Page 68 of Odette's Vow

I did not join him.

Aeolus gestured to one of his attendants, who left the room and returned minutes later with a small dark brown pouch, cinched at the top with a leather drawstring. As he got closer, I recognised the accented gold swirl across the top of the pouch. It was a wind symbol, the same one that decorated the pathways and junctures of this house.

Of course.

“The legendary Bag of Winds,” I guessed.

Aeolus nodded, taking the bag from his attendant and weighing it in his hands. “Contained within are the winds that will guide you safely back to Ithaca. Except,” he paused, cocking his head to one side, “for the west wind. Do not use it unless you wish to send another home.”

Aeolus looked at Odette as he said that last part, and she paled at his words.

He must have meant Troy, guessing where she’d come from.

I gave a grunt of thanks as I accepted the bag, and abruptly stood. But, keenly aware that I must continue to play the political game until my men were safely on the ship and back out to sea, I gave him one small offering. “Odette – stay, eat, as long as you wish. Aeolus will have plenty of enchanting tales to tell you. I will see you down at the ships before nightfall.”

That should appease the wiry fuck.

It took every ounce of me to stride from that hall without her, to not look back. To not see if Aelous had reached his hand across the table to touch her. To show Odette that I trusted her. And all the while, Aeolus’ words reverberated in my skull: ‘You cannot have everything you want without a little risk’, the warning about the west wind, and the implied suggestion that Odette’s presence was a similar gamble.

That night, fatigue weighed as heavily upon me as the Bag of Winds, a surprisingly dense pouch, which informed me just how far we had left to travel. Yet, the seas were calm when we set sail under the stars and sleep claimed me.

Visions of home and the challenges ahead flickered like a storybook through my mind. In the hazy realm, I could have sworn Odette took the bag from my chest and replaced it with her hand, a soft whisper in my ear.

“It could take us far from Ithaca,” she murmured. “It could give us a chance together.”

Her breath on my cheek felt so real, but when I grasped at my chest, the bag was still there.

It was just a dream, a figment of my weary mind, mixing the image of a life I could not have with the reality the gods bestowed upon me.

1 Similar to a four-post bed.

2 Flatterer or sycophant, someone who uses charm deceitfully to gain favour.

23

Odette

Odysseus was a hypocrite.Saying I wasn’t for sale.Yet, he would rather tie me to a fate he knew I did not want than care enough to let me go. If he had it his way, we would end up forever bound to the ocean, to Poseidon’s whims.

Not that he knew that. Instead, he thought he could keep me by his side indefinitely, another possession to control, another prize of war.

Aeolus may have been pompous, certainly conceited, but life with him would have been bearable. Odysseus could have returned to his wife, and I could have had a chance to start again. But no, he chose to keep me tethered to his desires, regardless of what I wanted. And now my vow would keep us shackled to this cursed voyage. If he continued to have it his way, we would be doomed to wander the waters indefinitely, but how could I tell Odysseus that?

I suppose I should have been grateful that he didn’t offer to sell me, that he didn’t see me as a commodity to trade anymore, if it hadn’t been entirely self-serving. I couldn’t deny that there were moments – fleeting, yet undeniable – when I felt something for him, certain he felt something for me, too. A connection, a bond forged in all that time spent in the tenttogether, the weight of war bearing down on us, the loneliness, the faint bitter taste of longing. But that didn’t stop me being trapped in this endless cycle, at the mercy of a man whocouldtreat me as property.

I was sick of the sea. Sick of the endless spray of salt and the rocking waves. Sick of the aching solitude and the longing that tugged in my gut.

I needed to find a way out, and the only one I could see was sitting on Odysseus’ chest, his hand wrapped loosely around the Bag of Winds. The oil lamp in the corner of the cabin flickered over his sleeping face, softened by sleep. A stark contrast from the man I’d come to know in public. But even in his vulnerability, he still clutched the bag, the key to our fate, as if he knew I might take it.

I could not bargain any longer.

The thought of returning to Ithaca, to a life as one of Penelope’s maids … I shuddered with dread.

Odysseus was no longer a war hero, the war long over. Now he was just a man lost at sea. Perhaps Athena was done with her hero, and if she had abandoned him, why shouldn’t I?

I reached out, my fingers trembling as I pried the bag from his grasp. Luckily, he stirred but did not wake.

“It could take us far from Ithaca,” I murmured. “It could give us a chance together.”

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