“Do you love me?” Eugenides asked without preamble.

“Why do you ask?” she asked and he grimaced in frustration.

“Because I need to know,” he said.

“I am wearing your earrings,” Attolia offered.

“Being willing to marry me is not the same as loving me.”

“Would you believe me if I said I did love you?” Attolia asked. It seemed a genuine question, and Eugenides thought carefully about his answer.

“I don’t think that you’d lie.”

“Does it matter?” Attolia asked.

“If you’re truthful?”

“If I love you” she said.

“Yes. Do you love me?” he asked again.

~~~

“Are you insane?”

“No more then usual, I think.”

“Insane to think of loving me,” said Attolia, and the emotions that colored her usually emotionless voice was bitterness and self mockery.

~~~

(Attolia) “Love I’m not familiar with. I didn’t recognize the feeling till I thought I lost you in Ephrata. And when I thought I was losing you a second time, I realized I would give anything to keep you – my lip service to other gods, but my pride too, and my rage to all gods, everything for you. Then I see you here and see what I have done to you.”

~~~

“Who am I, that you should love me?

“You are My Queen,” said Eugenides. She sat perfectly still, looking at him without moving as his words dropped like water into dry earth.

“Do you believe me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered.

“Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“I love you.”

And she believed him.

The Queen Of Attolia ~Megan Whalen Turner