose yourself to the likes of him," Mother had said, the sun striking her brown eyes and making them gold. Thunder rolled in the distance.
"Yes, Mother," I replied, the honey-taste of ambrosia still on my tongue, sticking to my fingers.
"I'm serious."
"I know."
Mother set a hand on my cheek, another hand coaxing my hair. "He'll claim ownership of you because he thinks you're beautiful. That's all the reason he needs."
He already has, I wanted to tell her. I'd kept herself from crying as a lump formed in my throat. I'd placed her hand on her mother's. Wanted to say that, yes, I was inexperienced in the world, but I knew Zeus.
Mother was afraid. Because when women become victims of the gods, the only way to escape their pain is death, either with a knife or magic. Becoming a tree—because intervening and standing between a god and what they want, even as another god, is unthinkable.
But I wanted to say to Mother: I'm different. Not a victim. I was brazen and foolish.
The memory of Mother clings to me like perfume. A cloud. A leech. Something brushes across her arm, some bug, and I swipe at my elbow.
Thunder murmurs in the distant swamp, too. The skin of my back and neck prickles.
I want to show everyone here my misery I hide away, but I know if I do, I'll never stop weeping. Tears offer no catharsis. Better to think of flowers and songs than to reminisce on the ugly past. Better not to let myself be overwhelmed.
Let the past fade. Let ugliness become shadows, ignored. Eventually, light will overwhelm them. Fighting only begets more fighting, especially when dealing with immortal friends, foes, and lovers.
Long ago, Mother had learned to sentence her grief to silence and never said her sisters' names; I never grew brave enough to ask.
All these similar stories, so far apart.
"Like Zeus changed Daphne out of sympathy," I breathe. That'd been Father's fault.
Carya replies dryly, "Apollo was prolific in his goals." She sobers. "And then, Melinoë freed me, and I went on to live the rest of my life."
"You were still alive?" I ask.
"Yes, just in a different form."
Looking into the fire, Melinoe says, "As I said, my powers aren't just madness and death. Hecate is a versatile teacher." Not only death; life.
Carya continues, "I met Artemis, and though I didn't want much to do with any gods, we fell in love. She saw me as an equal. She believed her chastity kept her independent from the machinations of the gods. I thought she'd judge me, but she didn't. To say the least, I was shocked."
I'm shocked, too. I think of Kallisto. The gods aren't known to be accepting.
Carya finishes, "She let me hunt with her, and though I died during a hunt, I at least died in her arms."
Melinoë says, "It is perhaps one of the deaths many aspire to."
Carya agrees, "I was grateful to not be alone." Again, she bows her head. Shame, deference, acceptance, I can't tell.
"I'm sorry for what you went through," I say softly.
Carya further slants her head toward me. "Thank you, Your Grace."
Flushed, I wave a hand. "I'm only Hedone."
"Ah, well," Carya says with a curious glance toward Melinoë, "I will leave you two alone." She drifts out the door, tendrils of blue mist, a part of her cheek, momentarily wrapping around the doorframe.
I stare at Melinoë. "Does she call you 'Your Grace'?"
The other goddess rubs her wrists. "No. She may have thought you wanted to be called that."
I watch Melinoë, whose eyes are bright and arcane in the firelight, and my throat constricts.
Melinoë comforts and assists both the living and the dead. What right do I have to judge her? What have I done for anyone? I sat by my window and listened to pretty songs and read pretty poems. Admired birds and frolicked in meadows. Listened and read and drank and ate and enjoyed every second of it.
And I kept those boons all to myself. Never once did I go out into the world to feed the destitute or bring them joy. Never did I take care of anyone because others' pain freezes me.
The universe worked, and I don't, so what right do I have to question everything? For so long, I've waited and pined, wanting to be of some use, and now . . .
In the distance, thunder rumbles again. The space between my shoulders tenses.
Zeus is angry about something.
Maybe he's angry at me.
Seconds after, rain thuds against the roof; the manor shudders and gives a long sigh as a draft winds through the rooms.
My chest tightens, and my breath catches in my throat. My elbows dig into the stiff armrests.
Don't worry. He's charming more often than he's angry. And if anything happens to me, I always have the phial under my pillow.
My eyes dart to the side. Melinoë is watching me.
"I . . ." She pauses, and her chest expands; she's taking a deep breath. "I understand that this manor is not the most ideal place for everyone. It's not beautiful."
I think about Adonis and his partner. "It is. Beauty is wildly different for everyone."
"As you say." Melinoë asks, "Are you afraid of thunder?"
