After our quarrel, Cadmus' absences lengthen. One would think he'd want to be closer if he was truly concerned about Circe's intentions. But then, if he suspects her of ruining me, perhaps he thinks it best to leave me to my own devices, like Pandora with the box. Best to let me open it because there are hundreds of stories of women who suffer because they fall.

Should I fall, I wonder if he'll throw me in the tower with a tug at his lips, a glimmer in his eyes that says, silly girl, I told you so.

What scares me is that I feel both so distant and close to falling, of plummeting out of the favor I grew with sweet smiles and meek words, and part of me doesn't care. Let me fall.

I cannot. But I dream, ridiculously, of racing to the coast, finding a boat on the white sand, and sailing to my own little island. Especially when I intend court the first time I cannot reasonably hide my runes, and the people stare and whisper. While such markings might be seen as crass, their words don't have the timber of judgment.

Slowly, I think, they are fearing what I might become, now that my chine bone peeks out.

Nowadays, I am no longer as wan as I was. My skin is beginning to reclaim the deep olive it once was, back when I wasn't resigned to a tower or the court alone.

A stola of deep, steely gray with silver floral patterns on a ruffled piece of velvet that falls diagonally from the breast. I'm reminded of the doves Mother let flock around her palace of roses and seashells, cooing on the veranda among garlands of blood-red anemones. The doves who would, in the hundreds, guide her shimmering chariot.

The very same gray birds who softly landed her on the ruined ashes of Troy, the only remaining towers the pillars of smoke rising. And the stacks of broken bodies. Crowned by bones, fire, and ash, Mother set her dainty, porcelain feet on the crumbling bones to admire her work. The doves plucked the salt of ash and bones like they were seeds.

She must've smiled with pride when she came across the caved in ribs of the people who tried to flee, pressed together heart-to-heart. fingers brushing palms, their ashes mixed together, like Adonis and Patroclus when they died.

My stomach turns. This is the price of love. Perhaps it is better to be alone.

Mother was as at home on the battlefield, the fruits of her passion, as she was strewn on the high-piled couch.

And me? Too cold and passionless to be her good daughter, too docile to make Ares proud.

I don't know where my home is.

My home must be here. Even if I could roam like many gods and goddesses before me, don a crown of vines

I did nothing to earn this crown, except be born. Even Zeus, god that he is, had to fight his own father. Then again, I suppose all these years, I have been fighting, every day a battle to prove that I am not a mad queen, that the world I see truly exists.

I palm the fabric, admiring its color. Though I think of Mother's doves, this color is too dark. It's wholly me. So different from the whites, golds, and Olympus-blues. Circe is the night sky, the rivers leading to the Underworld, and I'm an evening storm.

In the distance, a high piping nose weaves through the air. As imperious as gryphons seem, their calls for a mate are deceptively soft.

I grow tired of this bedroom, so I tell Kora to let Circe know she may meet me at the tower.

As I walk the palace path alone, I pause. As wind rustles my hair, the scent of lemons from one of the many gardens passes through. How strange it is, that I should meet someone by myself with a hoplite with a spear and shield coming with me. Or even Stratigos Telesilla, the poet-warrior of Argos who leads them.

I stop before the Tower of Time, and my long breath aches in my chest. I exhale through my nose and enter alone.

Circe is already there. I square my shoulders. Her eyes catch mine, but she doesn't stop for me. She strolls around the basin, the clock, in languid circles. Like her, I feel myself drawn to the water, its tempo thick in my veins.

"It will be full in five hours," I tell her. Only then does she stop before me.

"Indeed, it will." Circe faces me, crossing the space between us. There I stand, right under the depiction of one of her sister's false hooves.

"How are your runes feeling?" she asks me, inspecting my left arm.

I shift, my profile to her, and with a swift wave of my hand, she comes to my side, so we saunter around the clock together. Even with the torches, the room darkens through the open windows. "Sometimes tender, but nowhere as terrible. I can feel the necklace loosening its grip on me."

"Good," she says cheerfully. "That's the master witch at work."

Looking up at her, the defined contours of her shoulder, neck, and cheek, I quip, "Modest, aren't you?"

She smirks, arms swaying at her side. "Why should I be? Because of my exceptional skills, I am at the service of a beautiful queen."

A darkness wells between us, what goes unsaid. I had no agency in her being here, and from what I can tell, even if she did say yes, Circe didn't have much choice either.

Anyone could walk in on us. When the water reaches the rim and the bells ring, the attendants will come in once they are done making their rounds and cleaning the messes of horses and gryphons from the grounds.

In my mind's eye, as the water trickles into the basin, something squirms. A pink fetus. I try to forget, but this tower was built over where my daughter burned. Water over fire, dripping and dripping and letting me know how finite this eternity is, even if it doesn't feel like it.

