brutal strike. She misses Aunt Stheno’s hand by a hair’s breadth. Venom flings onto a nearby rug.
Aunt Stheno jumps backward, her own snakes a rioting mass of hissing.
The sudden loss of her hand on my neck sends me plummeting to the floor. My cheek smashes into the stone floor with a crack of bone.
The floor burns this close to the fire. Another length of my hair unfurls into the flames.
Stam lunges again. Aunt Euryale’s grip eases, then disappears. I’m left groaning on the floor, my cheekbone broken into pieces and the stone blistering my skin. My hair is a lost cause; years of growth lost in heartbeats to the flame.
The throbbing pain in my face should make me cry. Punishment should make me cry. Instead, anger simmers in my chest like embers in the depths of the hearth. When my eyes sting, it’s not from pain or fear. It’s from the embers within me igniting all at once.
I push myself to my knees. My breaths slow. Stam turns, giving me a single look, and I nod. Her mouth stretches into a reptilian mimicry of a smile. Venom leaks from her fangs.
“I don’t steal,” I say.
Aunt Stheno’s mocking laugh echoes through the cavern.
“You stole our honey,” Aunt Euryale says.
I turn with Stam coiled to strike. I’m not sure what they see in my eyes or my bruise-mottled face. Whatever it is has them backing away, their snakes tucking in on themselves.
“Say it again.”
The pure ice, the lack of inflection; at first, I don’t recognize the voice as my own.
“You stole our honey,” she repeats, less sure.
They shuffle out of my way when I stride past. Stam bares her mouth wider, showing them each bit of her dripping fangs.
I lean my hands against the kitchen table, my back to them. “Say it again. I dare you.”
“You stole our honey.”
The plates of decadent food crash onto the floor. Ceramic shatters. Grains of rice cover the floor in sticky heaps. The bits of green herbs I worked so hard for, now lost to the muddled green-gray rug.
“You’ll pay for that, you—” Aunt Stheno starts, footsteps surging close.
“Don’t.” Aunt Euryale says. “The venom.”
“To Hades with the venom,” she says. “We’ll chop that creature’s head off like we should’ve done years ago.”
I pivot, heart in my throat. Gone is the cold predator ready to kill. In her place stands cowering prey with singed hair.
Aunt Stheno bares her teeth. The glint of them distracts from the gleam of the knife in her hand, but only for a moment.
I’m immortal. Is Stam? I don’t—I don’t know.
I huddle into myself, hands cupped over her fragile body. “Auntie, please.”
Her snakes emerge, scenting the air with a hundred forked tongues. “The fire wasn’t enough of a lesson, was it?”
I snap my mouth shut.
“You had to keep going, keep arguing.” She steps closer. The knife point pricks into my side. “So let me make this clear.”
She leans close. Our noses touch. Her breath smells of vinegar. “Disobedience will be punished.”
Aunt Euryale nods. “Better us to teach you than the gods.”
The knife digs deeper. Wetness seeps from my side, trickling onto my dress.
“Do you understand?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Good girl.” She smiles. There’s nothing warm about the expression. “Now move your hands.”
No. Not Stam. Brave, fierce, beautiful Stam.
“But—”
She lifts the knife, batting at my knuckles with the point. “Move. Your. Hands.”
Not Stam.
I move my hands.
Stam lunges out. Aunt Stheno grunts, stumbling backward.
Stam’s jaw snaps at empty air. Venom flings onto the rug, the table, and Aunt Euryale’s skin. She shrieks, brushing it off, but it only smears. She drops, rolling against an edge of the rug with heaving gasps.
And in the chaos, Aunt Stheno moves forward before Stam can recover. She grabs Stam’s head, just behind her jaw, and holds as Stam writhes in her grip.
The knife raises. Plummets down toward Stam’s neck. My chest heaves. My heart skips. Black creeps into my sight.
“STOP!”
A tendril of darkness coils around Aunt Stheno’s waist, flinging her backward. She lands in a groaning heap against the wall next to the hearth.
Stam drops, gasping, onto my shoulder the moment my aunt’s grip loosens. Atia emerges, leaning into her sister and lending much-needed warmth.
“What are you doing?” Nyx says. She leans close. Her hand settles on my other shoulder.
Aunt Euryale kneels, head bowed. “Teaching the child a lesson.”
“A lesson?” Nyx asks, voice sickly sweet. “You were destroying her one weapon.”
She kicks the nearest stool. It smashes into slivers against the nearest wall. Shards of wood slice into Aunt Euryale’s arms. I try, and fail, not to be pleased at the sight of her blood.
Aunt Stheno crawls forward, stopping next to her sister. “They could’ve grown back—”
She growls. “Could have isn’t good enough.”
“Goddess,” Aunt Euryale says. “What would you have us do? The child is.” She pauses, upper lip twitching into a sneer. “Rebellious.”
“Good,” Nyx says. “We’ll need that for our plan, don’t forget.”
“But—” they say in unison.
“No,” Nyx rasps. “No more. If you wish to punish the girl, it won’t be while we are working together. Do I make myself clear?”
Their throats work in a gulp. “Yes, goddess.”
