Read Online Alcestis by Katharine Beutner - Free Book Online Page B

turned toward me slowly, and my stomach crawled. I backed away, hands out behind me to feel for the wall before I ran into it.
    “No. No, I have not.”
    “Go upstairs then,” Pelias said. I turned and went. The head maid walked ahead of me, uncharacteristically silent. When we came to the kitchen door, she grabbed my elbow and pulled me to a halt, then disappeared inside. She came back with an oatcake and a handful of dried apple slices and pressed them into my hands, anxious, glancing around for my father. I looked past her into the kitchens, where piles of chopped onions lay on a table and slaves bent over to stoke the fire beneath a roasting spit of meat.
    “Go on,” the head maid said. “Call for me if you need more to eat later. I’ll bring something for the queen.”
    I went, but stopped on the first step of the stairs—if I craned my neck and peered through the pillars, I could just see Admetus’s men entering the palace, subdued now that Pelias had returned. The chariot driver was not among them. The head maid hissed at me again, her head sticking out of the kitchen doorway, and I ran up the steps, clutching my sticky dinner in sweaty hands. In the bedchamber, I put the food on the table and went to the window, wiping my hands on my skirt. I braced my palms against the stones that framed the window as I leaned out. The courtyard was bright with torchlight. The chariot driver stood with the horses, holding their reins and murmuring to them, and I held my breath as I watched him, waiting for him to look up. He did not.
    “Alcestis?” Phylomache said sleepily. I smiled at her. She pushed herself up, back against the wall behind the bed, and reached out to touch Asteropia’s head, a brief glance of her fingers to reassure herself of the girl’s presence, the same way the head maid had touched me. “What are you looking at?” she asked me. “Come away from there, you make me nervous hanging out the window like that.”
    “Admetus of Pherae has come to speak to Pelias,” I said. “I’m looking at his horses.”
    Phylomache took a sharp breath. “When did he come? Just now?”
    I pushed away from the window and went to perch on the edge of the mattress. “He came this afternoon while Pelias was hunting. I thought—” I stopped, but Phylomache nodded once, quickly. She knew. “But he was perfectly polite. We just sat, for hours and hours, and then Pelias came home and shouted at him.” I rubbed my hands together, the skin of my palms sticking and gliding. “Admetus says he’ll have my hand. Pelias refused him. And he didn’t do it politely.”
    “It’s not your hand the man wants, love,” Phylomache said, and put her own hands on her belly. “You had chaperones, didn’t you? The maid at least, surely. You can’t have stayed down there with him alone. You would’ve wakened me.”
    “I had chaperones and guards. And I prayed to Artemis. He did not dishonor me.” I reached over and picked up the cake, breaking off a piece and considering it. My stomach still felt trembly and knotted. “The head maid would’ve eaten him if he tried anything.”
    Phylomache’s mouth twisted up on one side. “That is not funny, Alcestis.”
    “I know,” I said, and put the piece of cake in my mouth.
    “He made a bad mistake, staying while you were alone in the palace.”
    “So I shouldn’t have invited him to stay?”
    Phylomache waved a hand. “No, you had to invite him, of course. Your father knows that. He is letting Admetus stay the night, is he not?”
    “He is.”
    “And then?”
    “I told you, Pelias refused his suit. He ordered Admetus to leave in the morning and never speak of courting me again.”
    Phylomache gaped slightly. “He must not like this one.”
    “It seems that way, does it not?” I looked down at Asteropia, who was still sleeping, sprawled on her side with one fist against her face and her mouth wide open, too exhausted to be awakened by our voices. “She tired herself