Cadmus hasn't been seen for some time. Sometimes, he disappears for business he won't disclose. I can assume why, and it doesn't bother me. Monogamy, I learned, is especially difficult when you live forever.

We agreed that his eye could wander, and mine, well. His eyes flounce to other women, and once I was released from the tower, my eyes haven't wandered far from the throne. It's rare, especially as someone from my bloodline, to only have had one lover, a single spouse.

I say to Kora, "You seem to have your misgivings."

Kora blinks once, and a calm composure hangs over her eyelids, half-lidded. She says, "Not at all. I trust your judgment." Trust. I have no friends; I am lonely. Not alone, as a queen surrounded by a husband and court and gods. But lonely, but I have her. And it's a burden I don't dare place on Kora's head, since she is merely doing her duty. "And I cannot imagine your pain."

"It becomes bearable with time," I reply, trying to reassure her.

***

Circe has been given one of the eastern rooms, and I tell Kora to inform her that we will meet in the Tower of Time, also to the east. The tower is used by palace historians and astronomers to both observe star patterns and tell the time. Atop the forty-foot tall, round slab of marble is a golden man with a conch horn who twists in the direction of the wind.

As I walk the asphalt, bordered by meander designs, I suck in a breath, skin tightening along my ribs. As if I'm adjusting it, an ill-fitting shawl for my weak bird-bones. Weak, but ichor, hot and slow, flows through my veins. The day isn't hot. A breeze teases my hair, braided in rings atop my ahead, but

I set the crown aside, and as silly as it is, I feel as if I'm going in secret to the tower. As if I am unwatched. The sky is still pink with a lazy morning, and I come across no one else.

A shrill scream in the air. I look up to see a massive gryphon with feathers of burnished bronze soaring across the cloudless sky, a writhing, shimmering fish in one of its great talons.

No rider. The wealthiest here use gryphons for both transportation and the protection of their dearest treasures. Good for keeping riches secure, horrible for keeping the verandas clean of feathers and feces.

One time, one settled on the balcony outside the bedroom I share with Cadmus, and, sneaking behind the silver curtain, I observed it as it cleaned its feathers like a fastidious cat. Semele was fat and cooing in my arms, and the gryphons snapped to, its golden eyes, lined with black, on the curtain. Its curved lion's tail, which it had swung with ease, grew still, its bristles straight. This was before I grew so unwell I was locked in the westmost tower, but after the necklace clenched itself around my throat.

Behind me, Cadmus said with a hint of concern, "Come away, my love. They cannot tell the difference between children and meat." Once, outside the westernmost tower, I saw a gryphon feasting on a small pink thing, yanking the entrails from a fleshy body with tiny feet. I couldn't tell if it was a rabbit or a baby. Counted five toes. Or maybe I dreamed it.

Stepping away, I looked down at my daughter, who nibbled on her own fingers. After some silence, the gryphon flew off, but its hooked golden beak lingered in my mind.

As my gaze follows the bird-feline flying near the Tower of Time, I admire it. I envy it as I stand among the white lilies and scarlet roses.

The tower's shadow comes over me all at once. A cool, darker part of the grounds before the sun rises higher. Before the entrance frieze, decorated with bas-reliefs of the eight wind gods wrapped around every Ionic pillar, there are eight separate golden sundials. And when I go in, there will be a water clock driven by the water that flows from the rocky outcrop behind the palace.

I roll my shoulders and straighten my back, which aches. Enough of being the mad queen, the sad, fading lady in the tower, embroidering the same inoffensive poppies on tapestries. Oh, to have the boldness to Arachne with her weavings. But boldness will get me punished, always.

As the wind ushers in, the man with the conch twists to the north, and it rustles against my chiton, a billowing white garb with a long length of fabric draped diagonally around it, lined with gold and patterned with golden lotuses. On the sash, across the border, are silver squares with pearls in the center and a series of jeweled tassels.

I enter the tower and ascend the ivory stairs to the domed main room, where light comes in through a small opening. The floor gutters in rippling steps, joining around a hole in the tiles. On the northmost wall extends a long marble funnel where water comes through and empties into a triangular canister high above my head.

Once the water falls, it collects and filters through what extends out of the hole in the ground: a small, tiled well, where the water will rise and, with each engraved number passed, signify the hours of the day that have come and gone. The creators painstakingly measured the exact diameter it would take for the water to hit each marker every passing hour, exactly.

