It was an opening. Esther felt an anticipatory unclenching, the confessional equivalent of salivating before a meal. She almost told. Later, she would return to the moment and wonder, if she had sat down in her queen’s robes and told Lara everything—the cold, pulsing vortex, the beast, the near-escape, the knife—might it have made the difference? How, since then, she had tested herself, in secret, and found her powers so sapped it took her three hours to move a ring an inch? Would Lara, allowed in, have taken pity on her and gone to the camp? But that day in the night station she was so hurt still by Lara’s defection, and so hungry for Lara’s touch, and so angry that she was being denied it, and so disgusted by herself that she needed it, and so determined to protect herself against any of these feelings, that she gave back to Lara what Lara had given her and asked, coolly, “What difference does it make?”
Lara backed away. And that was how they stood for the rest of the negotiation, which is what it became, irrevocably, the second Esther said, “I came to ask a favor,” and began to try to sell Lara on privileges like access to the wives’ swimming pool and invites to an upper-tier banquet in exchange for Lara going to the camp. “And you’d get out of here for a while,” Esther added. “I’ll tell whichever eunuch brings you to take his time.”
She was still innocent then—both of how a queen was supposed to talk to people and of how the people could just say no. Lara didn’t even apologize. She said, “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Lara, after a pause, said, “No one’s told you what’s happened with the camp.”
“You mean the bandits?” Esther’s voice dove deep, mocking: “The king’s cleanse? They’ve been doing that for a long time.”
“No. There’s a new edict. Any non-Hebrew communing with a Hebrew will be put to death.”
Esther laughed. “That’s not possible. How would they buy or sell anything? How would they live?”
“I don’t know.”
“So the Persians must have stopped, then. Smashing the tents?”
“No. That’s allowed.”
“When was this?”
“Right after you were chosen. What’s he like?”
“Who?” But Esther was distracted. After you were chosen.
“The king,” said Lara.
“I hardly know him.”
“But haven’t you known him?”
“He’s harmless.”
“Clearly he’s not.”
Esther could have explained how the dangerous one wasn’t the king, but said instead, “I have to go.”
And Lara didn’t protest. She said, to Esther’s back, as nonchalantly as if they would see each other again in a couple hours: “Those things you offered me? The pool, the banquets? Do you really think it’s up to you, to let me do those things?”
* * *
Esther went straight to the king. His guards scoffed—they had not been told of any permission granting the queen entry today. And the minister was away, in Persepolis.
“I have no permission,” she said. She was shaking. “I won’t go away.”
Time passed. Esther had to sit down on the floor with her head between her hands; she could hear her teeth rattling. At some point, her arms were grabbed; someone hoisted her onto a chair. The queen must not sit on the floor. By the time she was led into the chambers, her shaking had given way to a dense pain that circled her head as if tracing the line of her crown.
The room where the king waited for her was not a room she had seen before. It was darker than his other rooms, without windows, lit only by torches and crude ones at that, the kind used in the palace’s passages and storage closets. Dominating the space was a large table strewn with tools and what looked like tiny stones, along with shelves—these, too, strewn with objects—that filled an entire wall, from floor to ceiling. The table was the only bright surface, its length lined with torches.
Esther blinked, trying to bring something into focus. Even the king, seated at the table, appeared blurred at his edges. Without looking her in the eyes, he pointed at a long, low cushion.
She sat.
When he didn’t speak, she began, “I’m here—”
“You’re bold.”
“I—”
He lifted a hand. “I understand.”
Esther waited. Her head hurt. It took all her strength to hold it upright—her crown felt heavier than water. The king picked up a tool. It was made for him, clearly—small, for his hands. He looked at the tool, then he picked up one of the stones in his other hand and began to scrape the stone with the tool. Then he stopped.
“You want something.”
Esther nodded, though he wasn’t looking at her. She was struck by how tenderly he handled the tool and the stone. This moved her to speak more freely than she might have, to use the voice she had not dared use since she had told him she wanted to go home. “What have you done to my people?” she asked.
“You’ll have to be more specific,” the king said. He brought the stone to eye level, lowered it, and began scraping again.
“The edict. Why?”
The king bent lower over his table. “There are differences,” he said, in a strange, singsong way, as if repeating something someone else had told him. “There are differences, and there are times when people must be reminded of these differences.”
“I’m one of them. You know this.”
He looked up and gave her a woeful smile. “I don’t know what you are.”
“I’m a Hebrew.”
“You were.”
“I still am.”
“You’re queen.”
A fresh sharpness joined the pain encircling Esther’s head. “You’re punishing them because you despise me,” she said.
The king set down his tool and stone and stood up from the table. Then he crossed the room to Esther and knelt in front of her. The torches sputtered behind him, throwing his beard and nose into shadow and making his eyes appear abnormally bright. He was quiet, examining her face. His eyes trying to get inside her eyes. This felt more threatening somehow than what he’d done with his sex the times he’d climbed atop her. Esther remembered his calm before he smashed the goblet. She worked not to flinch.
“I don’t despise you,” he said finally. “I mistrust you. I always will.”
Esther felt tears coming, but she did not cry. If she had not asked to go home, she thought, if she had not become the beast … the camp would likely have been forgotten, left alone. Right after you were chosen, Lara had said, and now Esther knew with certainty: what she had done was worse than merely failing to save them. She was driving them more quickly to destruction. She began again to shake.
“Esther. Beautiful Esther.” The king ran a finger down her left cheek, then another down her right. He touched her with the same tenderness and deliberation with which he handled his tools. Esther could see that he wanted to love her. She had sensed this before, in the dark, as he found his position above her, as he moved, and then stopped moving. But now she knew. He ran his fingers across her brow, pushing hair out of her eyes, and she could see that he was desperate to go back to before the beast yet couldn’t, not fully, not just because of her changed toes and ears but because the beast had left an after shape, like the way the sun left imprints on your vision even after you’d closed your eyes. He could not unbeast her. He could not unshame himself. Knowing this made her feel weaker—a softness for him knotted in her breastbone—and also more powerful, because she understood that he was weak, too.