Chapter XXVII
XXVII
I don’t find it strange that, even though Poseidon has asked me for a tour of my mother’s gardens, he’s the one who leads the way as we walk among their towering hedges and walls of hanging vines.
The evening air is cool, an early sign of the harvest season’s approach.
I listen as the last of the cicadas trill, as slivers of moonlight guide me through rows of hyacinths and crocuses.
With each step, I become more and more keenly aware of the sea king walking beside me.
When we reach a grassy lawn among the flower beds, he gestures.
“Let us rest here a moment.”
I settle on the ground, and he joins me, placing his hand on my knee.
“Are you all right?” he asks gently.
“I’m fine.” I swallow hard once, then a second time. “I’m just a bit dizzy.” Around me, the flowers are blurring, indistinct.
Poseidon nods. “You should drink some water.” He produces a silver flask, and I drink eagerly, relishing the cool relief of the water in my throat.
“Thank you.”
“Of course,” he says. When I look up at him, there is a hint of a smile in his green eyes. “I remember all too well the first time I drank Olympian wine. I fared far worse than you.”
A question occurs to me then, and in my drunken haze, nothing stops me from asking it. “Were you ever young? Truly young?”
“Once,” says Poseidon, “though, it’s been so long now…I’m not sure if my memories of youth are real or merely something I’ve conjured in my mind because I find that version preferable.”
I sit back, silent. It is a more honest answer than I expected.
I find it difficult to imagine Poseidon as a boy, or as a tiny helpless infant.
There is nothing at all helpless about him; he exudes nothing but limitless power, even while he is at rest. There is something about that power that draws me in, like a bee to a flower, or a moth to moonlight.
A cool breeze grazes my bare arms, and when I shiver, Poseidon wraps his arm around my shoulders. He is wonderfully warm. I lean against him and inhale. If all the good smells of the ocean could be blended into one, that is what he smells like—crisp morning air, salt water, and sun-warmed sand.
“I’ve missed you, Medusa,” he says into my hair.
I savor those words. “I’ve missed you, too. I…I thought you were angry with me. When I came back to the beach and called for you, when you didn’t come…”
“That was nothing personal,” he says quickly. “My brothers needed me. I feel a great responsibility to be there for them.” He nods. “You have two sisters. I figured you’d understand.”
I do understand, and suddenly I feel silly for ever thinking Poseidon was angry with me.
“You were speaking with a slave before.” I can’t see Poseidon’s face, but I hear the rumble deep in his chest. His tone is mild, conversational. “Who was he?”
“Hm?” It takes me a moment to connect the words. “Oh, you mean Theo.”
“He is something to you?”
I think I hear new emotion in his voice.
Is it hesitation? Jealousy? A small laugh bubbles up from my throat.
“He’s nothing,” I say. I’m drunk, but not so drunk that I don’t hear the tinny voice in the back of my mind ask: Why did you say that?
Theo isn’t nothing to me. He is my friend.
My mouth starts to form those words, but when I look up at Poseidon, he’s smiling.
As easily as that, Theo is forgotten again.
“You look beautiful tonight, Medusa.”
“Thank you.” I stare at my hands. “I think I owe you an apology.”
“An apology?” Poseidon frowns. “What for?”
“The last time we saw each other, when we…” I can’t make myself finish the sentence. “You said you thought maybe I didn’t feel the way you do.”
Poseidon doesn’t say anything in answer.
“I want you to know I do,” I say. “I…I care for you, Poseidon, in a way I’ve never cared for anyone else.
” I don’t know what else to do, so I reach for his hand.
For an instant, I worry that the gesture is too brazen, but he laces his fingers into mine at once and circles the pad of his thumb against my skin.
My entire body hums like a plucked string at that touch.
“I’m glad to hear that,” he murmurs. “I’m glad to know that what I’ve felt for you isn’t unrequited.”
“It isn’t,” I whisper.
He looks down at me, and in the moonlight, his silhouette is traced in silver. “In another life, I would have married you.”
I can see it all in my head. King Poseidon and Queen Medusa, rulers of all the sea. Free to go wherever we want, free to do whatever we please. Free to be together. None of it’s real; it’s all in my imagination. But it feels real, so close I can almost touch it.
Poseidon hooks a thumb under my chin and tilts my face upward.
He bends toward me, and when he kisses me, I think to myself that this is better than the most potent Olympian wine.
He slips his tongue between my lips, and a moan escapes me.
I wrap my arms around him, and he gently pushes my back to the grass before he rolls on top of me.
The world around me spins, blurs. Poseidon bends slightly, kissing the place where my neck and shoulder meet, then lifts the hem of my dress so that it bunches at my waist. I’ve worn nothing underneath it; in the night air, goosebumps stipple my bare legs.
“Exquisite,” he murmurs, running his hand along my inner thighs.
I jolt when he touches the place between them—in all my life, no one has ever touched me there—but he doesn’t seem to notice.
With one of his knees, he pushes my legs apart, then hikes up his own tunic.
I’ve never seen a real man exposed before; detachedly, I note that it is different from the illustrations in my scrolls.
Poseidon lowers himself onto me so that our naked bodies are pressed together, and my eyes catch on something over one of his shoulders, two tiny pinpricks of light in the dark.
They are positioned near one of my mother’s olive trees, round and yellow gold.
