For hopefully the last time, I awake upon a beach with sand clinging to my lips and hair.

Exhaustion, like none I’ve ever felt before, even in the grips of the god of death, weighs me down. I can barely flutter my eyes open. The orange sky of an autumn sunset greets me with purple clouds, while the waves push me farther and farther up the beach. There’s coughing and exclamations from beyond my line of sight. I don’t even have the energy to find out who speaks.

“We should have never left Troy in such a rush,” a man yells. “We should have waited for the squalls to pass.”

Troy.

Just hearing the name is like a punch to my gut. Pain wrenches me from the ground, my back arching and eyes clenching shut. A wild roar begins to build. The wind, as if in answer, rips my hair from my face and sprays water everywhere.

Men and women begin to scream, but their cries are lost in the din of the rising storm.

Then cold hands clap my cheeks. They squeeze my face painfully.

“Open your eyes, Daphne!”

I don’t recognize the voice, sharp and reedy. The wind continues to build, rocking my entire body and lifting it from the earth.

“I command you to open your eyes!”

They snap open of their own accord. There’s not a single light in the sky, only a dark, unrelenting storm. The wind rages, and I cough against the swell that has dragged me back out to sea.

A cold body holds me. Her hands still cup my face. Waves rock, tossing us around. I swallow a mouthful of water and choke.

Her hair is white and her skin pale green. Her features are so familiar, though. Determined and furious. The woman’s nails dig into my skin, and I feel blood begin to pour down my face.

“Do not let this storm control you,” she says. “You are the storm.”

“I don’t know how,” I say. My voice is hollow and raw, as if the squalls have ruined my throat.

“Think of a sunset that brought you happiness,” she says. “Of a time when the clouds disappeared and joy blossomed within you.”

I remember pillow-soft kisses, wet sand beneath me as Apollo pulled me close. The setting sun alighting the world with flame as our lips met and everything else ceased to exist.

The wind dies as suddenly as it burst to life, and the clouds flee the piercing magenta rays of the sunset. We’re swept back to shore. I hit the sand with a gasp. My knees bark as the tender skin is torn by broken shells and driftwood.

The woman is standing immediately. She sweeps a hand through her sodden white hair, which hangs past her knees, and it dries instantly. Her clothes do the same, whipping in the breeze and pressing against her thin frame.

“You are Circe,” I say. “Ariadne’s aunt.”

I would recognize her features anywhere. The pert nose and tiny mouth. The lovely, upturned eyes amid a serious face.

“I am.” She nods. “And such a demonstration of power could only belong to the daughter of Oceanus.”

“That was me?” I cough and the remaining water hurls from my lungs.

She leans down and hauls me to my feet with surprising ease for someone so thin. Godly strength, no doubt. Only when I stand do I finally look around.

Odysseus’s men and prisoners have washed ashore, the boat nothing more than broken pieces strewn across sand and rocks gleaming with mussels and many-legged starfish. The island is unlike any I’d ever known in Greece. The beach boasts large rocks, while trees I do not recognize hang over walls of shifting sand. Atop a high hill, a house of beechwood glares down at us, the open doorway a dark abyss. Long ago, Ligeia told me of the plight of the goddess Circe, exiled to the island Aeaea. A daughter of the titan Helios, feared for her great and unwieldy power. Or perhaps that is only what the stories would have me believe.

“You were never exiled.” Not a question. “You’re the daughter of a titan. You could open that doorway, too.”

“My mother sent me here, to Aeaea, to protect me the moment Zeus learned of that door’s weakness.”

Ligeia also told me that Aeaea was far beyond Greece to the west. On the opposite side of the Aegean as Troy.

I stagger, feet slipping on the wet rocks. “How did we get here?”

“You brought them here,” Circe says simply, shrugging a shoulder. “My magic called out to yours, it seems. I was just spelling the island against the turmoil I felt stirring in the east, and you barged right through all my enchantments and hexes as if they were nothing more than cobwebs. That curse from Hermes no doubt.”

“But why here?” I watch in horror as Odysseus’s men hurl their guts up on the sand. They likely did not pass the distance in a blink of an eye as I did.

I follow as Circe turns and walks toward the men. “You wanted an escape. You’ll find nothing of the sort here.”

I jerk to a halt. “What do you mean?”

A smile pulls at her thin lips. “I will help you.”

“Help me what?”

“Learn how to use your powers.” She waves to the sea. “To save Olympus.”

Shock jars me, but it is met in kind by a fierce hunger. I turn toward the water, and it seems to shudder under my attention. The ocean stretches beyond my line of sight but the pull of Olympus is undeniable. It’s there. Waiting for me.

The wind rises around me, fluttering the hair on my shoulders and stirring the hem of my bloodstained dress.

I will save not just Olympus.

I will also save my people.