She nods once. Then her hand, still against my shoulder, tugs at me until we’re free from the stifling kitchen.
I stagger alongside her until we reach my room. Sink onto the bed, hands on my knees. I glance down at my knuckles, still bloodied from Aunt Stheno’s knife, and bite back on a whimper. Touch my hair, now burned shorter. The ends crumble to ash against my fingertips.
Stam bumps her head against my wrist, a reassurance and comfort both.
“Chloe,” Nyx says.
And it’s like hearing from beneath a raging current. Muffled, distant.
“Chloe.”
Her hands land on my knees. Warm. One finger at a time, she taps my knobby knees until a rhythm emerges. Then hums along, almost the lullaby my mother once sang.
I focus on the beat instead of my galloping heart or shaking body. Breath by breath, I leave the vice-grip of panic.
When it’s gone, I wipe a hand over my tear-soaked face. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she says, a smile in her voice. “I’m glad I could help.”
I swallow a fresh wave of tears. “Thank you.”
She pats my knee once, then stands. “I must go deal with your aunts. Rest, my dear.”
She pushes at my shoulders until I lie back, my eyes trained on the ceiling. The spider wove his web wider; he’s closer to the center of the room now.
Her steps echo through the caverns. Then silence. Hushed voices, Nyx’s rasp distinct from the rest but no more decipherable. I lose time to the cadence of their whispers.
One moment I close my eyes, the night sky and a glimmer of stars visible through the hole in the ceiling, and the next I wake hours later. The sky is still dark above. The spider creeps to the other side of the room, spinning his web in fits and starts as he goes.
“Stam,” I whisper into the dark.
Her tongue licks across my cheek, now healed.
“I’m sorry.”
She leans against my neck. I know.
A flurry of whispers echo from the kitchen, closer to the doorway this time. I catch snippets of words.
Medusa. Temple. Father.
I jolt upright. My head spins, but I ignore it, shoving myself up to standing. I sidle closer to the flap of fabric covering my doorway, leaning my head against the crack where it flutters against the stone.
“We must tell her,” Aunt Euryale says.
Aunt Stheno joins. “She’ll understand everything if we do, goddess.”
Nyx hums but says nothing.
Sweat trickles down my neck. I swipe my hand across the skin there, then scratch at the fine hairs until my neck stings.
Could they know who my father is?
“Her father,” Aunt Euryale says, voice overloud compared to the quiet whispers from before.
“Hush!” Aunt Stheno says.
They do—they know who he is.
I push aside the fabric, stepping into the hallway. I’m careful to keep my steps loud; better for them to know I’m coming than to sneak close and get caught. They go quiet and still. When I edge into the kitchen, they turn as a group, their faces drawn.
“You know who my father is,” I say. My tone is accusing. Each word cracks.
“Darling—” Nyx says, hands outstretched toward me.
“I need to know. Please.” I pause, breath coming in gasps. “My mother is dead. If there’s a chance, no matter how slim, I have a father alive somewhere, I need to know.”
They exchange a look, one I can’t interpret. But there’s something dark in their eyes that has nothing to do with Nyx’s powers.
“Come sit,” Nyx says, leading me to a stool close to the low-burning hearth.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” I ask. Why else should I sit than to receive bad news?
“I wish he was,” Aunt Stheno mumbles.
Aunt Euryale elbows her in the side, hard enough for them both to stumble.
“He’s alive,” I say, clutching at Nyx’s dress. She stoops down, mouth pinched into a tight bud. “Where?”
“Sit and I’ll tell you,” she says, oddly soft.
I sit, the wooden stool hard against my skin, but I barely notice anything beyond the buzzing in my veins.
I have another parent somewhere out in the realm. Someone I can love, someone who can love me. Oh, my aunts love me in their own way, but they’re no substitute for my mother’s constant affection or the possibility of a father. A father who could spoil me like in the storybooks.
“Before she became a creature, your mother was a regular, if beautiful, mortal,” Nyx begins. “She worked as a priestess devoted to the gods in a grand temple in the town of Kyma.”
My mother, staring at the distant coastline with something like longing written across her face.
“Mother!” I yelled, tugging on her dress. Only when my tugs began tearing stitches, did she look away, putting her blindfold back into its spot over her deadly eyes.
But she’d always return to the northern tip of the islands, the same expression upon her face while staring at that spot.
Another quirk, I thought.
But I remember the maps in the books. The spot she looked at on the coastline bordering the Akri Sea? The spot with its streams of hearth smoke? Kyma.
Nyx continues. “She devoted herself to her work spreading the history of all the gods yet many knew her favorite was Athena.”
Athena, the goddess of wisdom and a warrior in her own right. Picturing my mother devoting herself to a warrior goddess—something doesn’t sit right. My mother was timid. Quiet.
Yet before she became a gorgon, was she different? Did she laugh and dance? Did she smile with all of herself?
“Mother,” I said.
She hummed to show she was listening, but didn’t glance up from the embroidery draped across her lap. She couldn’t look at me, not without a blindfold, and she remembered not to always, no matter how much I prodded at her patience.
I leaned into her leg, wide eyes trained on the stitches shaping into a scene of a battle of god against Titan.
