Danae blinked, trying to calm the breath surging in her chest. She lowered herself to the ground and slowly, with the edge of her sandal, nudged the prophecy stone between the folds of her dress. Careful not to let it touch her skin, she wrapped it in its cloth and slid it back into her bag.
Turning away from Atalanta, she curled her knees into her chest and whispered to herself, “Oh, Manto, what in Tartarus have you given me?”
Danae was woken by a hand on her shoulder. Someone hovered over her, the dawn shining through a cloud of chestnut hair. Her mind still hazed with sleep, for a moment she thought it was Santos.
“Time to go,” said Hylas.
Danae grabbed her bag and pushed herself to her feet, glancing shamefully at the pile of vomit next to her. She’d been able to stow away the prophecy stone without question, but she knew she’d by no means got away with it. She had a feeling Atalanta wasn’t remaining silent about what she’d seen out of kindness.
She understood now why Manto’s father told them never to use the stone. Even after a few hours of sleep, she still felt drained from her brief contact with it. And yet he’d instructed Manto to give it to her. There must be a way of mastering it. When she could be certain she wasn’t being watched, she would try again.
Dolos handed round a light breakfast of biscuits, washed down with a few gulps of water.
“Remind me again why I’m not in a feathered bed being fed grapes by a serving girl?” Telamon grumbled as he cricked his back.
“Seer,” said Heracles as he packed his saddle bags. “What do the omens say waits for us at Iolcos?”
Danae’s eyes met his, and her heart contracted like an anemone under a prying hand.
“A fresh start.” She hoped that was broad yet intriguing enough to placate whatever Heracles was hoping to hear.
A crease formed between the hero’s brows, his ocean-deep gaze still fixed on Danae. She had to remind herself to keep breathing.
Then he turned his face to the bay. “Good. That’s exactly what we need.”
Hylas was wrong. The second day of riding was far worse than the first. Danae’s entire body ached, pain radiating through muscles she didn’t even know she had. She ground her teeth as Hylas urged their horse into a gallop and tried to keep her eyes fixed on the expanse of sea to their left.
They hugged the coast for a few hours, riding close to the sandy dunes that eventually rose into jagged cliffs. When the terrain became too rocky for the horses, Heracles led them inland across open fields and eventually onto a wide, well-trodden road.
Danae watched Atalanta riding ahead, her dented armor gleaming, her braids streaming in the wind. She had thought the Maenads wild, but they were tame compared to her. There was a fierceness in the warrior born of mountains and ravines, of living life on a blade’s edge. It both thrilled and terrified Danae. Perhaps Hylas had been teasing her, but she could imagine Atalanta as a child, running with her wolf pack and howling at the moon.
The group was forced to slow by midday and let the horses rest from the unrelenting sun. They dismounted by the side of the path, where the trees were thickest, and took shelter under the leafy canopy. While Telamon fed the horses, they took the opportunity to rest themselves, and Dolos handed round a lunch of berries and more biscuits. Danae watched Heracles pace back and forth, then remove his lion hide. Her eyes traced the scars across his muscled back as he took himself away from the group to the dappled shade of an oak tree. The others slid him sideways glances but said nothing.
Danae took advantage of the hero being out of earshot and whispered to Hylas, “Why does Heracles take orders from the King of Mycenae?”
Hylas licked the berry residue from his fingers. “The same reason most people take up their professions...coin.”
Danae’s lip curled. “I don’t believe the greatest hero in Greece works for a king he clearly dislikes just for coin.”
Hylas shrugged. “You’re a seer, surely you can just gut a rabbit and read its entrails or eat sacred cow dung and the mystery will be revealed to you.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
Hylas looked at her with a face so sombre he could have been at a burial. “I would never make fun of one who speaks to the gods.”
Danae couldn’t tell if he was teasing her.
“You’re right. I could use my gift if I wished, but it would save a lot of time and effort if you just told me. And if you do, I’ll put in a good word for you...” She glanced upward.
Now it was Hylas’s turn to look as though he couldn’t work out if she was mocking him. He glanced over his shoulder, then said softly, “He was ordered to, by the oracle at Delphi. That’s all I know.”
There was something he wasn’t telling her. She was about to press him further when Heracles strode over, a scowl etched across his brow.
“We should head east, bypass Creon’s kingdom altogether.”
Danae was about to ask why, then she caught the expressions on Atalanta’s and Telamon’s faces.
“That would add on at least a day’s riding,” said Dolos. “At the speed we’ve been going, I don’t think the horses have it in them.”
