Telamon drew his sword. “Jason! Order them to turn back, or I will make you.”
Without a word, Dolos sprinted across the deck, his healer’s bag secured across his torso, and dived into the sea. There was a clash of metal behind Danae as Castor’s blade met Telamon’s, but her gaze stayed with Dolos as he swam back to the rocks that moved further and further away with every heartbeat.
She desperately wanted to follow the healer. But she didn’t move.
She remembered now where she’d seen the face of the golden stranger before. In a city far away, cast in a likeness over eight times her size.
Athena.
She, a mortal, had conjured a wind that knocked a goddess of Olympus to the ground. Not only that, Athena had fled rather than fight her. The Twelve were not untouchable after all.
When the prophet falls, and gold that grows bears no fruit, the last daughter will come. She will end the reign of thunder and become the light that frees mankind.
She saw Delphi, the burning bodies, the screams of terror, all those people massacred and unburied. She had a chance, she could stop that from ever happening again.
You know what you must do, said the voice.
Tears streamed down her face. She had to stay with theArgo, no matter who got left behind. Her destiny was greater than her desires, greater than the sum of every person aboard the ship. Reaching Prometheus had to come above all else. And no matter how much it hurt, she couldn’t let anything, or anyone, stand in her way.
PART 3
33
Revelations
“You’re a pathetic excuse for a captain, Jason!” Telamon’s face was redder than his hair. “You’re a parasite, a leech, a maggot on a steaming pile of shit! I wouldn’t piss on you if you were burning to death!”
Atalanta sat in silence bedside him, her glower more cutting than any of Telamon’s insults. Both were bound by the ankles and wrists, tied to iron rings in the wall of the stern deck. In the end, it had taken five men to restrain them.
The land of the Doliones was far behind them, but Telamon was still going strong. Danae was amazed he still had breath in his lungs. And that no one had gagged him.
Jason was rowing with the men. The captain didn’t have much choice. After fighting the Earthborn the Argonauts were down to fourteen crew, two of whom were currently tied up. Danae’s position as seer saved her joining the rowers, and with Tiphys at the tiller, there were only ten men spread across the benches.
Danae sat on the stern deck, staring unfocused at the waves. She was grateful she’d been left alone. She felt brittle as glass after conjuring the wind. No matter where she looked, she saw Hylas’s face as the Earthborn dragged him away.
She told herself she was too weak, that she wouldn’t have had the strength to swim back to the shore. But no matter how fervently she rallied her excuses, the truth stood like a colossus against her. She could have followed Dolos, but she chose to remain on the ship.
How strange that a lump of obsidian rock knew her nature better than she did. Three pairs of handprints; Hylas, Dolos and Heracles.
“King of Iolcos?” spat Telamon. “What a fucking joke. Heracles was our real leader. You just cost the Argonauts our best man. He was a true hero. He went back for Hylas, he’d have done that for any of us, and what do you do? You abandon them! Heracles is a living legend, and you are nothing!”
“Stop rowing!”
The men hauled in their oars as Jason climbed over his bench to face the crew.
“The time has come for the truth.” His chest was heaving, and his palms bled. He hadn’t built up calluses like the rest of them. “I hoped it wouldn’t come to this. But you all deserve to know. We have endured more than bad luck on this voyage.”
Danae’s head snapped toward the rowing benches.
“The storm, Lemnos, the mist, all in defiance of the omens. The gods have been punishing us, because of one of the Argonauts.”
Her stomach dropped through the deck. How did he know?
Jason took a breath. “Heracles is not the man you think he is.”
She froze.
“He has committed a blood crime—”
