Circe has been here for a week, but I only summoned her that one time to the Tower of Time. Since then, she has remained sparse. Her contradictions madden me, how she can so easily slip into the shadows but be loud and illuminating if she wants. The cavalier way she speaks of our sordid history, of what happened to her sister, is so unthinkable. I could never be so outwardly wry or coarse, even in jest.

The sigil she's placed on my arm, the small moon, has dulled and no longer aches at all. But I'm always aware of it. Waiting, dormant. I wonder if it really was meant to be a moon at all, since I stopped before she finished. I've asked Kora to check to see what Circe does in the stretch of time we're apart, but she seems to only go to the library to read scrolls.

When I awoke this morning, I was shocked that though my pain wasn't gone, I was refreshed. Ready to go to court, even with Cadmus missing; after all, it isn't as if I haven't carried court alone before. Even when he was there, even when he did most of the talking, I felt alone. The sun tumbling through the window didn't hit my eyes with the same promise of an acute headache.

The day has fared well so far. I managed to eat some slices of honeyed lamb with legumes. As I listen to petitions, I kick my sandals off and let my bare feet dangle, swaying from side to side. No one says a thing. I feared retribution if I were to act girlish, no longer the regal mockery of a statue.

If I sit straight enough and don't move, it subsides a little. A life without this ache seems like a distant dream.

No matter how I feel, I mustn't forget my duties to the people. The Olympians won't care if I act silly, so long as I don't trespass on their supremacy. I have the faint notion that I should go outside the palace for once, but I hesitate. Even if I have little to fear. Too many unknowns.

In the evening, with little to do, I look in the mirror and see the glimmer of my crown.

I don't feel entirely different, as if I've gone from relatively plain to shifting the fabric of the world around me, as if it were water. The difference, I think, is internal. Though I am not changed, I feel the capacity, the energy to start changing.

Candles burn around me. I spend many hours pacing from the washroom to my bedroom. When I think of reading from a scroll or using the loom, fatigue weighs down my bones, and my collarbone stings. Yet, the exhaustion isn't enough for me to sleep. Must remember to ask for poppy tea.

When I settle on the veranda outside my room, a breeze teases the thin linen of my robin egg-blue chiton, with two silver lines crossed in the front. I sigh, and allow it to caress me. Yet, I don't have enough peace to relax as the stars come out, and Ursa Major watches me.

I enter my bedroom, and loyal Kora is there to attend to my last needs, to help me remove the pearls and braids from my hair. When my cornsilk hair falls on my shoulders, a burden eases. Doesn't go away, but becomes less heavy.

As she goes to leave, I call her, "Kora?"

Her round face, red hair, hazel eyes, green around the irises while Circe's are gold. A passing urge in my stomach, a clench. It tells me something is wrong with Kora, but as I look at her, I can't tell what. The way her skin tightens around her mouth, the crux of her neck meeting her shoulders. It feels wrong.

She faces me. "Yes, my queen?"

"Before you retire, please bring Circe to my chambers."

The skin around her eyes scrunches. "Of course." She goes to leave.

I raise a hand. "Wait."

Jutting her chin over her shoulder, she asks, "Yes, my queen?"

As she watches me, her pupils dilate. Often, I've noticed, the black of her eyes pulsates, is larger than normal. "Are you feeling well?"

She cranes her head forward. "Yes. I am perfectly well."

I laugh and press my fingers to my head. "Ah. My apologies. I had a passing notion that there was something wrong."

As she ducks out, I cannot help but feel she's hiding something from me. I want to chastise myself. Paranoia is a common symptom of madness or resentment. It is what guides petty men or pettier gods, especially when it festers. A good queen needs supporters and confidantes, and I cannot afford to let my fragmented mind distance my only handmaiden.

When Kora leaves me, her moon-blue stola fluttering behind the golden door, I wait alone, hands gripping the velvet sheets.

Chimes in the distance. Midnight. It is late to bring someone into my chambers. The part of my mind that would tell me not to has softened, however. Circe fulfills the role of my nurse, and like a nurse tends to her queen when she must sit on the birthing chair, Circe is here to relieve me of the curse around my neck. I mustn't overthink these things. Mother used to chide me for how I ruminated for too long. How, when I was a babe, I would cry from a scratch hours after the pain dulled.

The golden door opens its flowery mouth, and Circe slips in with ease. Her eyes fall on me, drink me in. With my hair down, I look different than I do in court or at the feasts. One might say I look more relaxed. If they don't know how meticulously I've kept my hair from falling along my clavicle, so it doesn't get stuck in the crust and clots.

"Interesting," Circe says, standing by the door. Her distance means I don't need to crane my head quite so high to meet her gaze. "Even in your chambers, you look like you're always watching for something. Like a gryphon on alert."

I palm the hair by my face. "Watching for something? What is the 'something', do you think?"'

A ghost of a smile as she teases her finger against one of the vased lilies on the display table by the entrance. Perhaps when she feels the petals, she gets a sense of the area's aura. What stories these flowers must tell.

"Danger," says Circe, voice low. Heat rolls down my spine. The cool spring air outside has hardened my nipples into peaks she must surely notice. I wonder how often the island nymphs wore clothes. How often she let her stare linger.

Here, she keeps her distance. Waiting. And my posture feels the same as when we spoke in the Tower of Time, so angular and stiff it aches.

She wants to be familiar. Not as a lover, but as my nurse. Her witch-healing requires touch, closeness, and I find I'm tired of the porcelain mask.

More surprising to me, I find her skin on mine doesn't repel me. After the humiliations I've been through, what my body has been through, I feared having someone touch me. Cadmus I allow because I have no choice; a wife's duty, even if she is a queen, is to warm her husband's bed at his command.

"I'd like to continue our healing sessions. At a more fervent pace, if possible."

"Fervent?" Her eyes glitter when she grins. Her touches are soft, and yet her smiles are always sharp. "Of course. I've been waiting to see if you were ready for more."

"I think these are working, so I want to do more."

"We must pace it out, so you don't become overwhelmed."

I look at the mark on my left wrist. At first, it was scary to think I was letting her mark me. But no, like my scars from childbirth, this is mine. If I claim it, and I do. "What will I be able to do?"

"Many things. Detect glamors, perhaps spice your wine with a single move of your hand."

"Turn men into animals?" Men into animals, women into monsters.