They set down the sedan chair. The three friends hurry back the way we came, eager to get a drink at the empty tavern.
Ro walks over to the bench. “We have brought you a gift, Princess Selene. Something you lost long ago.”
Princess Selene. I shape the name but can’t find a place to fit it in the history I know about the generations of Kliatemnoses, Serenissimas, and all their relations.
Parting the curtains, the old scholar leans forward to take in a breath of the perfumed air. “What garden is this, poet?” the old man asks.
The oracle stares at his aged face for so long that a bird flits down from a tree to peck at the platter of fruit sitting on the bench beside her.
“Kallos?” Her voice trembles on the name, and I remember how, in the tomb, she mistook Kalliarkos for someone she knew. She grasps her cane and rises. The bird flies away in a blur of wings. “Is it truly you, my beloved Kallos?”
“Who is that?” He turns his head to seek her direction by the sound of her voice.
I take his hand and help him out of the sedan chair. He doesn’t even ask who I am or why I am assisting him. There’s a light in his face that’s painful to see, where a feather of hope collides with an ancient wall of grief. She stares, sways, and makes no protest as Ro tucks a strong hand under her arm.
As the old man and I approach, she speaks in a trembling voice. “They told me they’d killed you.”
He stops, hearing her words clearly now, and extends a hand. “Selene. Is it truly you? Have the gods answered my prayers even after all this time?”
Ro nods toward the bench, and I seat the old man there. For an instant I think the oracle will collapse from sheer emotion, but Ro eases her down beside the man she lost so long ago. Then the poet takes my hand and draws me down the path after his friends. I glance back to see her touch the old man’s scarred face, and yet her expression is not one of horror but of unlooked-for joy, as radiant as the sun rising after its long darkness.
I wipe tears from my cheeks. Ro doesn’t let go of my hand and I’m so overcome that I don’t even want to shake it off.
“They are the last survivors of the previous family battle over the throne, which took place two generations ago,” he says as we keep walking. “How spiteful, to separate two innocent lovers for more than fifty years.”
“You wrote about those events in your play, didn’t you? But I’ve never heard their names. I didn’t even know they existed.”
“The official histories buried the story. Instead we were all taught that after the tragic early deaths of her father and uncle, Serenissima the Third became queen, the benevolent ruler who showered generosity upon all. But that’s not what happened. I’ve heard the whole story now from someone who lived through it. The throne was intended for Serenissima’s younger brother, Kallos, but she wanted it for herself. She killed her father and an uncle because they stood in her way. And then she married her other uncle, who took the name Kliatemnos the Third, and made him her puppet.”
Much as Gargaron and maybe even Meno? intend Kalliarkos to be a puppet, I think as Ro goes on.
“At first she claimed to be ruling as regent for Kallos, because he was still a child. She had him raised in isolation, far from the court, together with his young cousin, Princess Selene, who was the only child of the murdered uncle. She and Kallos always knew their situation was precarious, that they lived on Serenissima the Third’s sufferance. They only had each other to trust, and they fell in love.”
“That’s so heartbreaking,” I murmur.
“Heartbreak is the wine of poets,” he murmurs, flashing a look at me from his handsome eyes. “As I contemplate every day you refuse me.”
To my annoyance, I blush but I don’t look away, because I won’t back down. “Then what happened?”
“When Selene gave birth, Serenissima killed the baby and imprisoned them in different temples.”
“Why didn’t she kill them too? She’d already murdered her father, her uncle, and the baby.”
“They don’t know. Since I’ve still found no private records from that time, we may never know.”
We have reached the passage that leads out of the hidden garden and its secrets. Ro halts under the shade of a massive sycamore.
“Jessamy. I’m glad you left the palace. The royal air may smell of nectar but it’s nothing but poison. We’ll drive out the Saroese—”
“All of them? Even Denya and Cook?”
“‘Cook’? She has a name. You should use it.”
“You’re right, I should,” I mutter, shamefaced since I can’t help but wonder if Father ever knew that Cook’s name is Yenia. “But that doesn’t change my question.”
“Foreigners settled in Efea before the Saroese arrived. Including some Saroese. But they came to become part of Efea, like a guest who decides to marry one of your cousins. So I don’t care about the ordinary people who live and work here now. We can make our peace with many of them. But not with the palace and the temples, their rulers and their gods. Never with that.”
I think of Queen Serenissima, who let her son, Temnos, be killed and then was herself dragged through a gate into darkness. Of Selene, who lived so many long years trapped inside a crushing prison. Of my father and Kal, each threatened by Gargaron.
“Never with that,” I echo.
He rests his hands on my shoulders quite boldly.
“I’m glad you came home to us. This is where you belong.”
He smells of orange blossom, like he’s rubbed petals onto his skin in anticipation of this delicate moment. His lips part as he leans in, leaving a pause to allow me to speak, to refuse. But I don’t speak. I don’t refuse. My heart, so long bricked up, has started to crack the seams of its prison. He’s here, and he’s fine, and he’s so brilliantly alive.
“Jessamy,” he whispers.
His mouth brushes mine, warm and urgent. I sink into his embrace without shame. There’s no one to judge us. Nothing to hold us back.
Nothing except the memory of Kal’s face in shadow as he said he could not live with himself if he knew I’d been killed because of him. He broke it off because he thought forcing me to go would keep me safe. And when he discovered he was wrong, he sent people to look for me because he is trapped in a besieged city. I’m the one who didn’t want to face the truth about putting him on the throne. He knew better, and I didn’t listen.
I take a step back, out from under Ro’s hands. “I’m not ready.”
By the stunned look on his face, I might as well have slapped him.
“You still believe you’re in love with him!”
“Is kissing me really about me? Or is it about who you are, and who Kal is? And which one of you wins?”
“You can’t see past your misguided adulation of your Patron father. Much less Lord Kalliarkos, the golden prince.”