He barks a laugh. “And you have?”
Yes, I mean to say. I have never loved. I have never wanted to be loved. In all the world, I am the only girl who doesn’t.
But then he looks at me—his mouth twisted halfway between a smile and a grimace, the skin crinkled at the corners of his dark eyes—and I can’t speak.
I’m the only girl in the world who doesn’t want love. I’m the only girl in the world who can protect people from my mother. And I am always, always alone. But the slant of his shoulders, the set of his mouth, the line of his eyebrows all say, Me too—and for one crazy, impossible moment, I believe him. I believe that someone else could understand me.
I believe that love could possibly be kind.
And then I don’t.
“I haven’t gone off love,” I say. “I never liked it to begin with.” My hands are shaking; my heart is pounding as hard as the time that Stepmother slapped me, and all I could think for an hour was, Mother, Mother, my darling mother, I love my stepmother so very much.
“Well, you are a lucky girl, then, to swear off love so gladly. Just be sure Aphrodite doesn’t punish you as she did Hippolytus.”
That startles a real laugh out of me. “I don’t think even the gods could make my stepmother fall in love with me.”
“So you’ve a stepmother,” he says thoughtfully, “and you’re well educated. Likely wellborn, too. There aren’t even many nobles who know the story of Hippolytus—let alone servants, who usually only want stories about the hedge-gods.”
I wouldn’t know about Hippolytus either, except that one winter Thea got the idea that she should educate me, and she trailed after me reading plays aloud until Stepmother locked her in her room.
“Actually,” I say, “most servants here in Sardis won’t have anything to do with the hedge-gods. Too rustic and uncouth.” My voice falls into the cadences of our old cook’s voice. “That sort of rubbish is only for weak-willed jennies who wish they were back on the farm with dirt beneath their fingernails.”
“Really? My late mother would have been delighted; she was always trying to organize new programs of improvement for the servants.”
“So said our old cook. Mind you, she wasn’t above throwing midsummer cakes on the fire, though she tried to hide it.” I smile, remembering the way she scolded me when I asked her what she was doing. None of your business, little Miss Nosy.
The memory stabs me straight between the ribs. A week after that scolding, something happened that left her hands shaking, that made her hide beneath her apron at every loud noise. For the next month she burned soups and dropped pots; then Stepmother dismissed her.
I don’t think it was my fault. I laughed at the scolding, and she smiled at me a moment after. If she’d actually met a demon, she’d have died or gone insane. But I can’t be sure. I can never, ever be sure, and that’s when I realized it was better not to make friends with the servants. After her, none of them stayed more than a month, anyway. They always realized the house was haunted and fled.
“You’re like a chameleon, do you know that?” Lord Anax is staring at me now with his eyebrows drawn together thoughtfully, his mouth crooked up in a faint smile. “One moment you have vowels that could put my mother to shame, the next you’re talking like the scullery maid. You dress in rags and you know thousand-year-old plays.”
I am the most perfect chameleon he’s ever known, and he can’t know me. He can marry Koré if he wants. He can even marry Lydia. I’ll smile and pour out wine to the gods in thanks. But he can’t get to know me any better or Mother will notice him and he’ll be trapped in my fate and I would rather die.
I’d rather die, I think, and realize that I mean it.
“I’m also a messenger,” I say. My body feels cold and stiff. “Here’s your letter for today.” I hold it out.
“Maia—”
“Good day, my lord.” I throw the letter at him and flee.
I try not to think it as I sweep the floors, scrub the pots, cook the meals. I try, but everywhere I turn, the thought drums along with my heartbeat: I’d rather die. I’d rather die. I’d rather die.
I can’t love him. I don’t. This feeling is not the selfish, grasping need that I’ve seen tear apart my family, writhing through their hearts like worms through rotten apples.
What sense does that make? Lord Anax demanded when telling me about the girl he didn’t love but would die for. The girl who he was wise and kind enough to leave. Perhaps, I finally admit to myself, perhaps for him there’s a way to love that’s sane and happy, that isn’t cruel. The gods know he deserves it.
For me, there has always only been this desperate, heart’s-blood determination not to destroy.
“I think he’ll marry Koré, Mother,” I whisper into the steam rising from the stewpot. Her touch shivers against my neck. “He’ll be so happy.”
He’ll take Koré away to his gilded palace, let her hold Alcibiades, and smile at her words. She’ll run her fingers through his hair and speak the truth to him until he’s comforted, until he forgets both Lydia and the strange little serving girl who delivered letters, until he’s happy. I’ll stay in the dusty, dim house of demons and broken shutters, and I’ll know that he is safe. I can’t ask more than that, want more than that. I won’t.
The next two days, I bring him letters. We don’t talk of Koré, or Lydia, or who I am. He tells me about his studies, his plans for when he is duke, and I tell him exactly what I think. I stare at the lace on his cuffs, the tendons in his hands, and try to memorize him for the day when I’m alone.