Medea's POV
The day had started like any other. Páppos's rays of light shone through, awakening me from my slumber despite the magically reinforced cento I'd used to prevent sunlight from peeking through. At a slow pace, I climbed out of bed. I could hear the sounds of servants working through the hall. I raised a hand, channeling magic through my hand.
A wave of magic escaped my hand, its destination the servants' quarters, where someone would tend to my needs. I yawned, rubbing my eyes, trying to wipe away my drowsiness. As if to assist me, the rays of light grew brighter, helping me wake up. I looked away from the bright lights, which were hurting my eyes.
"I am awake, Pappos. May you stop shining your light?" I yawned as Pappos's rays retreated, hearing my request. I removed my sheets as I climbed out of bed. As my feet touched the cool tesserae, the door to my quarters opened, and servants entered.
"Chaire, Otonia, Damia, Xenia," I greeted the three servants who came to help me prepare this morning with a smile. Together they led me to the baths.
"Has father informed you what my duties are for today, Otonia?" I questioned Otonia. I raised my arm for Xenia to clean it while Damia cleaned my legs.
"Lord Aeëtes said you are to continue your usual duties, but you are to come to the throne room, for the King has a guest arriving today," Otonia responded to me. Otonia's words surprised me; I expected my duties to be the same as usual. Most of my days comprised the same things: tending to Peleus, continuing my studies under Lady Hecate.
Father rarely had guests because, unless for mutual trade agreements, no king wanted to interact with him. I wasn't blind to how bad a ruler father is. He was paranoid, cruel, and ever since he received the Golden Fleece from Phrixus, things have gotten even worse.
I grimaced at the thought of Phrixus; his death had shocked everyone. Executed at the order of the father, accused of treason. Chalciope had become devastated; even now, unless ordered, she rarely ate.
'All because of a prophecy that may or may not be true. It's like father forgot the legend of Oedipus. The killing of Phrixus by him might cause his own death.'I thought grimly about the possibility of my father's death. Right now, father dying would cause the enemies of Colchis would jump at the chance to invade. The boon of the Golden Fleece was wonderful for the land, but the eyes of various rulers were full of greed. And my father's court treated greed like a plague.
By the time the servants finished rinsing the last traces of sleep from my skin, the palace had fully woken. Beyond the steam and marble, I could hear it: the shuffle of sandals, the clink of bronze, the indistinct murmur of men reciting morning reports like prayers. Colchis did not breathe the way other kingdoms did.
It held its breath.
Xenia combed out my hair in long, careful strokes, and I let my gaze drift to the small window cut high into the wall. Even there, even through thick stone, Páppos's light tried to find me. It always did. It was irritating, and yet a reminder.
I was not merely a king's daughter. I was the granddaughter of the Sun, no matter how much Father pretended my blood was a tool he alone could wield.
"Your chiton," Damia said, holding up a folded length of cloth the color of pomegranate skin. The weave was fine enough that it caught the light and scattered it like water.
Otonia added, almost as an afterthought, "Lord Aeëtes asked that you wear your veil today."
That made my hands still.
"Did he?" I whispered.
Otonia lowered her eyes. The servants didn't gossip—not in this palace. Not anymore. Not after the first-time Father made an example of tongues.
I let them dress me. The veil was thin linen, pale as bone against the darker hair Xenia braided and pinned. Damia fastened gold clasps at my shoulders, shaped like coiled serpents. My father liked serpents. He liked anything that warned before it struck.
When I stood, the bronze mirror caught my reflection in fragments: dark eyes made sharper by sleep, mouth set as if it already knew the taste of bitterness. A princess, draped in softness, wearing the symbols of a court that had long since stopped pretending it was gentle.
"Before the throne room," I told them, "I want to see Chalciope."
They exchanged glances—quick, afraid. Chalciope's quarters had become a place the palace avoided as if grief could be contagious. But none of them dared refuse me.
We moved through the corridors at a respectful pace. The palace was beautiful in the way a blade was beautiful: polished, made to cut. Frescoes of sea-horses and bulls roared in painted silence along the walls; braziers burned with resinous smoke that clung to the throat. At every turn, there were guards—more than there had been when I was a child. Father's paranoia had roots now; it had grown into the stone.
Guards also watched Chalciope's door, but no one called it guarding. They called it "attending." As if grief were a queen that required witnesses. The guard opened the door upon my approach to meeting my eyes.
Inside, the air was stale. Someone drew the curtains. The only light was the dull glow of a small oil lamp on the table—one lamp, like a stubborn ember refusing to die.
