Chapter 38
Sand and Stars
Moonlight pooled over Danae’s and Heracles’s tangled bodies. They lay on their backs, sandy and sweaty despite the chill air.
She couldn’t stop smiling. She’d lain with Heracles. The Heracles. She couldn’t wait to see the look on Alea’s face.
The giddiness left her in an instant. For a heartbeat, she’d forgotten.
Heracles drew her close. “Was that your first time?”
Holy Tartarus, was it that obvious?
“No.” She blinked the salt from her eyes, then said quickly, “How did you get this?” She traced a silver scar that sliced the hero’s abdomen like a crescent moon.
Heracles peered down at his stomach. “Tusk of the Erymanthian boar.”
“Let me guess, this one was the many-headed hydra?”
Heracles laughed. “No, just a regular battle wound, I’m afraid.”
“What about this?” She trailed her finger down the scar that sliced the skin from his eyebrow to his jaw.
“That—” he took her fingers and kissed them “—was a feather from one of those birds you...drowned?”
She sat up, suddenly remembering something that had occurred to her earlier on the ship. “How did you come to arrive at the beach at the same time as the Argo?”
“Lucky coincidence. Dolos and I spotted the Stymphalian birds a few weeks ago. We were tracking them.” He pointed to his face. “I had some unfinished business.”
He drew her back to the sand, and they lay for a while, staring at the night sky.
Heracles traced his fingers along the curve of her waist. “Dolos told me, if I do what my father wants, I’ll be transformed into a star when I die.”
Danae looked at the lights twinkling above them. “Is that what you want?”
Heracles shrugged. “It is the highest honor the gods can bestow. But it always seems lonely to me. Burning alone in the firmament, forever staring down at earth. Always so far away.”
She wondered if he was thinking of his family. She knew if he could, he would be with his wife and children. When her time came, she would always choose to be with Alea.
“My mother loves the stars. She knows the stories of every soul the gods have placed up there to shine for all eternity. Most of them anyway—some she definitely made up.”
“Tell me about them.”
She pointed to the sky, tracing the lights with her finger.
“That cluster is the queen Cassiopeia—she’s upside down as punishment for being vain.
” Heracles snorted. “Those three there are the belt of the giant Orion, and those are Andromeda, the princess rescued by Perseus from the jaws of a sea monster.”
Her mind went blank. She dropped her hand, suddenly feeling foolish. A crack appeared in the cocoon of their intimacy. A prickle of guilt that she was wasting time.
“Heracles—” She propped herself onto her elbow and looked at him. “Would you ever challenge your father?”
The hero frowned. “That’s a big thing to ask.”
“Heracles!” The cry echoed across the dunes.
“Shit.” Danae scrabbled to find her dress, only just tugging it on before Dolos appeared. Heracles made no attempt to cover himself.
The healer stopped still when he saw them. His eyes hardened like frosted earth.
“Jason is asking for you both.”
“How’s Peleus?” Danae hurriedly got to her feet.
“I’ve done all I can. How he recovers over the next day will be crucial. That stitching was terrible, no wonder it got infected.” Dolos cleared his throat. “But without it, he would have certainly bled to death. You saved his life. For now, anyway.”
She smiled. “Thank you, Dolos. I’m so glad you’re back.”
The healer nodded curtly then turned to Heracles. “Are you coming?”
The hero grinned, stretched like a cat, then slowly got to his feet. Dolos tapped his foot as Heracles fastened his kilt about his waist and flicked the sand from his lion hide.
“I’ll catch you up,” Danae said as the two men headed back toward the beach.
As she watched them walk away, worry crept into her heart.
In his arms, she’d felt so strongly that her own and Heracles’s destinies were entwined. He’d been returned to her. Surely that meant they were fated to walk the same path. The odds of him finding the Argo at the exact moment he did were too slim to be chance.
But Phineus’s words echoed through her mind. Trust no one.
She slipped her hand into the pocket of her dress and pulled out the omphalos shard.
Ever since she’d learned of its origins, she’d kept it on her at all times.
She unwrapped it and let it roll, naked into her palm.
Immediately, her life-threads rushed into her hand, clustering against her skin like fish seeking crumbs on the surface of a pool.
She breathed out slowly as they were sucked into the stone.
Then she was plunged into darkness, suspended outside her body in the void.
She let her mind empty, then formulated her question.
Will Heracles join my quest?
