She fled from thekapeleion, pacing through the winding streets until she was sure no one was pursuing her. She slowed, turning into a narrow alley, then leant against the wall to catch her breath. The sun had already begun its afternoon descent. She’d left Hylas too long and had nothing to show for it. Biting the inside of her lip, she tried to focus on what to do next.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a flash of green at the end of the alley. Her eyes darkened, and she paced towards it. When she turned the corner, she found the emerald-cloaked stranger who’d been sat in the corner of thekapeleionseemingly very interested in a pair of white shutters.
She grabbed them, dragging the stranger into the shadows of the alley, and rammed them against the wall, her forearm pressed against their neck.
‘Why are you following me?’
‘Daeira, i-it’s me.’
Her heart stilled. It had been a year since she’d heard the false name she used aboard theArgo. She dropped her arm and took a step back.
The stranger removed their hood. It took Danae a moment to place the man standing before her. His once round face was pinched and had lost its youth since she’d left him with the other Argonauts outside the city of Colchis.
‘Orpheus?’ she breathed.
The musician managed a strained smile. ‘I almost didn’t recognize you back there, but when you used your power –’
Danae whipped out her knife and held it to his neck. ‘Who are you with?’
His eyes bulged. ‘N-no one.’
‘Do not lie to me,’ she pressed the blade against his flesh.
Orpheus gasped.
‘The Argonauts, are any of them here?’
‘I-I’m alone.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘The same reason … you are.’ He drew a stuttering breath. ‘To find the entrance to the Underworld … and I have. I-I can take you there.’
She released him, her pulse drumming in her ears as the musician coughed and massaged his neck.
‘If you know where it is, then why were you idling away the hours in thatkapeleion?’
Orpheus blinked, his hands laced protectively around his neck. ‘I thought if I listened to the locals I might learn something useful. The way will not be easy. No mortal has yet succeeded in breaking into Hades’ kingdom.’ Danae thought of Theseus and his claim that he’d never made it past the River Styx. Orpheus managed a half-smile. ‘A better approach than yours, I’d wager. People tend to be looser with their tongues if you don’t throw them against a wall.’
Danae watched him, searching the creases of his face as though they were a map that would lead her to the truth.
It was unnerving that an Argonaut had appeared in Taenarum at the same time as her, seemingly by coincidence. Unless it was no such thing …
Wild assumptions tore through her mind. She had abandoned Jason and the others without a word, leaving them under the cover of darkness to wake and discover Dolos, the healer and Heracles’ closest friend, slain and Danae vanished. What must they have concluded? Perhaps Orpheus thought her a murderer, and he had been ordered by Jason to seek her out and deliver retribution. Or the musician had been lurking in Athens, and King Theseus had charged him to snare her, and, despite Hylas’ speed, he’d somehow reached Taenarum first. Or he was an agent of the Twelve, sent to ambush her where the harpies had failed.
Or perhaps the fates might be smiling on her at last.
3. The Art of Pále
Dust swirled from the arena floor, glittering through the wisps of cloud trailing across the stadium carved into the rock of Mount Olympus.
Hera perched on the edge of a golden throne upon a shaded dais. Her back was straight as a javelin, hands laid neatly across her lap, her face impassive as the stone platform beneath her feet. Only her kohl-rimmed eyes betrayed the fury simmering in her soul.
Reclining beside her on an even larger throne was her husband, Zeus. Hera stole a glance at him. His face was as smooth and youthful as the day he’d left their old mortal village for Olympus. Only his eyes, threaded with gold like a lightning-cracked sky, betrayed the god he had become. His right hand lay upon the head of the mortal boy sitting at his feet, his fingers twisting idly through Ganymede’s mahogany curls. The boy cradled a golden goblet of ambrosia wine in his hands. Zeus’ goblet. He was the official cup bearer to the King of Heaven, and Zeus would drink nothing that had not first passed those sweet, mortal lips.
The hours Hera had spent fantasizing about slipping a drop of poison into that goblet. But the victory would be short-lived. Zeus would only install another soft-lipped mortal youth in his chambers to mock her with.
Zeus shifted and began conversing with his brother, Poseidon, seated on his other side. The unintelligible murmur of his words scraped her ears like the drone of a fly on a blistering summer’s day. She set her jaw and looked to the emptythrone at the end of the row beside the God of the Sea. There was another unoccupied seat to her right. Five thrones for the senior Olympians, that unfilled pair a constant reminder of the two absent deities: Hades and Demeter. One banished below the earth, the other confined to the sky palace, broken beyond repair.