Chalciope sat near the shuttered window. Her hair, once carefully braided and adorned, hung loose over her shoulders. She wore black, not the formal black of ritual mourning, but the black of a woman who had forgotten she could choose any other color.
She didn't look until I spoke.
"Adelphē," I said
Her eyes moved to me slowly, as if my silhouette had to travel a great distance to reach her. When she finally focused, something in her face shifted—not relief. Not joy. Recognition, pain finding a name.
"Medea," she whispered, and my name sounded wrong in her mouth, a thing too alive for this room.
I stepped closer and sat beside her, careful not to crowd. Grief was strange; it could lash out if touched too quickly.
"They told me Father has a guest," I said, because the truth was safer than the question I really wanted to ask.
Chalciope's fingers tightened around the edge of her sleeve. "A guest," she repeated, voice flat. "As if he still believes he can invite fortune into this palace as though it were a man he could threaten."
She stared at the lamp. "Does he want you there?"
"Yes," I replied
A sharp, humorless breath left her. "Of course."
We sat in silence. The palace noise felt far away here, muffled, as if the walls were thicker around sorrow.
At last I said carefully, "Have you eaten?"
Chalciope didn't answer. So I took her hand—dry, cold, too thin—and pressed my thumb against her pulse. It beat. It insisted on beating. Even when she seemed determined to prove it wrong.
"When this is over," I said, "I'll send food. If you won't eat for yourself, eat to spite him."
Her mouth twitched, a tiny almost-smile that flickered out before it could live. "You always were the stubborn one."
"No," I said, and my voice came out harder than I intended. "He made me stubborn."
That earned me a glance, sharp as a needle. Chalciope looked as if she might say something—something dangerous, something honest. But she only squeezed my fingers once and let go, as if even holding a hand was an act that exhausted her.
"Be careful in that throne room," she whispered. "Father's guests are rarely just guests."
"I know," I said.
I left her with the lamp still burning, a single defiant flame in a room that refused the sun.
My "usual duties" were a chain of small obligations that kept my mind occupied: overseeing the herb stores, checking on the palace infirmary, reading the latest tablets from the harbormaster. I did them because if I didn't, Father's court would place other hands on them—hands that would be quicker to poison and slower to heal.
I visited the gardens next. The palace kept a cultivated square of green tucked between wings of stone, a compromise between luxury and superstition. Some plants were there because they were beautiful. Most were there because they were useful.
Deeper in the shade, my little corner—plants that never appeared on official lists. The kind Lady Hecate praised softly, and Father pretended not to notice, because he enjoyed having a daughter who could turn sickness into silence.
I knelt, running fingers over leaves, murmuring under my breath as I coaxed a stubborn sprig into straighter growth. Magic slid through the soil like water. It was easier here than anywhere else, away from eyes, away from the weight of the throne.
For a moment, I let myself be only Medea. Then a shadow fell across the garden stones. A palace runner—a boy no older than twelve, cheeks flushed—stood at the archway, breathing hard as if he'd sprinted the length of the corridors.
"Princess," he managed, bowing quickly. "The King commands your presence. Now."
The last word cut like a blade. No request. No invitation. Command. My fingers curled around the stem I'd been tending until it bent.
I rose, wiping soil from my hands onto my skirt. In my mind, Auntie's lessons stirred—how to hide poison under honey, how to read a lie by watching the eyes, how to listen to what a man avoids saying.
"Tell Father I'm coming," I said.
The boy nodded and fled, relief in his shoulders as he escaped the garden's quiet. Otonia and the others were waiting by the corridor, as if they'd been expecting the summons. They adjusted my veil, checked my clasps, fixed my sleeves with trembling precision.
"Do I look like a daughter?" I asked lightly. "Or a sacrifice?"
They froze.
"Otonia," I said, gentler, and she hurriedly shook her head.
"You look like a princess," she whispered.
I didn't correct her.
The closer we drew to the throne room, the more the palace stiffened with ceremony. Guards stood in pairs, spears upright, armor polished to a mirror-bright sheen. Incense thickened the air. And beneath it all, the hum of people whispering the same word as though it might ward off bad luck.
At the great doors, the captain of the guard stepped forward and bowed just enough to show respect without surrendering vigilance.
"Princess Medea," he announced, and pushed the doors open.
They had carved the throne with sunbursts and coiling beasts, and inlaid gold so heavy that it looked less like an ornament and more like a warning.
