Chapter 1 A Skull and a Crown
Danae crouched in the shadows at the mouth of the cave.
It was a cloudless night; the ink-dark sky swirled with stars and a sickle moon.
Athens sprawled out beneath her vantage point, halfway up a hill opposite the acropolis.
Even at this hour, the city pulsed with life.
So many people, so many lives intertwining, colliding.
Three years had passed since her last visit to the city, but the memory of her eighteen-year-old self trying to find her way to Delphi lingered uncomfortably under her skin.
She could still taste the fear of standing in chains before a theatre of men bidding for her life, recall the terrible sounds of King Theseus’ hounds ripping apart his son’s body, and feel the bone-crushing hopelessness of door after door closing in her face.
Its stone buildings may look beautiful in the moonlight, but to her the city of riches smelt like desperation, shame and piss.
A bone-white feather drifted across her vision. Then the warm breath of Hylas the winged horse tickled her cheek. When she did not move, he gently nipped her ear.
‘I know.’ Her gaze lifted to the acropolis. The hulking outlines of the Temple of Athena and King Theseus’ palace looked like two colossuses crouching under the stars. ‘Time to go.’
Hylas was already saddled, Danae’s meagre possessions stuffed into two pouches that hung down his flanks. She had stolen the saddle straight off the back of a nobleman’s mare in a town outside Thebes and crudely fashioned it to fit around Hylas’ wing joints.
She tucked her flyaway strands of hair into the rough braid that hung to the nape of her neck and pulled up the hood of her black seer’s cloak.
Its length hid the ill-fitting brown tunic beneath – another stolen item, this one from a Phrygian farmer’s washing basket.
It had been a long time since her clothes had seen a river.
Hylas too was looking the worse for a year on the run, his once gleaming coat smeared with dirt, his tail knotted, his mane tangled.
‘We’re almost there,’ she whispered, smoothing his neck.
She mounted the winged horse and cast a final look around the cave that had been their home for the past five days.
It was the longest they’d stayed in once place since fleeing the Caucasus Mountains a year earlier.
She thought of the griffin’s cave that had been her shelter as she’d climbed the highest ice-encrusted peak to reach Prometheus, the Titan imprisoned for attempting to liberate mortals from the tyrannical Olympian gods.
Even now, the words of his prophecy still echoed in her mind.
When the prophet falls, and gold that grows bears no fruit, the last daughter will come.
She will end the reign of thunder and become the light that frees mankind.
She screwed her eyes shut. She had travelled to the end of the world, betrayed her friends and dedicated all her strength to finding the man she believed would teach her how to fulfil her destiny.
But the Titan had left her with nothing but questions.
One, in particular, had consumed her. Eclipsing all else, it had driven her across rivers, mountains, cities and villages, while she fought to keep herself and Hylas concealed from the Twelve.
She opened her eyes. Tonight, she would finally get her answer.
Weaving her fingers through Hylas’ snowy mane, she locked them into their familiar hold.
It was a risk, flying over a bustling city on such a clear night.
But she could delay no longer. She’d spent five days hiding in her cave so she could stake out the palace, learn the guards’ patrol route and King Theseus’ movements.
Earlier that day, she had discovered that he was due to leave the city the following dawn to visit the King of Aetolia. It was now or never.
She dug her heels into Hylas’ sides, and he cantered across the rocky ground beyond the cave, then launched into the air on his vast feathered wings. Her hood blew back, the cloak streaming behind as her cheeks stung with anticipation.
You cannot run from your destiny, said the voice that had awoken inside her along with her power.
She pushed the words from her mind with practised force and braced herself as Hylas descended. As his hooves clattered onto the palace roof, she slid from his back to land softly on the tiles.
‘Don’t move,’ she whispered.
Hylas tossed his silky white mane, threaded silver in the moonlight.
‘You’ll have food soon, I promise.’
The horse eyed her then rippled his lips.
‘And wine.’
At that, Hylas pressed his muzzle into her hand, gently nibbling her fingers. The ghost of a smile curled Danae’s mouth. During their time together, she’d discovered the horse had a fondness for unmixed wine. No doubt a product of being raised on Olympus.