A single thread danced across the blackness. She focused on it and felt the now familiar tug as her mind traveled down its length, weaving into the tapestry of life. Then the strands unraveled and threaded together to create a new image.
She saw a figure, wearing Heracles’s impenetrable lion hide, climbing what appeared to be a storm-swathed mountain. It must be the Caucasus Mountains, where Prometheus was tethered.
She dropped the stone and returned with a sickening jolt to the dunes. She had her proof, the stone did not lie. She didn’t have to do it alone.
Heracles would come with her to find Prometheus.
By the time Danae arrived back on the beach, a camp had been erected.
A cluster of tents lined the shore, and the Argo had been dragged onto the sand, a tarpaulin stretched over the deck to shelter Peleus and any others who wished to sleep aboard.
She spotted Heracles sitting with Telamon and Atalanta beside a large stone-ringed fire.
“Daeira!” Telamon set down the metallic bird he was stripping and beckoned her over with a large hand, encased in several pairs of hide gloves. Atalanta was fixing the discarded feathers to the ends of her arrows.
The warrior took in the sand on Heracles’s lion hide and the grains in Danae’s ruffled hair. She twisted the feather in her hand so violently it flicked off the end of the arrow and landed between Danae’s feet.
Their eyes met, and Atalanta looked at her with all the disdain of their first encounter, as though the months they’d traveled together had been swept away. Danae didn’t know why she cared so much, but it hurt, like a fist to her gut.
Heracles placed a hand on the warrior’s shoulder. “Daeira is one of us. I trust her, and that is enough.” His tone was friendly, but the look in his eyes was final.
Telamon’s gaze slid from the hero to Danae. “Now I know why Dolos went to sulk with the horses,” he said with a smirk.
“Daeira!”
Danae looked across the camp to see Jason, sitting on a large piece of driftwood, beckoning to her.
She sighed. “Back in a moment.” And strode across the beach.
“Sit.” Jason gestured beside him as she approached. “Why has he returned?”
She was taken aback by the abruptness of his question.
“You must have got something out of him on the dunes?”
Her mouth twitched. She lowered herself onto the log. “He and Dolos were tracking the Stymphalian birds, which led them to us.”
Jason’s scowl deepened.
“He can’t rejoin the crew.”
A whisper of panic fluttered through her. “Why not?”
“The men aren’t happy about it.”
She knew exactly which men he meant and shot a barbed glance at Castor and Pollux on the other side of the camp.
Attempting to smooth the worry from her face, she said, “But think of the strength you would command with two demigods in your crew.”
Jason laughed. “That man is a law unto himself. He’s dangerous and volatile. The others won’t have it. Not now they know his true nature.”
Jason was a coward who didn’t want to be overshadowed. That’s what this was about.
“They will do what you tell them to, Captain.” Before he could respond she added, “Let me speak to my father before we sail tomorrow. It would be wise to arrive at Colchis knowing what the fates have in store for us.”
Jason regarded her for a moment. Then nodded.
She was about to leave when he said, “You should have told me.”
“I explained—”
“I’m your captain, you swore loyalty to me. Don’t make me regret what I offered you.”
“Yes, Captain.” She inclined her head and rose to her feet. As she walked away, a smile spread across her lips. Phineus said most seers were liars or fools. She was about to prove him right.
She would make sure the omens were in Heracles’s favor.
They gave Tiphys a sea burial. It was what he would have wanted. Danae spoke the funeral rights as the navigator’s body bobbed away across the waves, two obols tucked into his wrappings for the ferryman.
Then Jason instructed the Argonauts to build an altar.
In the early hours before dawn, they combed the beach for driftwood and piled it high on the shore.
They’d saved the Stymphalian birds’ thighs to roast on the pyre as an offering to Poseidon.
It was a strange but welcome discovery that underneath their knife-like feathers, the birds were flesh and bone like any other.
For the first time in a long while, everyone had gone to bed with a full stomach.
Danae made sure she looked the part. She brought out her midnight cloak for the occasion and finished the effect by smudging charcoal from the ashes of the fire around her eyes.
“Just like the first time I saw you,” Heracles whispered as she walked past.
A thrill rippled through her.
Castor and Pollux stood at either side of the altar. At her nod, they threw burning torches on the pyre and stepped back to join the others.
Danae fell to her knees and lifted her arms into the air.
“Father Poseidon, hear my prayer. Bless the Argo and all who sail in her. Keep us safe on your waters, protect the crew from harm. As your daughter, I ask this of you.”