Chapter 37 #2
“She’s no evil spirit.”
Heracles heaved himself over the side of the ship. He stepped over the broken birds and came to stand beside her.
She was met with a beaming smile. “Which god is it?”
Danae was utterly confused.
He put a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to pretend anymore. I suspected since the mountain village, but I could tell you wanted to hide it.” His blue eyes sparkled. “I had no idea you were this powerful.”
“I say we kill her!” growled Castor.
“Say that again and I will end you.” Heracles turned to Jason. “Daeira is no daimon. She is a demigod.”
Collectively, the Argonauts gaped. Jason looked like he was trying to form words but couldn’t get them over his tongue.
“For the love of the gods, put down your weapons,” said Telamon. “She just saved our lives.”
They did as he said.
Danae’s heart was thundering. Heracles had jumped to the wrong conclusion, but he might have just given her a gift.
“He’s right.” She returned the hero’s smile. “My father is Poseidon, Lord of the Sea and Shaker of the Earth.”
There were so many questions, but the lies came easily. By now, Danae was well practised.
“My village shunned my mother after Poseidon impregnated her. My family lived in poverty and we kept to ourselves. But when the villagers discovered I had a gift for prophecy and these unearthly powers, they were afraid, and I was driven away. So, I left my home and became a seer.”
She hoped it would be enough to satisfy them. Jason looked torn. She didn’t blame him.
“Why didn’t you reveal yourself sooner? We are warriors not superstitious peasants.” Jason glanced pointedly at Castor, who looked at his feet. “Why didn’t you intervene with the storm, on that island, with the Earthborn? Lives could have been saved.”
Now was hardly the moment to confess she’d started the fire on Lemnos. She bowed her head. “You’re right. My fear of persecution is to blame. I carry the guilt for all those we’ve lost.” That was no lie.
Jason continued to stare at her like she was a cub who had suddenly grown into a lion right in front of him. She could see the pressure building behind his eyes. She wondered if he was going to banish her from the Argo, but then he turned away.
“Heracles.” Jason couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “How in the name of the gods did you survive the Earthborn?”
Heracles grinned at the Argonauts. “I wish I could say it was all down to me. I killed a good few more of those six-armed bastards and managed to scare the rest back to their mountain. The Doliones came round when they saw how many I’d butchered.
” He paused, frowning slightly at the lack of enthusiasm his story was rousing.
“We stayed with them for a couple of days until, as luck would have it, a merchant ship was passing and—”
“What happened to Hylas?”
Danae couldn’t wait any longer. It was the question she’d been burning and dreading to ask since the hero had appeared over the dunes. She already knew the answer, but she needed to hear it from him.
Heracles’s huge shoulders sank. “The Earthborn took him back to their nest. I couldn’t save him.”
“You left him unburied?”
How dare Heracles stand there, bragging about killing Earthborn, when he’d left Hylas’s ghost to wander the banks of the Styx. He would never find peace, forever separated from the souls of everyone who ever cared for him. He was the last person in the world who deserved that fate.
“How could you?” Tears blurted down her cheeks. “You abandoned him! If you killed so many Earthborn, why couldn’t you—”
“I can’t save everyone.”
“You didn’t try hard enough!”
“Neither did you!”
She flinched. The Argonauts cringed away from the hero. Heracles stared at them, his blue eyes muddled with surprise and confusion.
Furiously, she wiped her face. In that moment she couldn’t bear the sight of him, but she needed to tell him what Jason had revealed somewhere private, where he couldn’t react in front of the crew, or Tiphys’s might not be the only body that needed burying.
“Jason, before the attack we were going ashore to fetch water,” she prompted.
“Yes,” the captain said distractedly. He was still staring at Heracles.
“And Tiphys will need burying.”
Jason’s gaze snapped back to her, then behind him to the stern, as though he’d forgotten they’d lost their navigator.
“Yes,” he said again, then cleared his throat. “Argonauts, clear the deck of these birds. We’ll camp here tonight and replenish our supplies. At dawn we’ll send Tiphys on his way to the Underworld. Then, we sail for Colchis.”
Dolos was waiting with the horses on the shore. As soon as they cleared the shallows, Telamon sprinted over to the healer.
“Thank the gods, you need to come to the ship. Peleus is hurt.”
As the pair hurried back to the Argo, Danae took Heracles’s arm and steered him toward the dunes.
“Daeira, wait,” Jason called as he waded onto the beach. “Where are you going?”
“Heracles and I need to speak in private.”
Revealing her abilities had shifted the power dynamic, and they both knew it. He was still the captain and she his seer, but she could end his life as easily as blowing out a candle.