‘I won’t be long.’
She unpinned her cloak and stowed it away in Hylas’ saddle bag, then checked her knife was securely tucked into the belt of her tunic.
Lastly, she untied a coil of rope attached to a grapple hook and wound it around her arm.
Moving as stealthily as possible across the sloping roof tiles, she crept towards the edge.
The streets of Athens spread out beneath her, a sea of winking brazier lights.
The city was as loud as a storm-tossed coast. Kapeleia rumbled with merriment as their customers conversed over cups of wine and plates of victuals, and other late-night establishments beckoned patrons with the tantalizing glow of candles and the promise of blissful forgetting.
Danae padded along the edge of the roof, carefully measuring her steps.
When she reached the correct spot, she hooked the grapple onto the lip of the palace roof.
Once satisfied it would hold, she wrapped the rope around her thigh and slowly lowered herself past the stone pillars until she was parallel with a window on the second floor.
The shutters were closed, and arms of bronze filagree barred her way. This was the tricky part. She heaved her weight back and forth, until the swinging motion brought her within touching distance of the shutters. She collided with the wood and almost lost hold of the rope. They were bolted.
Of course they were. This was the king’s bedroom.
She cursed her own stupidity. After all her planning, she’d failed to account for a lock. But she was not thwarted yet.
During the past year, she hadn’t just spent her time running and chasing answers.
She’d also been practising the skill of harnessing her powers.
Wherever she and Hylas went, she had drained the life force from trees, bushes, livestock, every shimmering thread she consumed poured into better understanding her abilities and how to wield them with force.
As she swung back towards the window, she stretched out her arm and drew a tangle of life-threads into her hand.
She’d left several trees withered and lifeless in the Athenian forest in preparation for tonight, but she hadn’t planned on using her powers so soon.
Gods know how many threads she would need to fight her way out.
Her hand collided with the shutters. Wood splintered and bronze twisted as the windows were blasted open. She landed sprawled on a tiled floor. The room was vast, dominated by a huge bed on the far side, guarded by painted pillars and silk curtains.
Without pausing for breath, she leapt to her feet and sent another surge of life-threads into her arms while pacing across the room, giving her the strength to drag a heavy ornate table along the wall to block the double doors.
She had barely finished moving the piece of furniture when something cold and sharp pressed against her skin. Slowly, she turned.
King Theseus held a sword to her cheek. Silver light poured in from the window, throwing the creases of his face into shadow.
His nostrils flared, and the corners of his mouth curved with disdain.
He stood naked, one foot in front of the other, his weight perfectly balanced.
This was a man who knew how to wield a weapon, so confident of his own power he hadn’t even called out for the guards.
But then Theseus was no ordinary king. In his youth he’d been Greece’s greatest hero, until Heracles, the mortal son of Zeus, had claimed the title with his courageous labours.
However, there were whispers that Theseus had travelled to lands even the mighty Heracles had not braved, and if legend was to be believed, had almost succeeded in kidnapping the goddess Persephone from Hades’ palace in the Underworld.
Danae had good reason to hope this was true.
The omphalos shard’s visions, the last piece of an obsidian stone that granted images of the future, had led her to Athens.
Finally, she might be about to discover the answer she’d spent a year searching for.
Danae flinched at a crash behind her. The doors bulged against the weight of the table as they were battered from the other side.
‘My king! Are you hurt?’
Before Theseus could reply, Danae whipped a further clutch of life-threads into her hand and hurled him across the room.
He crashed past the painted bed and smacked against the wall.
Quick as she was, he still managed to cut her before his sword clattered away across the patterned floor.
Blood dribbling down the front of her tunic, she leapt across the room and straddled him, her knife against his throat.
Theseus looked dazed, his chest heaving.
‘Where is the entrance to the Underworld?’ Even as she spoke, she felt her energy wane.
She’d mainly been reviving her powers with the life-threads of shrubbery and small animals.
Even draining them from a couple of large trees didn’t come close to how she’d felt after absorbing the life of the harpy.
She longed to feel that powerful again, ached for it, more than anything else in the world.