Chapter 1
Medea
As the pale light of afternoon filtered into a secluded corner of the palace garden, I held my head in my hands and wept.
Beside me bloomed lavender, roses running riot, and other, rarer plants. Their scent imparted a light fragrance to the air,
which I swallowed in great gulps as sobs shook me. Never mind that I was a princess of Qulha, called Colchis by the Greeks.
At that moment, I was nothing but a lonely little girl.
Earlier that day, I’d walked barefoot over the gravel path at the palace’s main gate to bid my sister, Chalciope, farewell.
While her carriage awaited, the horses tossing their manes impatiently, we threw our arms around each other and wept.
“It’s not fair,” I said, burying my face in her cloak.
“I know,” she murmured in my hair, holding me tight enough to bruise my ribs. The daughter of Father’s first wife, Chalciope
was a woman as stalwart and reliable as a hearth fire. If she saw a hungry mouth, she fed it; if she saw a dirty bowl, she
washed it. Chalciope was the one who had raised me after my mother’s death, holding my hand as I toddled my first steps.
Then Father married her off to Phrixus in exchange for that noxious pelt, the Golden Fleece. Chalciope was permitted to visit
once a year for the festival of the ancestors, which was slow to come and all too quickly over. The festival had concluded
yesterday.
“Don’t leave me alone with him,” I whispered. A long shadow seemed to extend outward from the palace, and I flicked a nervous glance backward. I did not need to explain who “he” was—Aeetes, our father and the king of Qulha.
“You must bear it, my dear one,” Chalciope said, extricating herself from my embrace. “Endure him. It will not be forever.
Soon you will be grown and married, safe in your husband’s house and free forever.”
“My lady, we must leave now if we are to make it home before nightfall,” the carriage driver said.
I glared at the man as he took Chalciope’s hand and helped her onto the plush seat, though not before she planted one last
kiss on my forehead. The ghostly faces of her two little sons peered at me from the dimness of the carriage, and I seethed
with envy that they enjoyed the privilege of staying at her side when I could not.
The pain of the sharp gravel on my bare feet was nothing compared with the agony in my heart as I watched Chalciope’s carriage
disappear through the royal gates, helpless either to make her stay or to go with her. When she disappeared from sight, I
fled to the sanctuary of the gardens.
The departure of Chalciope evoked memories of an older, more primal loss: my mother, who had died giving birth to me.
A hollow feeling spread throughout my chest. I knew very little about my mother, save for the fact that she had been the one
to plant the first seeds of the garden where I now sat, and green things loved to grow at her touch. Supposedly she’d been
a great huntress in life, stalking over the hills with bow in hand.
I knew none of this for certain. All I had was a name: Hekate. There was not even a grave to visit, because in his fury over
her death, Father denied her a proper burial.
Eventually my weeping eased. Not because my grief faded, but because I no longer had the energy to sustain it.
I could do nothing to change my situation.
My head lifted; the air was filled with the gentle babble of the four rivers that flowed through the Qulhan palace gardens, one made of milk, another of wine, the third of oil, and the last of water.
These were said to be gifts from the gods, but in truth they were engineering marvels created by the artisans of Qulha.
They also smelled horrible, since the milk had long since gone rancid and the wine was mere vinegar.
But such was the nature of my father’s palace, where a wondrous exterior concealed a rotten core.
I stood up, swaying, taking deep breaths to compose myself. If my brother, Absyrtos, saw me weeping, he would mock me relentlessly.
If Aeetes saw, he would strike me a heavy blow. I was only thirteen, but already I knew that no one was coming to save me.
A path wound through the city gates, and I followed it, walking to the seashore where the waves lapped at the sand like affectionate
puppies. My father did not care about these wanderings, so long as I was back at the palace before dark. No one bothered to
keep close track of me. I let the wind play with the ringlets of my hair and watched the clouds racing across the sky. Though
I could not quite forget my sorrow, I could set it aside for a time, allowing it to become merely one part of the tapestry
of existence.
After Chalciope went away, it would be most accurate to say that the land of Qulha itself raised me. There were nurses and
servants, yes, but I barely learned their names. It was the land that I loved: Qulha of the painted stone tombs. Amazons roamed
the steppes beyond the mountains, and from the cliffs you could watch the flights of griffins and fierce dragons. Green hills
rose over the storm-lashed sea, and sometimes you could see the scattershot shimmer of the Sheep of the Sun grazing along
their flanks. These belonged to my father’s father, the god of the sun. Among the Qulhans, he was variously known as Helios,
Ra, and Tabiti, but I knew him as Grandfather, even if he never came to visit.
When the sun began to slant to the west, I made my way back to the city.
My feet ached and my stomach grumbled; even if no one waited for me in the cold halls of the palace, it was time to return.
Disdaining the main gate, I took instead the way that the farmers used to bring their harvests into the city, which led through the necropolis.
It was home to a bristling forest of monuments—small markers for the humble, grand mausoleums for the wealthy and members
of my own family. Recently my father had declared that all men should be given sky burial while women were interred in the
earth, but many of these monuments dated back to the earliest days of the city, when King Sesostris came out of Egypt to found
the kingdom of Qulha.
My eyes fell upon a little structure squatting at a crossroads: a roadside shrine, formed of nothing more complex than a statue
inside a little alcove. The statue was quite ordinary, a crude rendition of a woman with three faces. Below was a name carved
in Qulhan, Egyptian, and Greek:
HEKATE.
I paused mid-step, one foot hovering above the ground. Hekate was my mother’s name, and not a common one. Goose bumps prickled
my skin.
Hekate . . .
The faces of the statue were generic and roughly carved. But the longer I gazed at them, the more I had the feeling that those
sightless eyes might blink.
Moving of their own accord, my feet carried me toward the statue, and my hand closed around one of the seashells I’d gathered
from the shore. A child’s bauble, worthless, but I had nothing else to give. I laid it among the piles of incense soot and
shriveled flowers.
The cloud-filled sky held its breath. Even the tomb markers seemed to be listening.
Into the silence I spoke a single word. “Mother.” It was like a stone dropped into a still pond, heard by no one and signifying
nothing, but I could not help myself.
“Mother,” I repeated. “Don’t forget me. Don’t forget your daughter. Descend and comfort me, I beg you.”
There was no answer. The silence passed, and the world resumed its turning. Birds sang, and a breeze moved through the necropolis.
The voices of passersby reached my ears once more.
Shivering, I pulled the hood of my cloak over my head and hurried onward, trying to beat the long shadows of evening back
to the palace.