She knows. It's the only thing that would explain the tension in her shoulders, the straight slash of her mouth, the hunter's eyes. She must have been there at the edge of the meadow, maybe saw his hand touching mine, the narcissus, the look in his eyes, my hand lingering. . . .

   I'm dead. Dead. Dead.

   "Persephone."

   Her voice is a command. I drag my feet toward her, wish- ing I could turn and run. My hand clutches at the lavender bushes as if they could swallow me, but my feet keep walking, step by agonizing step.

She isn't pacing anymore, just standing there, staring, waiting.

   I pass a tree. Open your rough bark, I pray silently. Close me in. Nothing.

   How long has she known?

   As I approach she lifts her hand and I cringe. But she's just motioning me into the courtyard and then to a stone bench. I sit.

   She draws a deep breath, looking down at me. I look at the hands clenched in my lap.

   I'll never see him again.

   "I've heard news that causes me grave concern." Her voice is as rigid as her lips. "It would be an understatement to say I'm disappointed in you."

   My cheeks are burning; my heart is pounding so loud, I have to struggle to hear her words.

   She takes a few steps and stares over the gate, her eyes tracing the path. "I have always allowed you considerable freedom. I haven't asked you to tell me where you're going or which friends you see. I have felt, in the security of this vale, I need not limit you to our four walls. Now I doubt the wisdom of my choice."

   My body is an empty shell. That's all I'll ever be now: a husk, rattling in the wind.

   He'll wait for me tomorrow, maybe the next day, maybe one more, and then he won't come back.

   I barely sense her sitting next to me. She lifts my hand from my lap, traps it between her cool fingers.

   "Yet what happened is certainly not your fault, nor, other than neglecting to tell me, are your own actions in question. So it is clearly not you who should be punished."

   What?

   "And so I have asked Admete to leave," she says, dropping my hand. She stands again, paces a few steps, and heaves a vast sigh, rustling the leaves. "To think I've been nurturing this traitor in my vale! I must tell you, when I heard she had been seeing this . . ."—she stops, shudders—"this so-called 'river god,' I was shocked. There has . . ."

   Her words wash over me, nothing but noise. She doesn't know!

   ". . . and in the future I would expect you to tell me when you hear news of inappropriate . . ."

   The orchestra inside me drowns out her voice. It's playing a song of sun and skin, blaring about the life filling me again. I'm thinking of the way his hand looked lying on the grass, the brown back of his hand, the sunlit hairs licking his glowing arm.