It takes me a moment to recognize them for what they are.
Eyes. An owl’s eyes.
It isn’t Glaukopis, Athena’s owl—this bird is small and black and common—but the sight of the creature is enough. Athena’s face and all my oaths to the temple rush back to me.
“Wait,” I say as Poseidon adjusts. “Wait, I can’t—”
“Shh.” He bends his head to me. “It’s all right.”
I move slightly, testing to see if I can wriggle free.
With one hand, he suddenly pins both my arms above my head, and I know then that I cannot.
Poseidon is bigger than me, I’ve always known that, but I’ve never really accounted for how much bigger he is.
My pulse leaps as there’s more fumbling, a pause, and then a sudden sharp pain, low in my belly as he pushes inside me.
I cry out, but he silences me with a hard kiss.
“Shh.” He begins to rock back and forth against me, still holding my arms above my head.
His chest grows damp and sweaty as he moves faster and faster and his face turns ruddy with the effort.
Eventually, he stops looking at me altogether.
His eyes glaze over, and his mouth hangs slack as the strange rhythm quickens.
“Good,” he says between the grunts, “good girl.”
I don’t know exactly how long it lasts, only that, at some point, Poseidon lets out a long moan and collapses on top of me.
The lawn’s grass prickles my bare shoulders as he pants, and in the back of my mind, I think of the fact that my dress is now ruined.
Something wet slicks my inner thighs, and a violent shudder of disgust rolls through my body, but Poseidon still holds me pinned there, unable to move.
I am staring blankly at the stars when I hear footsteps approaching. I stiffen, but Poseidon only raises his head and peers into the darkness. Seconds later, a smile spreads across his lips, and the next words he says chill my blood.
“Ah, Athena, this is a surprise.”
“Honestly, Poseidon?”
There is audible exasperation in Athena’s voice. “You may care little for your wife, but Hera is here, and you know how she gets when you—”
Athena’s eyes find me in the dark, and she goes perfectly still. I expect rage, but what I see in her eyes is a more complicated array of emotions—intermingling traces of shock, grief, then betrayal. Her lower lip trembles as she speaks.
“You.”
Poseidon rolls off me, but I barely feel it. He doesn’t seem to have heard her. He chuckles as he rises and unhurriedly pulls down his tunic. I rush to pull my own down.
“As always, your timing is impeccable,” he says with a snort. “I didn’t think you were planning to join us tonight—”
There is a terrible crack as Athena’s fist connects with Poseidon’s jaw.
From the ground, I watch as Poseidon’s entire head snaps to the left with the sheer force of that blow.
His eyes widen in shock, momentarily stunned.
He grabs his lower face with one hand, and there’s a wet pop as he resets bone.
Of course, the injury is nothing to him, really.
He spits golden blood into the grass beside me, then turns back to face Athena. He isn’t smiling anymore.
“You would dare,” she says between her teeth, “you would dare touch one of my girls?”
My girls. I hear those words and think, for one finite moment, that there might be a fragment of hope left after all. I am a temple priestess, one of hers. She will understand, she will forgive me. I let myself believe that everything will still be all right.
Poseidon drags an arm across his mouth slowly, assessing Athena with an inscrutable expression. The two of them stare at each other for what feels like a century, saying nothing at all.
Then Poseidon strikes.
He takes Athena by her forearm and wrenches her down to her knees, so that she is forced to kneel before him.
If she tries to resist or struggle, I can’t tell; it makes no difference at all.
The coils of muscle in Poseidon’s arm bulge and flex as he holds her, the same way he held me.
There is something deeply disturbing about it.
I know that they are both immortal, centuries and centuries old, but passersby would not see that if they looked into the garden.
No, what they would see is a young man holding down a woman who looks old enough to be his mother.
Poseidon does not grimace as he looks down at Athena.
He does not even look angry. His expression is cool and indifferent; somehow, that is the most frightening thing.
“You forget yourself, little niece,” he says in a quiet voice.
It is courteous, unemotional; he might be discussing something as banal as the weather.
“You are a powerful goddess, perhaps the most powerful of them all. But you are no god; nor are you my equal. If you ever think to raise a hand to me again”—he yanks her to her feet so that their noses are mere inches apart—“I will see to it that you are a virgin goddess no longer.”
Athena looks away from him, and I catch a glimpse of the tears in her eyes.
They hurt to see, almost as much as the pain I felt before in my lower belly.
Because there it is: another woman, brought to her knees.
Athena—goddess of wisdom, craftwork, and war—is the most powerful woman I’ve ever known.
Now even she has been brought to her knees.
Poseidon stares down at her a second longer before he releases her.
He turns on his heel and makes his way inside without looking back, and in his absence, the cicadas’ trill returns.
The stars above flicker like candles in a gust of wind now, and it is just the two of us—Athena and me—alone in my mother’s gardens.
When the silence becomes unbearable, I try for words.
“Goddess,” my voice shakes, “forgive me.”
Athena’s silver eyes cut to me like two blades as she stands. She glares at me, and I watch as the muscles in her jaw clench, as her mouth twists with disgust.
“Whore.”
She doesn’t snatch me by my forearm, the way Poseidon snatched her. No, Athena closes the space between us, grabs an entire fistful of my locs, and drags me back into my father’s hall as I scream.