Back arched, I say to her, "You mentioned you wanted me to show you my pleasant memories. I'm afraid I don't keep paintings of them."

"Good thing I have just the trick. When you're surrounded by water, you learn how to speak with it."

"I imagine it must be a riveting conversation."

She cocks her head. "You jest, but every part of nature speaks. Not in the way we understand it, but everything created is an extension of its creators."

Circe turns her back to me, facing the water clock. When I come to her side, she has a large ivory bowl in her hand, which didn't exist in this space before. And though I know her power, I freeze when water streams out of the water clock and into the basin. Circe makes no special motions, but the crescents and constellations on her back shimmer for a moment.

"This will affect the time," I say lightly. She says nothing as she turns and hands the bowl, filled almost to the rim, to me.

Looking down helplessly at the water, I say, "I don't know if I can do anything with this."

She steps forward and says, voice low, "You can. Simply think."

With a sigh through my nose, I take a deep breath and shut my eyes. When I open them again, I don't look at Circe. Instead, I concentrate on the still water.

For a second, nothing.

More seconds pass. Nothing again.

But.

The water ripples, though I hold the smooth bowl without so much as trembling. The floor beneath us remains inert. I blink, but I don't look away at the water, which doesn't look much like water at all. It looks thicker, like it would be the consistency of honey or syrup in my palm.

Pleasant memories. Hm. I only see myself. The lines and shadows of sleeplessness are faded, but I look fretful, that sort of worry that comes with waiting for something that might not come. I'm cursed. Powerless. I cannot create images in water.

No. I've lived for so long and have gone through so much to give up now.

Am I so noble for not having been killed? In some ways, I have died again and again.

The water ripples again, and, as if I am looking down yet forward, I see something besides my own reflection. I am young, newly married. My hair falls in a braid along my shoulder, my skin a deep olive. I work at the loom, the poppies on my tapestry blooming red.

"Do you see it?" I breathe.

"Yes," Circe replies. Her voice, though deeper than mine, is like a balm. Darkly velvet. Assured. Though she doesn't touch me, something about our proximity feels intimate. Perhaps more so than when she sat with me in bed. When I inhale, I smell the smoke and salt of her. "I didn't know you found happiness in the loom. I was told stories that, when you were in the tower, that was all you had. I suppose I would've come to resent it."

"Did you come to resent the island because you had no choice but to be imprisoned there?"

"It's a rather complicated thing, to find comfort in a place that shackles you. To see its virtues. The shimmer of the sand under the full moon. The perfect spirals of the seashells left on the shore. The sway of hips when the naiads dance in the water. The taste of salt and grass and bone. I grew tired of the taste of crabs, seagull eggs, and otter marrow, but I miss them."

I meet her rheumy eyes, which sparkle. "I could always make arrangements for your meals."

"No offense meant, but I tend to prefer things with a bit more salt. There's only so much honey I can take before I can feel it eroding my eyeteeth."

"Perhaps that was my plan all along, to make the infamous sea-witch lose her bite."

"Would that make you happy?" asks Circe, eyes half-lidded.

"I'm not sure happiness could come from this place. For me." I don't say it with bitterness; I do what I do because of duty, not contentment.

Yet, this is the farthest I've come to leaving the palace. The capitol, I see it from my window. I watch the gryphons fly close to the palace, while the rest of the sky is a vacant blue. Sometimes, I see smokestacks, but Cadmus assures me they're for celebration. Sometimes, I am certain he carefully vets who will come to petition, so I will not know of anything too distressing. So, in the end, I have no say in what happens.

"I'm not sure how I did it," I confess to her. "I had a moment of clarity, I thought, but also of doubt."

Circe comes to stand beside me, my elbow, the one I healed, brushes against her arm, and the skin there prickles. I suck in a breath.

She says, "Water isn't constant. Sometimes it has more salt, sometimes less. Sometimes it carries bones or whales or men to shore, and sometimes it brings nothing. Understanding the forces of nature isn't always about certainty." She leans close, and her breath only barely caresses my hair, the shell of my ear. "Sometimes, a certain person knows very little."

That isn't what I expected. I never would've thought the proud witch of Aeaea would admit to doubt. For many, strength means never admitting uncertainty or fear, ever.

Skimming the water's edge with my finger, I ask her, "Could I leave this anywhere to absorb memories and conversations?" The clear "water" has the consistency of milk.

"Yes, it's your own personal spy. Except, though it's water, it won't easily spill your secrets."

Furrowing a brow, I ask her, "What if someone were to tip the bowl? Or break it?"

She holds the porcelain container upside down, and my heart leaps in my throat. But indeed, the water doesn't spill on the tiles.

"Good," I say, as she positions the bowl upright and hands it to me. I set it down as we sit together on the step.

My skin tingles and faintly glows, and something changes. Instead of being blue, the runes in my flesh warm to gold.

