CHAPTER THIRTY #2
‘But there’s a reason we’re avoiding clashing now.
Our army might not rival yours, but our intelligence does – we have men posted in every corner of the known world.
With our strategies and your forces, we could conquer the undefeatable.
We could slay Scylla and Charybdis. We could hunt out Echidna herself. We could even eradicate the Amazons.’
Father scratches his jaw. ‘The Amazons?’
Theseus eyes me as he answers – that same gleam in his eye. Victory. ‘To be the men to tear down that unnatural band of warrior women, to put them all so firmly back where they belong? Our names would go down in history. We would become legends.’
That is quite enough – Hermes must have planted that evidence by now. So despite everything urging me not to, I step forward.
‘Father, he –’
‘You do not speak here!’ my father roars so violently the palace itself might as well shake. I feel my mother and sister flinch as I do – that raised voice, those echoing shouts. Eighteen years of terror, stemming from exactly that sound.
But let him shout – I will be the quiet whisper beneath that he cannot ignore. ‘Theseus has been intercepting other offers for Phaedra’s hand in marriage!’
And the room, finally, falls quiet.
‘What?’ Phaedra asks, breathless.
‘She’s lying,’ Theseus snarls. ‘I’ve had no such missives.’
‘Dionysus and I encountered a messenger at the docks as we set out to leave. He said he was under Theseus’s employ, but the letters were addressed to you, Father, dozens of proposals from kingdoms far and wide. I have them here.’
Theseus lunges for the papyrus, but Phaedra is quicker. Deucalion steps between her and Theseus, looking over her shoulder as she rummages through them.
‘That’s the seal of Corinth,’ he says.
Phaedra nods, turning over the next – and then the next. ‘Midea, Pilos, Orchomenos, Ephesus.’
Everyone turns to my father – whose anger, now brought forth, is turned wholly on Theseus.
‘Explain yourself,’ he demands.
Theseus’s nostrils flare as he takes a careful breath. ‘I’ve never seen those letters in my life. I suspect they’re forgeries – you would ruin our negotiations and all we might achieve in the hope of false promises.’
‘I’ve been told gifts are following, you need only wait a couple of days,’ I say.
‘Deucalion, lead the guards to search King Theseus’s rooms,’ my father declares. My brother does not wait, and the guards follow at his call.
Theseus’s eyes are alight with panic. There’s something he doesn’t want them finding even beyond the falsehoods we have planted.
‘What are you hiding?’ I hiss, smiling as it all comes together. This is it, whatever he dreads, coming to pass.
I promised I’d ruin you.
His eyes flash. ‘Don’t think I can’t destroy you too.’
‘By all means.’
He turns to my father. ‘Would you care to hear the truth of how she betrayed you?’ My blood drains from my face – that is not the direction I’d expected him to go in.
Where is Dionysus? Shouldn’t he be done by now? Icarus, Daedalus and Zosime safely stowed on the ship?
‘She disguised herself as a priestess of Poseidon and came to us in the stables. She told us every secret of the palace. Every route out, every path, every place to hide.’
Unlike him, I don’t waste my breath to declare it false. Father never cared much for a verdict – the accusation was enough.
‘She gave me a sword and armed the rest of us with daggers.’ He is revelling in his relaying of the tale and he steps closer to me, utterly gleeful.
I glower up at him. ‘For someone who cares so much for a story, I thought you’d be better at telling it.
’ And then – why not? Father thinks me guilty anyway.
‘They were crying in the stables. Wailing so loudly I had to explain myself several times over. Theseus implored me to help, got down on his knees and pleaded.’
He shoves me back and the only sign of protest is my mother’s startled shriek. ‘She fell in love with me the first moment she saw me. She professed herself in that dirty jail, urged me to carry her away when she freed us and promised her fealty to me before I even spoke my first word.’
‘On that boat he told me he’d never lain with a woman before. He begged me to show him how.’
Theseus slams me back against the wall, his hand curling in my chiton. I reach out and pluck his dagger from his side – the one he once pushed across the table while declaring our union.
‘Stop him,’ my mother begs, her eyes glowing and bright.
‘She’s built her pyre,’ my father dismisses. ‘Let her finally burn upon it.’
Theseus looms over me like I might cower before him.
How ludicrous – this man who would be a hero of legend, outraged by the thought of tears and virginity. Like his strength lies only in heartless conquest. What a miserable life – and I see now what Dionysus meant when he explained why men too join the thiasus, because this ruins us all.
His lip curls. ‘And she’d been with so many men she was quite the expert.’
The doors swing so aggressively they collide with the walls.