"Is it that obvious?"
"You seem more tense."
"I try not to think about it." The method proves to be less effective than I hoped. Hedone asked, "How did you come to live here? Why did you choose here, specifically?" By my side, Penelope licks my fingers.
"Here, I don't worry over being told what magic I can do and why." Melinoë shrugs. "I enjoy my privacy, and the swamp is both secluded and powerful. When Mother and Father were my dominion, and they wanted me to only go out at night."
"Why?"
"I suppose it was easier to explain bad dreams and dogs going wild when the moon was out, especially a full moon." When the hound goes over to her, Melinoë runs a hand down Penelope's back. "Many a myth has been made about that time."
I swallow. "I had an inquiry for you, but I wasn't sure how to phrase it."
"You don't need to worry much about tact with me." Her hand settles on Penelope's head. "Let's say those in the Underworld don't let etiquette get in the way of sharing their opinions."
"Do you experience desire at all?" I ask her.
She blinks slowly. "Desire is a general term. I desire seclusion, books, knowledge."
"That's certainly a desire." There are many sorts of desire: Agape, love for the gods. Eros, sexual passion. Xenia, hospitality for guests. Philautia, self-love.
And though I prefer company, I can appreciate cozy solitude. Little conflict would be had, then.
She says, "It isn't that it's impossible, but I've merely never felt romantically for anyone, so other feelings haven't followed. I suppose that's stereotypical of me. I am my parents' daughter. I've always supposed a romance requires reciprocation, after some time."
"No infatuations?" I ask her, serious.
One hand resting above the other, Melinoe replies, "The ghosts are my subjects. Even if I view them as equals, that's not how we've been defined. I was tasked to look over them, so it'd be wrong to do anything with them. And I can't say any have propositioned, with a face like mine."
"I like your face," Hedone replies. "It's unusual."
Her mouth forms a straight line. "That is the problem, yes."
"If it were, wouldn't you use a glamor?"
"I do, at times."
I frown. "But not for me?"
"No."
That must mean something.
After some quiet passes, I focus on something she said. "Equals, the ghosts, but that's not how you've been defined? What do you mean?"
She leans back. "When I was a girl, I would play in the Styx. I avoided the Lethe and the like, but I would play, as a child did. I think I was fairly observant as a child, but even then, the gloom didn't quite chill me. Watching my toes poke out of the water, I would float with the ghosts in the water without thinking, without seeing myself as above them, as a leader. I never asked for them to call me anything but my name."
Gripping the armrests, I say, "I thought most of the ghosts would be in the Asphodel Fields."
"There are only so many fields, and they aren't meant to be a punishment. Merely a reflection of a mundane life. The ghosts can drift elsewhere, besides Tartarus and Elysium."
"Do you control them?"
Melinoe blinks slowly. "No, not like that. Not directly, as if they are tools. But as I grew, I was told it was my duty to guide them. If any souls became lost, in the night I'd retrieve them." I imagined her gliding with a row of lost souls behind her like a fallen wedding veil. "That became my role, my duty, but . . ."
"But? You're not certain you see yourself in that role anymore?"
"I am still searching for my place." Such a vulnerable thing to admit, but it comes easily off Melinoë's tongue, so detached and ominously unrooted.
"That sounds frightening." I pause. "That's how I feel, too."
Something warm passes between us, softer than electricity.
"How did you like Carya?" asks Melinoë. I shudder at the rumble of thunder. Too close.
"She was nice." Leaning over the armrest, I stroke Penelope's back as she lumbers between the two of us for attention; the hound is large enough that I don't have to reach far. It's soothing, feels like Penelope understands I need someone next to me.
"I think she enjoyed your company, too. None of us are much for conversation here, as I'm sure you've noticed."
"But, yes . . . do the other ghosts like being approached?" When I listened hard and walk through the halls, I rarely see them.
Melinoë replies, "If I were a ghost, I'd say I wouldn't be sociable. Then again, that is who I am."
"I appreciate you talking with me."
Melinoe sets her cheek on her knuckles. The flames strike a harsh chiaroscuro on both halves of her skin. "All the talk of loneliness made me think that was on your mind."
I laugh. "Am I that obvious?"
"No, not as much as it might've seemed at first."
"Well." I can't help my playful grin. "I'm glad to surprise you."
The ever-burning fire is the only noise in the room. Melinoë stares into it, one curled hand raised to her collarbone. "Yes."
***
That night, as the storm rages on, Penelope jumps up on the bed and curls into a ball at the foot. In need of company, as I curl on my side with my knees near my chest, I let her.
***