On either side of the dais, priests and shamans stood in quiet rows—crocus robes, ash-marked foreheads, hands hidden in their sleeves as if even their fingers might offend the gods. Scribes waited with tablets already damp with fresh wax. The captains of the guard held their spears upright and motionless, bronze tips pointed toward the ceiling as if they were trying to pin the air in place.
My father sat in the center like a man who believed he could force the world, an enemy, into obedience. When I stepped into the space he'd showed—two paces from the throne, one pace too far to be family—I felt the room's attention settle on me, heavy as wet cloth. Several gazes showed curiosity. Some were resentful. Some were calculating.
Father's eyes slid over me, pausing on my veil with obvious approval. Of course he wanted it on me today. A veil hid expression. A veil turned a girl into an object. His fingers tapped once on the armrest—an impatient, private signal.
The great doors opposite the dais opened with a groan of hinges. Silence spread, sudden and complete. A herald stepped forward, voice ringing against stone.
"A xenos seeks an audience with Lord Aeëtes, King of Colchis."
A foreigner. My stomach tightened, not from fear—not exactly—but from the feeling that something had just stepped onto a path it could not leave.
The xenos who entered was nothing like the perfumed envoys I'd seen in Father's hall. He was a young man—older than me, but not so old that the road had taken the softness from his face—standing with the quiet, balanced poise of someone who'd learned to keep his footing when the world tried to throw him.
His hair was a messy tumble of red-brown, like embers stirred back to life, and it caught the torchlight in sharp copper edges. Beneath it, his eyes were an impossible blue—clear and cold, the color of deep water under a winter sky. He did not smile as he walked. He did not need to. His expression was steady, almost severe, as if he'd already measured the room and decided he could survive it.
He wore a white chiton cut for movement rather than display, trimmed and patterned with gold-threaded designs that spoke of craftsmanship, not court vanity. A dark scarf looped around his neck and shoulders, draped like a shadow he carried willingly, and a blue cloak fell from one side, heavy enough to be practical, shaped to his body like it belonged on a battlefield. Leather straps crossed his chest—restraints for gear, not decoration—and at his waist a belt and sash held everything in place with a soldier's efficiency.
What caught my attention was the man's presence. It was like standing in front of a living flame. I could tell with just a glance this was a hero. I couldn't help but frown. Even though I've never seen this man, he seems familiar, but I can't place him.
The xenos stopped at the proper distance from the dais and bowed—deep enough to show respect, not so deep it became groveling. He made the movement, which was practiced and court-correct, but it still resembled a warrior's bow, the kind a warrior would make before a duel.
"My lord Aeëtes," he said, voice carrying cleanly through the hall. "King of Colchis."
At least he knew the title. But the way he said it—steady, unflinching, without the usual honeyed fear—made half the court stiffen as if he'd raised a blade.
A herald stepped forward to announce him, and the name rang against stone. "Alkaios Astrea of Stymphalos."
The ripple that followed was immediate. Recognition sharpened some murmurs. Stymphalos. Arcadia. The Hero's country.
Now I knew where I recognized that color of hair from. Alkaios Astrea, the champion of Astraea. His deeds had echoed across the land years ago. Killing the Stymphalian birds at such a young age had resounded across the land.
The only reason I knew of him was because Auntie words "What an irritating man." She never said a name, only told me two features. With hair that was blazing red and his presence felt like being in front of a living flame. I never understood the second part, but now I do.
Alkaios's presence shone as a flame of heroism and resisted any attempts to contain him.
Father leaned back a fraction, eyes narrowing, his fingers resting on the arm of the throne as though it were a restraint he might break at any moment.
"You seek an audience," Father said. He did not waste words. "Speak."
Alkaios lifted his head. For the first time since he entered, his gaze flicked—not to me, not to the courtiers—but to the priests lining the dais, to the ash-marked foreheads and hidden hands. As if he'd clocked which laws mattered here.
"I first come under Xenia," he said. "Under Lord Zeus Xenios's eye, I ask for shelter and safe speech—for myself and my companions."
The word xenia landed like a stone dropped into water. The priests went still. A few of the older courtiers exhaled sharply through their noses—relief and resentment tangled together. Invoking Lord Zeus Xenios here, in my father's hall, was not only custom.
It was a constraint. Father's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. Something else—an irritation forced into stillness.
"Bread and salt," Father ordered.
Servants moved at once. The servants brought a tray with salt in a clean bowl, warm bread, and a cup of wine forward. The ritual was old enough to feel like gravity. Even Father followed it when it benefited him.
