Chapter 48
Atalanta
I had my answer, it seemed.
Turning away from the torches and the sound of wedding songs, I stalked through the night forests like a thunderstorm, higher
and higher into the mountains of Phaeacia. Each step reignited the pain of my injuries from Talos, but I did not care. I wanted
to get as far away as possible from the torches and music, from the cave and all that was happening within it.
My shadow blended into the night; wolves and great cats fled from it. They were wise. If any tried me, I would have killed
them with my bare hands.
Heartbreak was familiar territory by now, as well known as the slopes of the mountain where I’d grown up. Here was the hollowed-out
log my heart had become, here the cliff leading away into darkness. But no matter how familiar, it never stopped hurting.
Branches whipped my skin as I ran, raising welts across my arms and legs. Hot drops of blood burned my skin, or perhaps they
were tears.
My losses circled me like vultures. Procris, Meleager, now Medea. The pain was only complicated by the fact that the last
yet lived. And that of all people it was Jason she had chosen over me. That spineless, craven . . .
I was aware, dimly, that Medea’s choice had not been made freely. She had taken the safest refuge she could find. But it stung to know that the one thing that would save her was the one thing I could not give. It traced the scar of Procris, murdered by her husband after leaving me.
Moreover, Medea had lied. I’d always known she was a liar, and a good one, but I never thought she would lie to me.
I will consider it, she said. She never really had.
Medea betrayed me, but I betrayed myself as well. Because when dawn came, reaching her rosy fingers over the horizon, I saw
where my feet had led me. Not into the hills, but back to the golden hull of the Argo.