‘Arrest him,’ my brother demands, and guards tear Theseus from me before he can so much as blink.
‘If you think this is not war …’ Theseus begins, angrier than I’ve ever seen him as he thrashes in their grip.
‘Deucalion,’ my father warns. ‘What is it –’
‘Plans to free the prisoners from the labyrinth,’ he says, tossing the pages we forged to the floor, and Theseus struggles even harder.
I step away, behind my brother, knowing now that if he gets free even for a moment he’ll use it to kill me.
‘Missives detailing plots to abduct the princesses and use their blood to open the doors. And a jar of poisoned honey, intended to kill Prince Glaucus.’
Everyone falls silent, turning to Theseus like there might be any sort of alternative explanation. Even now, I underestimate him. I conceive of plots that are nowhere near as awful as what he is truly planning.
‘He’s ten,’ I say, aghast.
‘I did no such thing,’ Theseus snarls, glaring at my father. ‘Unlike Crete, we do not imprison children in labyrinths and we don’t plot to kill them either.’
Deucalion snorts his disagreement. ‘He means to murder us both, secure Phaedra’s hand and thus position himself in line for the Cretan throne. He desires an Athenian empire – and Crete the jewel within it.’
‘Deucalion,’ my father says, quite calmly, ‘round up every man the King of Athens brought with him here. I want their bodies strung along the walls.’ His glower cuts to me. ‘Leave a cage spare.’
My mother grabs my brother’s wrist. ‘Don’t,’ she implores, but he shakes her off and stalks from the room.
‘You will regret this,’ Theseus growls.
‘I don’t believe I will,’ Father says. ‘Release him.’
What?
The guards look to each other with just as much uncertainty but let go of Theseus, who stands panting, staring at my father with apprehension.
‘You’re going back to Athens, alone. You will tell your people what you failed to achieve here.
And I’m going to look through those marriage offers and I’m going to choose whichever one of those men has the biggest navy, and I’m going to come for you, with swords drawn, just as I did eighteen years ago, and you are going to die, Theseus, not a guest of my house or a serpent within it but a foe with a blade in hand. ’
Theseus spits at my father’s feet, stalking to the door – not in a hurry, not like he’s going to try to rescue his men but like an opponent in a duel. He sneers as he passes me and I can’t resist the small satisfied smile that twitches into place.
And then his fury breaks.
His hand flies out. There is a sharp yank at the base of my skull as my hair twists in his hand. I am flung to the floor, hitting it hard, and then he is on top of me, his hands at my throat.
‘I should have done this last time,’ he hisses. ‘Maybe I’ll get your blood for that labyrinth after all.’
‘Unhand her!’ my mother snarls. ‘Guards! Stop him!’
‘No!’ my father overrules. ‘Let the legend tell how he murdered her – it’s a far cleaner end than the truth of her debauchery.’
Theseus is fumbling for his dagger. It’s not there – of course, I took it. But it’s trapped by his knees straddling my hips, my hand crushed beneath, and as soon as he realizes … as soon as he knows where it is …
Phaedra pulls at Theseus’s shoulders. ‘Father, please!’ But she might as well be one of those spectres flitting through these halls for all that either of them pay attention to her.
I manage to slam my head up, colliding with his nose, but it only seems to throw him into further frenzy, abandoning his quest for the dagger, instead ripping off his cloak pin and thrusting its tip into my throat.
I scream – and something within me screams too, howling furious pain, and walls spring up around me – and suddenly I’m standing, Theseus across from me in the deep, dark pit of the labyrinth.
His brow furrows. ‘What is this?’
The vision collapses, the walls tumbling away, and Theseus is on top of me, pin dug into my skin but not deep – not deep because I flung him into whatever vision that was.
‘I am queen of this kingdom,’ my mother snarls.
‘Daughter of the sun god, sister of the greatest witch the world has ever known and mother to the greatest there ever will be, so I strongly suggest you listen to me.’ And then, finally, Theseus – who seems every bit as disoriented as I am – is pulled from me.
He staggers, then pulls himself together enough to stumble from the room – pin clutched tight. My blood staining it.
Enough to open the labyrinth.
I clap a hand to the wound, feel the blood hot and thick beneath. I manage to climb to my feet but I’m so dizzy I have to reach out – and it’s my sister’s shoulder I find.
My father snorts. ‘He thinks after everything that bitch did I’d still allow the labyrinth to be opened with blood from my line? It is mine and mine alone that will do it.’
He would have let me die for nothing.
Of course he would have.
And what then of Dionysus and his attempt to rescue Icarus and Daedalus from within it?