Alkaios reached for the salt and bread… then hesitated.
"I—" he began, and the pause was the first crack in his composure. No fear. No doubt. Something colder—like he was choosing the shape of each word before letting it live.
"With respect, my king," he said at last, "I would speak my purpose before I eat."
The room reacted as one. A priest's brow creased. A scribe's stylus paused mid-scratch. One captain's spear shifted the width of a breath, moved by instinct because the order mattered.
In proper xenia, the guest ate. The host provided. Only then did the guest speak of why he had come. To refuse the offering—even politely—could sound like suspicion. He feared poison. Like he believed himself above the law of hospitality.
And looking at Alkaios, I could tell he hadn't meant it that way. He carried himself like a warrior—like a man who thought honesty should come first, even over ritual.
But in my father's throne room, honor without etiquette looked perilously close to insult. I felt Father's attention sharpen, the way a blade finds its edge.
"You stand in my hall," Father said slowly, "and you instruct me on the order of my own customs?"
Alkaios's eyes widened a fraction—realization, too late.
"No," he said immediately, and that was the first time his voice softened. "No, my king. Forgive me. In my homeland, it is… considered disrespectful to state one's intent plainly, so there is no deceit beneath the bread."
He inclined his head again—more earnest than before. No submission. An apology. It should have been enough. But Father's court lived on the knife-edge of interpretation. Everyone weighed every gesture for hidden meaning. They treated every deviation as a test.
And Alkaios—gods help him—did not move like a man who feared failing. Father said nothing for a long moment. Then he lifted one hand, two fingers extended.
A silent permission.
Alkaios accepted the bread and salt and took a single bite—just enough to satisfy the ritual without pretending comfort. Then he set the bread back down and faced the throne again.
"My purpose," he said, "is to seek guidance."
That line at least was safe. Many men came to the courts seeking guidance. Many left with only bruises for their trouble.
Alkaios continued, and I saw him choose his words carefully—as if he'd finally realized this room punished carelessness more than cowardice.
"I have heard," he said, "that the King of Colchis possesses the Golden Fleece, blessed by the gods. Not only that, but a power not just of bronze and spear guarded him... but of blood."
Father's gaze did not flick to the Fleece, but the entire hall felt its presence tighten behind him. Like a beast shifting in its sleep.
"And within this palace," Alkaios added, "there is a princess taught by Lady Hecate."
The priests did not react. They didn't need to. Lady Hecate's name always cooled a room. My spine stiffened beneath the veil.
His eyes found me—not lingering, not crude. Just direct. As though the veil was a courtesy he acknowledged, not a wall he respected.
"I seek Princess Medea's tutelage," he said, "in the magical arts."
The court murmured again, quieter this time, as if the first shock had taught them fear. Several heads turned—some toward me, some toward Father, some toward the priests, as though seeking permission to be offended.
Asking for a princess's teaching was not like asking for a court scholar. It implied I had something worth taking. It implied Father allowed me to be more than decoration.
Father's face remained composed, but I knew him too well. I saw the tiny tension at the corner of his mouth. The flare behind his eyes.
Then Alkaios did the one thing he should have avoided. He did not stop.
"And," he added, voice steady—too steady—"I would bind that request with marriage."
The words hit like a slap, not because he shouted them, but because he spoke them as if they were the natural next step. As if any man could simply walk into Colchis and propose a knot around my life.
A proposal did not come like this. We do not do this in open court. Not without envoys. Not without gifts stacked high enough to bribe the gods into silence. I felt heat rise beneath my veil. Not flattery. Not yet.
Outrage.
When I looked at Alkaios, there was no smugness there. No leering confidence. He wasn't grinning like a drunken sailor. His expression was serious—almost solemn. As if this were not a conquest for him. As if it were a vow.
He lifted one hand, palm open, in a gesture that meant I bring no blade to this request.
"I do not ask lightly," he said. "Nor do I ask as an insult. Princess Medea's name carries weight beyond Colchis. I would learn from her—and in time, if she wills it, stand beside her."
If she wills it.
That should have soothed the room. It was the right phrase. The respectful phrase. But the damage had already been done—not to Xenia, not formally, but to Father's pride. Even respect can sound presumptuous if someone speaks it without fear.
Alkaios's tone—earnest, direct, painfully certain—made it sound as if my acceptance was a matter of timing… not permission. He glanced toward Father again, and I saw it: the line of thought that had led him here.
In his head, he was doing everything correctly. Lord Zeus Xenios was called upon by him. An apology for the error was what he offered. He used titles. He displayed deference.