Now, as water trickles in, eight marks out of twenty-four are filled. In the small well is a clay float and a rod. Once it reaches midnight, the rod buoys and hits the eight little bell, crafted from bronze and terracotta, anchored by beams around the dome. The chimes signal the end of the day, and for the caretakers to empty the basin before it overflows. By far, a more reliable way of telling the time when clouds prevent the sundials from picking up the time.

Turning on my heels, I survey the circular room, which I have only ventured to when I'm in need of complete quiet. It is a place of study and observations, and the stars wind to the roof, where sometimes academics will study the stars and moons.

Around me are painted murals. Zephyr guiding frightened Psyche in her seashell-pink chiton into Eros' arms.

Queen Pasiphaë of Crete, swathed in cowhide and on all fours as a giant bull approaches.

Zeus, disguised as feather-dressed Artemis, leering at Kallisto, who has a bearskin as a cloak and pale blue eyes, half-lidded with desire. And of course, her torso is exposed. After Zeus took advantage of her affection for Artemis and raped her, and Kallisto grew heavy with child, Artemis furiously left her in the woods alone, since only maidens may be one of her hunters. Devastated, she wandered until jealous Hera turned her into a bear to be killed in the hunt, but Zeus set her into the stars.

"It truly is a shame," Circe says cheerfully, seemingly gliding out of the shadows. "I hope she was able to find a kind she-bear to love." She stares at me, hands behind her back. She's dressed in one of the gifts I told Kora to offer, a deep blue stola in the same fashion as the one I wear now. "What?" As if I believe that wide-eyed innocence.

A little sharply, I reply, "You startled me."

"Ah. My apologies." Something tells me she isn't sorry. She looks at the murals on the wall, Queen Pasiphaë in the cowhide. "Ah, yes, she was my sister, you know. Is, I suppose."

"Pasiphaë?" That's no surprise, since the Queen of Crete was known for being a witch.

She nods sagely, chin high. "Yes, the woman who slept with a bull." Always so frank and gauche. "A shame, because she was held in high regard before that."

"How can she be blamed?" I protest. "She was cursed by Poseidon. And besides that, she was a powerful witch-queen."

"That doesn't matter when all you're remembered for is sleeping with a bull and birthing the Minotaur." How frightened she must have been, no matter her steely resolve, to carry a horned beast inside her. And how angry, to be reduced to her humiliation and trauma. "Although I was amused when she made Minos ejaculate serpents and scorpions. I must say I always wondered how that reunion supper would fare, but no matter."

I sit on one of the steps high above the well, as tiny streams dribble into it from the funnel.

"May I?" Circe asks, settling beside me.

With a nod, I consent to her hand on mine. Instead of lingering, her forefinger runs across my arm, under my elbow, and up. She glances her touch near my wound, and then over my shoulder. When her feather-light caress swerves down, tickles my spine and slows, careful.

I suck in a breath, kneading my bottom lip with my teeth. A burning in my stomach. I fear her seeing the rest of me. My scars.

She pulls away, the lines deepening around her mouth. Whereas my fingers are smooth, her palms are lined with faint wrinkles and a glittering thrum of power under the skin. But still, they flow like water on my skin. A balm.

"I didn't want to get too close with your handmaiden ill at ease, but I was right. It's as if you have an infection. I fear the scholars and philosophers tend to underestimate how physical curses can be."

A lump swells in my throat. "My body is infected? Will your magic cure it?"

"This is complicated. There's no snapping my fingers and, suddenly, any grief or pain you have will disappear. Any melancholy, gone." She snaps to illustrate her point.

Hopelessness pools in my ribs. Familiar. Horrible, but safe. "But then, this might be pointless, if I cannot be healed."

"Consider this more of a rediscovery."

"What else do I need to discover about myself?" I have been inside my own head since before the Greek empire began. Over six-thousand years. One of the youngest of my extensive family, but then I look at mortals, and I realize how long the centuries have been.

"With immortals, there's less urgency to self-reflect. We become constant. Stagnant. And because mortals are not so willing to challenge us, lest they be turned into trees or struck down, they keep silent. And so, without resistance, a stone cannot change."

"If it cannot erode, doesn't that make it stronger?" I must be fooling myself. What have I done but been stripped and beaten by the wind, letting it erode me until I am small and smooth?

Circe looks down at my hands, crossed in my lap. "Sometimes, to be made better, we must be changed. Broken apart and remade." Broken apart? What else has this life granted me?

Silence, except for the water. She looks at me for permission, and I nod. She softly grasps my wrist, as if to feel my heartbeat.

"I'm sorry," she says, "but this might hurt."

I square my shoulders and offer her my left hand. "Go ahead." Anything she gives me cannot be worse than anything that's already happened.