"Is that normal?" I ask, startled.

I'm afraid I'm not very good at determining normal and abnormal. I will say it's not bad. Magic tends to mold itself

"When I think of gold, I think of Olympus."

"Perhaps all the richness of the palace is false." Gilded. "But this," she says, placing a finger on the pulse in my wrist, "is real."

"The gods' power is never false. I've learned that. I never needed to speak with some of them to know their wrath." I had never even met Hephaestus, though he was married to my mother. I didn't know him, but he loathed me and sought the destruction of myself and my lineage.

I pick up the bowl again and look in it, surprised at what I see. Mother, taking a comb made of bony mollusks and gold and brushing my hair. I'm stiff by the vanity, which is ringed in clams and seashells.

Mother says, lips red, hair smooth and rose-gold. "You really need to be less quiet, my little lamb."

I reply meekly, "I thought you said men like quiet women."

Mother counters with a raised finger. "Yes, but there are ways to be loud without speaking. And if you're too reticent, you'll find a partner might take advantage, be they man, woman or otherwise."

As Circe watches the memory, watches me, then and now, I murmur to her, "It's never been simple, knowing when to be quiet and when to speak." Not when rebellion is so easily punished.

The witch says wryly, "I suppose I can be too abrasive."

"Hm. Maybe that's what I need. What anyone needs. Someone who takes their stale ideas of how things should be and questions them."

"The gods often don't enjoy being questioned in such a way."

"I've never been built like them. They tell me to forget. Move on." That's what Mother said. Forget my children like she let me go as a defect, like she didn't mourn Adonis. What good are ugly, pathetic tears? she'd ask me. Tears are only beautiful in poetry.

Another image ripples in the water. Under a tree of yellow apples, I feed Semele from my own breast; even as babes, I can tell all my children from each other.

"Have you ever had a child?" I ask Circe.

"Yes. Four." I must look surprised. Mirth fills her eyes. "I know. Four sons of the heroes who sometimes came to the islands."

"What became of them?" I ask her.

She looks at the memory bowl. "They were allowed to leave, so they went to philander and slay monsters. I wouldn't have stopped them, even if I could."

"Did they ever visit you?" I ask her, as she once asked about my own confinement.

"No. You may notice a pattern. I don't blame them. They had their desires beyond the island, and I was never the most doting mother. I gave them what they needed, and they became people beyond what I wanted." Her thin fingers slide over her stomach. "When I grew pregnant for the first time, it felt more like a curiosity, an experiment I could witness firsthand instead of from the outside, helping the nymphs when the shepherds or sailors gave them child. I never clung to my sons. If they wanted to leave, I wouldn't stop them."

I envy her. To be rational. To let go. Though I let my children grow, I never wanted them to leave me. Even dead, they haven't. It isn't that I see myself as nothing without them, but I never wanted to be alone. Perhaps it is in my blood, to cling to love. But I never thought being strong and having a family needed to be mutually exclusive.

Clasping my hands together, feeling their friction more keenly than ever, I ask her, "Did you turn their fathers into animals?"

Circe flashes a wicked grin, but her eyelids droop, and it fades. "No. They were exceptions."

"It feels odd, thinking that you only had sons. I wonder how you might've been with a daughter. If you would've wanted her to stay."

Her eyes soften. "I understand. Hypothetically, of course. I couldn't understand what it must've been like, with what happened to your children. If I had a girl, I feel I would've been the same as I was with my sons. If I didn't want to restrain them, I certainly wouldn't have made a daughter stay with me. The world would've imposed enough on her, only to have me as an enemy to her ambitions."

"Would you have taught her magic, if it made her rival you?" I think of Hera and her husband's mistresses. Or Grandmother tormenting Psyche, showing her the cruelty and grief in love. Women are threats to one another before they are peers, this is the lesson we learn. This is what keeps us apart.

When all was said and done, Psyche's two sisters plunged to their deaths when Grandmother convinced them they could take her place as Eros' bride, but Psyche was able to find a home with her husband and the daughter burgeoning inside her. At least there's that solace, that the three of them can be free of this tiresome game. This endless gambit to survive or fall and to be damned by history either way.

She presses her lips together, deepening the line in her pale, shrewd face. "Yes. I do not think a daughter or a companion knowing magic is a threat to me. Magic, natural arts, witchcraft. Even if Mother gave me the inclination, none of it belongs to me alone. It never has."

I reach forward. All this time, I've allowed her to touch me when she sought permission. But now, as my fingers graze her shoulders, the twinkling constellations there, I watch as our stars meet and shudder. But she remains perfectly still, meeting my eyes, our mouths inches apart.

I break away, pressing a hand to my temple. "I'm afraid I feel rather tired today."

Circe nods. "Of course. This will take much out of you."

In the end, it is I who leaves first.

***