Chapter 6 - Psyche
For the next few days, there were no birds. No visits from my sister. I was alone with my crowd. Their constant, muted rumble played like the song of my heart. An endless rise and fall with no definition. Like a shape without sides. And though the sound pulsed and writhed to its own rthym, the dullness made it feel unreal.
I wanted it all to be unreal.
The crowd, I snubbed. My sister, I craved. Each day that passed without her made my soul bleed. I could feel the walls building between us. The knocks on her door that went unanswered. How she left a room whenever I walked in.
Some things can be forgiven. But this?
Not that I’d known or meant any of it. Still. Maybe I deserved her impaling hatred. And I wished I could go back in time. Back to when that milk-white bird had first fluttered through my window. I’d tell her everything. Even though Aphrodite made me promise not to breathe a word. I’d tell Chara, and she’d keep my secret, and neither of us would be where we were now.
Those were the dreams of my tears. They gave me Heliosice in the hours between sleep.
Until the knock on my door finally came.
Flinging myself out of bed, I raced for the door, abHeliosutely sure I’d find Chara on the other side. I didn’t dare hope she’d forgiven me, just cooled enough to talk. To hear my side. To help me on a solution for us all.
I couldn’t even stop myself from blooming into a smile, I was so giddy she’d finally come.
The reality of my visitor slammed me like colliding with a slab of marble. My father’s messenger waited, column-strait, when I threw open my door. His eyes were fixed on a spot above my head. No eye contact.
“My Lady, your father sends word that you are to be ready by sundown. The first suitor has arrived. You are not to leave your room until that time.”
As if.
He bowed, averting his eyes, and left with his toga flaring behind him in his flight to escape my presence.
Once I closed my door, I sank into a pile on the floor. It was here. Already.
I’d been thinking through this moment, making sure I was ready to do the right thing for my sister. And the only thing that could possibly save myself.
There’d been so many dead-end thoughts; paths down a Minotaur’s labrinth that had no end. Only one idea seemed even plausible. I’d make sure the first suitor who came married me. My stomach clencthed as I went over my reasoning for the millionth time.
If I was married first, maybe Chara’s bride price would drop. And then it wouldn’t matter when she were married and Mom and Dad could let her wait. Like they’d always planned.
Plus, if Aphrodite really meant what she’d said about learning from her mistakes with Helen, then she’d have to give up the matchmaker role once I had a husband. No more wars over women, right? I’d simply have to stay her hand the only way I could.
In all time I’d spent alone in my room the past few days, I hadn’t come up with a better solution.
So why was pushing myself up off the floor to get ready the hardest movement I’d ever had to make?