She cups my open hand, my palm up, as if she's cradling a small bird. Along my wrist, the edge of her nail nimbly traces a pattern, back and forth, back and forth. Back. Forth. A glow emanates under my wrist, my pulse hot, as her nail grazes the sensitive skin.

I gasp when I see the lighting under my skin, braiding itself through my veins. And I tug my hand away and shamble backwards, almost falling to my side. I want to stand, but the throbbing pain is my world.

But as soon as it comes, it doesn't subside, but it dulls when Circe reaches out, and a coolness crawls over my skin. As I cradle my marked hand to my chest, I tremble, and it's hard to keep my tears at bay.

When I raise my hand, there is only a small mark, a silver crescent to the left of my vein. It has its own heartbeat.

I struggle to control my breathing. "I can't keep doing this. If Cadmus sees, he'll . . ."

Circe jaw tenses. "Kill you?"

As if he could ever be so merciful. Like he or the gods would bless me with numbing death. "Far worse." None of us, neither mortals nor the minor gods, are so fortunate. Our souls only exist where the Olympians deem them fit.

She pulls her hand away. "Very well. If you want to stop, we will."

I whisper, "That's it?"

"Well. I might be a witch long-reviled by most, but I'm not a monster. I won't incur anything on your body that you don't want."

"You have an interesting definition of a monster."

She is giving me a choice. As a queen, it feels silly to piteously whine about having no choices, and yet this feels strange and new to me. Here Circe is, giving a new path that scares but intrigues me. So many unknowns.

If these tattoos will save me from this lifelong curse, I want them. Even if that means Cadmus will be angry. If he's disgusted, it isn't as if we need to sleep together. I cannot have heirs. And to many, that makes me little better than a monster, except monsters can have children. They have utility, to reproduce or be slain. A barren woman is treated with less regard.

I must use my queenly voice. "There's no one here but us. So, tell me. Is it true what you told me, that you turned Scylla into a monster to save her?"

Without hesitation, without looking away, she says, "Yes."

As I grip it close, the beginning sigil throbs against my chest, my heart. "And her lover never hurt her again?"

Dryly, Circe replies, "She ate him, so perhaps there was some indigestion." I don't know what else I expected.

The space behind my eyes tightens. "That's foolish. The gods send heroes to kill monsters." Like Perseus slew Medusa while she slept pregnant in her lonely sea cave.

Her eyes narrow, severe. No longer with the flippant façade that makes her seem younger. "What, then?"

I think about it. "We must learn to adapt."

Circe frowns and, when I nod to her, sets a hand on my shoulder. "You cannot befriend those who terrorize you. Your oppressors bet on your need to placate them."

She doesn't understand. Her life isolated from the world has let her run free with ideals. I cannot be a threat. The gods teach you that to survive, to have a place, you must be a monster, and then slice your head off because you’re a monster.

I shrug away her hand from my shoulder. "Should a reckoning come, I'd like to be alive to see it. Free. Not in chains."

"Is this not a chain?" she asks, pointing to the necklace in my skin.

"That's why you're here. Don't fail me."

Expression plain, mouth straight, Circe says, "Is that an order, Queen Harmonia?"

I lean close. "Do you want it to be?"

I rub my throat. No matter what, it remains taut. "If I relinquish this pain, it feels like a disrespect to all those who have suffered because of it." As if the pain were for nothing. I'll forget. Without agony, I might slip back into the labyrinth of my own head. My mind, both the labyrinth in the Minotaur.

With a hint of sadness in those deep, dark eyes, Circe says to me, "There is more to grief than suffering. You must have happy memories, too."

Indeed, but even those are sad, since they no longer exist. I can never go back to braiding Semele's hair or watching my sons practice with their spears or xiphe in the old courtyard, rife with golden lilies and plum trees.

I inhale sharply. "You must think I want to suffer."

Circe looks at me with dark, half-lidded eyes. "No. How can I expect you to know how to contend with your grief when you were never allowed to?"

"It seems all I do is contend with it."

"Perhaps you can show me some of your more pleasant memories."

I blink. "How?"

Her jaw sets. "There are ways."

I want to know. And despite myself, my fears of what I'll become, I want Circe to teach me all she knows. Want to feel her touch on my skin, as she maps out the cartography of my flesh in a way that makes me feel new to myself.

I don't want to be a monster, but there's some comfort in the thought of being disgusting to Cadmus. More than I already am with my scars and wounds. If I go too far, he may even want to kill me. A long time ago, maybe I would've wanted him to. But if he wants to hurt me, that means I have an excuse to free myself of him.

The gods won't take kindly to an errant mortal king-turned-immortal trying to harm the daughter of two Olympians, especially after Zeus himself bestowed me as a gift. It'd be as if he climbed into the clouds and spit in Zeus' face. With the side glances Cadmus has given me throughout the years, I know he has never forgotten that the gods would sooner let him languish in the meadowy bowels of the Underworld than me.

No. I shake my head. Cadmus has not always been kind, but he's been with me this long. That must mean something. It'd be callous to admit those centuries mean nothing, that they were a waste.

"If all this pain is meaningless, that means all the deaths, all the grief, it was for nothing."

"Perhaps that's true to a degree, but consider that we can take away lessons from the pain. Ways to armor others from what we've endured. It doesn't make it right, but it's some consolation."

I jerk away, standing and clutching my burning hand close to my chest. "You speak as if you know me."

"Don't I?"

I purse my lips. "You are becoming familiar." I'm unsure if I want to leave because being near an infamous witch repulses me or the opposite. Because I know, in time, she'll be repulsed by me.

She stands, too, but steps away from me. "I fear that is the nature of my work." Without another word, a shadow flits across her eyes, and she leaves me alone in the tower. With only the water to keep me company.