Page 22 of Elysium
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 to me 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.