A memory tugged at the far reaches of his mind.
Just after his father had made him divine, his brother, Apollo, had taken him to see Delphi.
‘What do people ask the oracle?’ Hermes had said as they soared above the holy city in Apollo’s golden chariot.
‘Anything they desire to know. Mostly it comes down to questions of power, lineage, infidelity, how to prevent an untimely death. Mortals aren’t very imaginative.’
‘And it always tells the truth?’
Apollo had smiled. ‘In one way or another. The stone never lies.’
Hermes recalled a chamber, thick with sulphurous smoke and something trapped beneath the ground, cracked and glittering like a great black eye.
‘CanIask it something?’ he’d said.
‘No.’ His brother’s face had grown stern. ‘Father has forbidden any of us Olympians to touch the omphalos stone. It would weaken us, drain our godly powers.’
The same fear that had pricked Hermes then returned as he stared at the shard of rock. It was a piece of the omphalos stone, he was sure of it. But if it was so dangerous, why had Hades had it in his possession?
His hand was aching now.
Touch it, said the voice.
Heart thundering, Hermes rolled the stone free of its cloth, onto his palm.
As soon as his skin touched the shard, he was yanked from his physical form, his consciousness plummeting into a void of nothingness. For a moment, there was only darkness.Then terror like he’d never known engulfed him as his shimmering life-threads fled away across the blackness. He tried to reach for one, but he had no hand to grasp it. Instead, his consciousness lurched forward, dissolving into the strand and travelling along its length as it joined another, then another.
Shapes began to emerge. Hermes soared through the wings of an eagle, glinted in the eye of a bull and shot through the antennae of a butterfly as he raced through the tapestry of life. He was flying across the curve of a dolphin’s fin when he remembered: he was meant to ask a question.
What did he desire the most? His father’s approval? Aphrodite’s love? Ares’ envy?
He wanted all of it.
Suddenly the tapestry changed. The web of gleaming threads twisted, forming something new.
A city drawn in ever-moving lines of light. A fortress, its glowing towers stretching away into the darkness. Troy. Then the image shifted, the threads weaving into a clash of bodies, Aphrodite’s son, Aeneas, falling back as a female soldier raised her sword against him. Hermes tried to cry out, but he had no voice to scream. The vision swirled again: the same battlefield, a different tangle of bodies. He searched for Aeneas but could not see him. Then a girl parted the throng, her short hair buffeted by an invisible wind. She stared at Hermes as if she could see him, then raised her hands, Poseidon’s trident clutched in her fist. Life-threads streamed from her, leaching from the scene around him into her as she channelled her power.
With a gut-churning wrench, Hermes dropped the stone and returned to his body. He staggered from the bed, fell upon his hands and retched onto the tiled floor.
His insides emptied, he wiped his mouth and sat back on his heels, chest heaving.
Aeneas, Troy, the Titan girl, his uncle’s trident. It didn’t make sense. Yet, Apollo had said the stone did not lie. There must still be a way for him to redeem himself, even if the path was not yet clear. Perhaps he could save Aphrodite’s son after all and defeat the Titan girl in one fell swoop.
Hermes looked to the darkening sky beyond his window and curled his hands into fists.
Of one thing he was certain: his destiny waited in Troy.
46. First Blood
Danae stared at the blood oozing from the Trojan guard’s body, glistening in the moonlight like spilt ink.
She flinched as Odysseus grabbed her arm, pulling her to face him. Her gaze caught on the dark flecks splattered across his neck.
‘What did she say to you?’ His fingers dug into her flesh.
She ripped her limb from his grasp and backed away staring at the blade still clenched in his fist.
‘How did you know …’
