I am not a little child,I thought, glaring at him.I stood against a corrupt father and transformed snakes into dragons before ever meeting you. I’m not so helpless as I appear.
Jason looked away first. “I only want you to be well,” he said. “I could never live with myself if anything happened to my future wife.”
He bestowed a winning smile upon me, as if to soften his chiding. Beyond his shoulder, Idas successfully pushed Peleus off the corpse of Talos, then pumped his fist in the air. This prompted raucous cheering from the crowd of onlookers.
Murmuring an excuse, I turned to leave, wondering all the while if Jason would always put me on a pedestal or if he’d ever let me walk by his side.
Atalanta stirred when I entered the tent, lit by the light of the single flame. Gray eyes flickered open and focused on me. “Did I get him?” she rasped through dry lips.
“Talos? Yes.” I knelt by her side, overwhelmed with relief.
“Tell them to keep that last part out of the songs, though,” she added, wincing. She drank obediently from the waterskin I offered her, then fell back on the pallet with a sigh.
After a moment of hesitation, words began to spill from my lips. “What happened back there?! You could havedied.”
Atalanta struggled to push herself up so that she was sitting among the blankets.
“Lie back down,” I chided. “I worked magic so that you will heal faster, but you still need rest.”
“Medea.” My name on her lips silenced my racing thoughts. “Come here.”
Puzzled, I did.
“Closer,” she insisted.
When I bent my head toward her, she twined a hand in my hair and pulled me in for a kiss.
Stars burst in my belly and fire danced under my skin. The kiss was sweet—soft lips on mine, the gentle questioning of a tongue between them.
I pulled away. My hand floated up to cover my lips, which felt like they were burning. My heart hammered in my chest, but not out of fear.
Atalanta sank back down on the blankets, flushed from effort but with the promise of more in her half-lidded eyes.
Silver eyes,I thought wildly,a match for my golden ones.How had I never seen it before? Silver for the moon, gold for the sun. Together, we made a perfect whole.
“Medea,” Atalanta said, “I love you.”
Suddenly the little tent seemed too hot, or perhaps too small. I was suffocating; none of this could be real. I was dreaming, I must be.
“Come with me,” Atalanta said. She took my hands, lacing her fingers through mine. “Run away with me into the forest. Become my wife. We will not follow the roads laid out for us, but instead make a way for ourselves where there was none. The next time we make landfall, disappear with me.”
I stared at Atalanta. Though my life’s path had always been an unusual one, it ran straight and clear, shaped by my mother’s gift and her expectations. I was a witch, but that was something of a family tradition; there was nothing subversive in my magic back then. But now Atalanta offered another path, wilder and more free, beyond the rule of gods or men. The affection in her eyes called forth an answering bloom from my chest.
Orpheus’s words rose up in my mind.There is the love that is thrust upon us and the love that we choose. Run after the latter, nomatter what gods and men say, and never let it go. Or, at least, never let yourself look back.
Did I love Atalanta? If so, in what sort of way? Certainly I was fond of her. But a kiss was not a lifetime contract, and it was no small decision to leave the rest of the world behind.
If I loved Atalanta, did I love her as herself, or as a symbol of what I wished to become?
“I’m supposed to marry Jason,” I said weakly, holding the words up like a shield.
“Jason,” Atalanta echoed, her expression darkening. “I love the hard edges in you, and the softness too, because I see your compassion as well as your cunning. But what does he love? Nothing but himself, if he even manages that. I want every part of you, good and bad. He only wants you small.”
My mouth opened, then closed. I wanted to defend Jason, my promised husband, but I remembered his chiding after the incident with Talos, and my tongue was stilled. Perhaps Jasondidlike me small, so as not to overshadow his glory.
“You don’t need to answer now,” Atalanta said. “But next time we make landfall, I’ll be waiting. All you have to do is say the word.”
I was breathing hard now, and my lips still tingled from the kiss. Inside my skull was a whirling mass of confusion and desire, all of it centered on the woman in front of me.
