Danae stretched on the cold ground and rolled over to find the hero sitting up. Metis was crouched beside him, helping him eat a bowl of leaf paste muddled with crushed cicadas. A gasp slipped from Danae’s lips, and Heracles looked up, his bony fingers halting on the way to his mouth. Her heart thundered as she looked into his bloodshot eyes, shadowed by the bruised skin of their deep sockets. Before she could divine what feelings stirred in the depths of his gaze, Heracles lowered his head, set down the bowl and tugged the cloak over his torso, covering his emaciated chest. His finger joints were swollen, and every movement seemed to cost him.
Metis looked between them, as though she were judging a game of petteia, then stood up. ‘I’ve got lizard traps that need tending.’ And before Danae could protest, she darted out of the hut.
The stone dwelling felt small as a walnut shell and large as the Aegean all at once. Heracles shuffled back into the corner of the hut until his wasted face was draped in shadow. The familiar hand of guilt wrapped around Danae’s throat. Was he afraid of her?
She swallowed, her mouth dry as a parched seabed. She edged toward the hydria and slopped water into one of the cracked bowls, gulping it down. The cool liquid sat painfully in her stomach, the clay trembling in her hand.
When the silence became too strained to bear, she held out the bowl, ‘Do you want some?’
‘No.’ From the gloom, Heracles’ eyes burned like the blue heart of a flame.
‘How do you feel?’
‘Like death.’
Silence slithered once more across the hut.
Finally, he rasped, ‘Where am I?’
‘An island called Delos. We – Telamon, Atalanta and I – rescued you from the Underworld. They … there was a run-in with Eurystheus when we emerged at Lerna, so I had to leave them behind to get you to safety. Metis has been taking care of you. She saved your life.’
Heracles blinked.
‘There is so much to explain. Much I still do not know myself …’ She trailed off, wondering how to begin.
‘Why did you leave?’
Despite the light warming her back, Danae flushed cold. ‘I left because I had to find the Titan Prometheus. That’s why I came with you and the Argonauts to Colchis. He made a prophecy about me … I wanted to tell you, believe me, there were so many times … I thought we would find him together. I hoped –’
The angles of Heracles’ face sharpened. ‘Even now, you can’t help but lie.’
‘I’m not lying.’
Suddenly, Heracles leant forward, and Danae recoiled as his skull-like face twisted with hate.
‘Then tell me, what happened to Dolos.’
Danae’s lips parted, but no sound came. She was transported back to Colchis, to the icy quiet, snow creaking beneath her fur-wrapped feet as blood trickled between Dolos’ sightless eyes.
‘It took me a week to realize it was you,’ Heracles continued, his teeth clenched in pain. ‘Days of hunting for a trailthrough that freezing forest, thinking you’d been kidnapped by shades. Then it dawned on me – if Dolos and the shade were both killed in the clearing, how did the bag of medicine end up outside my tent. Who stole my lion hide?’
She felt sick, as though the world had turned to sand and she was slipping through it.
‘It was you.’
Lies clustered to her aid: she could tell him that a group of shades had ambushed her and Dolos, she had tried to run back to camp and alert the Argonauts but only had time to drop the elixir by Heracles’ tent before they overpowered her and stole his hide. But facing him now, those false answers turned to ash on her tongue.
‘This is the truth: Dolos betrayed you. He spent his life manipulating you on the orders of your father. That medicine he fed you was an elixir from Zeus. That is the real source of your strength. It’s why you grew weak when it ran out. That night outside Colchis, I followed Dolos and caught him meeting with a shade who’d brought him more of the potion from Olympus. When I discovered the truth and tried to force him to tell you, he stabbed me.’ She drew a quivering breath. ‘I killed him in self-defence.’
As she spoke, Heracles retreated further towards the back of the hut, curling his body away from the light pouring in from the rising sun.
When she was small, her mother had told her and her siblings the story of Atlas, a Titan, who, after his brethren’s apparent defeat in the Titanomachy, was cast far to the west and condemned by Zeus to hold the weight of the sky on his back for all eternity. A tale Danae now knew to be a lie. But, in that moment, she felt as though the very heavens rested upon her shoulders. There was no going back now; Heracles too was a victim of his father. He deserved to know the truth.
‘The Twelve have lied to us about everything.’ Haltingly, she relayed the story Metis had told her: of Chaos, Gaia and Ouranos. She repeated the words of Prometheus’ prophecy and finally she said, ‘I was made a Titan by Gaia, in order to end the reign of the false gods of Mount Olympus.’
For a while neither of them spoke. Then Heracles rasped, ‘This is … madness.’
Danae moved closer, the cold hearth a continent between them. ‘It is the truth. Heracles, deep down you must know that the elixir was what made you strong.’ Her eyes travelled across his atrophied limbs.