One by one, I pointed to the figures shaped by the thread, asking their names. Some had no names; simple fillers of the forgotten mortals who helped in the battles. Others were gods. Ares, running a man through with a sword. Zeus, striking a massive Titan down with forked lightning. Apollo, glowing hands tending to one of the fallen mortals, healing them even as they bled out.
Then a woman, her helm the same shining gray as her eyes. “And her?”
A flicker of a smile. “Athena.”
Nyx’s voice pulls me back. “But word of Medusa’s beauty spread far, even to Athansi and the glittering court within its Olympian Palace. Before long, a particular god ventured to Kyma’s temple.”
My mother, her burgundy hair twisted into endless snakes. Her fair skin. Eyes like liquid chestnuts, near gold when the sun struck them, but unwilling to stare at anyone for so much as a second.
“Why are mine green?” I asked her once, staring into the clear stream between the two isles. My reflection stared back up at me, eyes a startling green.
She said nothing. That night, she curled on our shared bed, her back to me, and refused to sing one of her lullabies no matter how I poked at her spine.
“And?” I ask.
“And he met her.” Nyx’s mouth purses until it blends into her dark skin. “He made his advance, offering her a spot by his side as a coddled lover. He had already married, but his wife had vanished beneath the Thalassa Ocean’s waves years before.”
Screech. Aunt Euryale leans against the table, pushing it backwards. She raises a hand to her face, shadowing her features.
“Medusa refused. No matter how deep her devotion to the gods went, she could not leave her post to tend to this one god.”
Nyx swallows, throat bobbing. Her gaze stays trained on mine. “So he took what he wanted by force. He left her there, bleeding in the shadow of Kyma’s statues of the gods.”
“He—” My throat tightens. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. “He raped her.”
Nyx nods. “He did.”
My mother, her back to me, her blindfold knotted into place. I tugged on her dress until she turned.
“Yes, Chloe?” she asked, exasperation and fondness laced in her tone.
I grinned. “I found a name for my snakes!” My lips pursed to the side, my grin stifled just barely. “You kept saying this word in your sleep. And it’s perfect! Divided in half, it’s four letters for each snake, that way they don’t get jealous.”
Her mouth fell from its smile. “What word?”
“Stamatia! I’ll name this snake.” I held each of my two snakes up for her, though she couldn’t see. “Stam. It even sounds tough, like she is. The other will be Atia, the nicer of the two names, for she’s the sweetest.”
My mother’s face grew blank. Her skin drained of any color. Her hands, when they moved to twine around each other by her hip, trembled.
“Do you know what that word means?” Her voice shook.
I lowered my eyes, thinking. The old language, the one the Titans favored before the war.
Then I grinned, the answer slotting into place. “Stop! It means stop.”
She nodded, then turned away.
She didn’t leave our bed for three days afterward. Even when she did, days later, she always returned to saying that same word each night in her sleep. Only each time after, she screamed.
I learned to live with her screaming.
Buzzing flows from my veins to fill my ears. I lift a hand. Try to place it against my clammy forehead. But it shakes, veering off course, and lands on the wall next to the hearth.
Nyx inhales, sharp and low. Her hand cradles mine. “Careful, you’ll burn.”
I deserve to burn. All my questions, all my mistakes, my too-bright eyes—each one reminded her of him.
“Was he punished?” I croak.
She shakes her head. “No. She was.”
I reel backward. The stool clatters beneath me before stilling, legs back against the ground. The buzzing grows, filling my head.
“Athena appeared in the temple, finding Medusa where she bled and waited beneath Athena’s statue. Medusa, your mother, called for the goddess during and after her assault.”
“Athena punished her?”
“Worse. She transformed her into a monster of snake hair, red as the blood smeared on her precious statue. Made her eyes turn anyone she looked upon into a stone statue much like those of the gods in the temple. Then the goddess exiled her to these islands to live among the other gorgons for the rest of her mortal life.”
I lean, head against my knocking knees, and try to breathe. “Why?”
“She desecrated Athena’s statue. Few remember Athena is a virginal goddess.”
“He raped her.”
“The gods cared not, especially Athena. In their eyes, she had done wrong and deserved such punishment. Besides, punishing one of their own precious court members? Unheard of.”
“Who was the god?”
“Poseidon, god of the ocean.”
I ran toward the waves in my worst dress, intent on splashing in the shallow depths close to the one sandy stretch of shore on the islands. But before I could step foot in the water, my mother’s icy hands pulled me back.
“No,” she whispered into my ear. “Never venture into the ocean.”
I squirmed in her hold. “But Mother—”
“Never, Chloe. Promise me.”
I pouted. It did nothing; she couldn’t see me beyond the fabric covering her eyes.
After wearing myself out, wiggling in her arms, shoving at her hands, I gave in.
“I promise.”
I’ve kept the promise for the ten years since. I’m seventeen, and not once have I swum in the sea. The stream, no matter how shallow, always has to be enough.
Finally, I know why my skin heals. Why my body forever regenerates anything lost. Why I’m immortal where my mother was not.
My father is alive.
My father is a god.