Jason pressed his mouth into a line. “All right. But don’t go too far.”
She nodded, then turned back to Heracles. Together, they paced up the sandy dunes away from the shore.
“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly. “I didn’t mean...”
“No, you were right.” It had never really been Heracles she was angry with.
If she’d known that staying on the Argo would result in Hylas being slaughtered and left unburied, she might have gone back. But what upset her more than learning his fate was the part of her that knew, even if she’d had the foresight, she would still have left him.
Danae and Heracles sat side by side on the hero’s lion hide, hidden behind the dunes as they gazed out over the ocean.
He hadn’t looked at her since she’d told him what Jason had revealed about his family.
“You must think me a monster.”
Her eyes traced the outline of his face against the darkening sky. He’d never looked more human.
“I know you were drugged. Telamon told me the truth, that Hera was to blame. But the rest of the crew...” She hesitated. “They think you killed them in cold blood.”
Heracles said nothing. She loathed twisting the knife in further, but he had to know.
“They believe all the misfortune that’s befallen us on this voyage is because you broke your agreement with Eurystheus. They think Hera’s been punishing you.”
Heracles barked out a laugh. “Hera’s methods are far more underhand than storms and monsters. Besides, Jason is her golden boy.” His voice tightened with spite. “She wouldn’t jeopardize him. If the gods are meddling with us, it’s nothing to do with me.”
He was right, but she couldn’t tell him. Not yet.
The hero leaned forward and buried his head in his hands. She hated seeing him like this.
“I know nothing I say will ease your guilt. But please believe me when I say you are not alone. I know what it feels like to see those you care for hurt because of who you are.”
She wanted to touch him, but she didn’t dare. He was so powerful and so powerless at the same time. They both were.
Heracles rubbed his face and let out a bone-weary sigh. “I would have been happy if I was born an ordinary man. Could have grown old with grandchildren pulling at my tunic.” His voice cracked. “I see their faces, every time I can’t save someone...”
His grief reached into her chest and wrapped its fingers around her heart. She saw Arius in Alea’s arms, his tiny fists tangled in her sister’s hair.
“All I have is my reputation. Heracles, the living legend. That’s what Zeus wanted me to be, what he made me become. You know, I’ve never even met him. My own father. He’s controlled my entire life, and I’ve never seen his face.”
She was stunned. “Never? Not even when you were younger?”
Heracles shook his head. “I don’t remember much of my childhood. Just empty marble rooms. Then Dolos came to look after me.”
Heracles’s mother had been a princess; Danae knew that much. Little was told of her beyond being the womb that bore the greatest hero who had ever lived.
“When Zeus came to your mother...how did he...?”
“He abducted and raped her,” Heracles said flatly.
Her throat thickened. There had been moments on the voyage, in the quiet, dark hours when sleep would not come, that she wondered. Could Alea have been right about Zeus being Arius’s father? But if it that were true, surely the King of Heaven would not have let his son join the Missing?
“When you were a baby...were you ever taken by a shade?”
He frowned. “No, I’m sure that’s something my mother would have told me. Why?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She felt foolish for asking. For allowing herself a spark of hope that Arius might still be out there somewhere.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Heracles turned his face from the waves and looked at her.
“Yes.”
“I’ve always hated my father. All of the gods, in fact.”
Excitement thrummed through her limbs as possibility solidified into certainty.
This was why she’d been drawn to him. He too saw the gods as the tyrants they really were.
They would find Prometheus together and, with Heracles at her side, taking on the Twelve wouldn’t be such an insurmountable task.
She desperately wanted to tell him everything, all at once, but she had to be delicate.
“So have I.”
Heracles’s gaze grew so intense, she felt as though she’d been stripped bare. “I didn’t think there was anyone else like me in the world.”
They were so close, she could feel the heat rising from his bare torso. Her body tingled, her gut a tangle of emotions.
His lips met hers and he kissed her, softly at first, then her mouth opened and she let him drink her in, her entire body pulsing with every heartbeat.
He drew back. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t,” she breathed, barely able to form the words. “I’m like you, remember.”
He took her face in his hands. “Are you sure you want this?”
In that moment, it was all she wanted.
“Yes.”
Her skin shivered as he slipped his hands under her dress.
She gasped, shocks of pleasure vibrating through her as they edged up her thighs.
Then he lifted her and lay her down on his lion hide.
She let him pull up her dress and shuddered as he kissed her bare stomach.
As his lips moved slowly downward, the ache of longing was so great, she thought she was going to explode.
She didn’t care if someone found them, she didn’t care about Prometheus or the prophecy. All she wanted was to disappear into the ecstasy.