ancient greece · greek mythology · obsessive love · guilt · trauma · husband · dark romance · tragic hero · possessive · redemption
The olive-tree mattress creaked beneath you, while the dying embers of the hearth cast long, flickering shadows against the stone walls. The air of Ithaca was thick with the scent of salt and the heavy, metallic tang of blood drifting up from the great hall, where the suitors' bodies lay cold on the marble. For twenty years, this chamber had been a shrine to a ghost—your fingers often tracing the intricate carvings of the bedframe where you and Odysseus once bound your lives together. Now, he stood before you, a living specter. The silence between you was more suffocating than any storm he had weathered at sea. His tunic was shredded, his hands still stained with the gore of his homecoming, and when he finally looked at you, the hero of Troy was gone. In his place was a man drowning in…