But he was also a hero, accustomed to doors opening when he pushed them, and my father was not a door.
"You have no lineage," someone whispered from the court, too soft to be named but loud enough to be heard.
Alkaios's jaw tightened. Not anger—restraint. Like a man swallowing a retort out of discipline.
"I have deeds," he said instead, and though he meant it as an explanation, the words came out sharply in the hush.
Deeds.
Deeds over blood. Action over birthright. People might have admired that in another hall. Here, in Colchis—before Aeëtes, before the Fleece, before the memory of Phrixus still staining the palace—it sounded dangerously like a challenge.
If things were different—if paranoia didn't live in Father's bones, if prophecy didn't crouch on his shoulders like a carrion bird—Alkaios's deeds might have been enough. But Father didn't see deeds first. He saw threats.
I'd watched him for years: every traveler became a possibility, every possibility became a blade aimed at his throat. And ever since Phrixus and the Fleece, that fear had turned vicious—sharp enough to cut anyone who wandered too close.
He wouldn't care that Alkaios was a goddess's champion. Father would hear "favored" and think "temporary." He would look at a hero and still see a mortal—one without blood ties he respected, one without a lineage he feared. And worse—Alkaios had wounded Father's pride in open court.
To ask for my hand so directly, to stumble through our customs and still keep his chin high… it wasn't just bold. In this hall, it was provocation dressed as sincerity.
Alkaios' accomplishment against the Stymphalian birds was grand, yet my Father would find more importance in the blow Alkaios dealt to his pride. To ask a God's son for his daughter's hand while indirectly showing disrespect.
I didn't need prophecy to know what came next. I felt it in the way Father went still, in the silence that tightened around his smile. Father would never accept this. Silent and sick with it, I mourned Alkaios before Father even spoke the first command—because I could already see his mind turning, searching for a cruelty that would look like justice.
Father's fingers curled against the throne's armrest. The air itself seemed to recoil, waiting for the strike.
Father's voice echoed through the chamber. "Would you care to repeat that? I must have misheard when you asked for my daughter's hand in marriage. After all, you would not ask that, would you? A child with no lineage daring to make such a request."
I shifted where I stood, suddenly too aware of every eye in the room. Father's tone was calm—too calm—but I could hear the fury coiled beneath it like a serpent about to strike.
"That is incorrect, my lord," Alkaios said smoothly. "I requested both your daughter's tutelage in magic and her hand in marriage."
I had to bite back a gasp. The shamelessness of it—no softening, no careful approach, no proper intermediaries. Who did he think he was? Had the road knocked sense clean out of him, that he would speak to my father with such blatant disrespect?
Father drew a slow breath. I watched his jaw tighten, watched the smile that wasn't a smile flicker at the corner of his mouth before his face settled into something cold.
"Give me one reason I shouldn't have my guards take your head where you stand, Alkaios of Stymphalos," Father said. "Do not think the gods will protect you after such disrespect in my home."
A charming smile spread across Alkaios's face—as if my father had offered him wine, not death.
"My king, I will undertake any task you demand to prove my worth," he replied. "If I must slay the mighty Hydra to show my might, I shall travel the marshes of Lerna to claim its head for you. All I ask is for a chance to prove myself worthy of your daughter's hand."
Father's gaze did not leave him. For a heartbeat, he looked almost thoughtful. Then, that expression came—subtle, familiar, dreadful. The look Father wore right before he did something especially cruel.
"Any task, you say?" he repeated, and a slow smile formed on his lips.
My stomach dropped. The way father spoke sent a chill down my spine. I just knew that the next words he would say would shock everyone in the room. My prediction had unfortunately come to pass.
"If you wish to prove yourself," Father said, "kill the sea monster Scylla and bring me her head."
I froze at the name.
Scylla.
Suicide. No one passed her straits safely—not with ships full of men, not with prayers, not with offerings thrown into the sea like bribes. To hunt her was to volunteer for drowning, for screaming, for being torn apart and swallowed and forgotten.
And Father—Father was smiling.
I expected Alkaios to refuse. I thought Alkaios would retreat and beg, thus giving Father the perfect excuse to execute him without violating xenia or incurring Zeus's wrath for killing a guest who had been offered shelter.
I looked at Alkaios, waiting to see fear. Instead, the man grinned as if my father had just handed him glory.
"My king," he said, voice ringing clear, "if Scylla's head is what you desire, then Scylla's head you shall receive. I, Alkaios Astrea of Stymphalos, swear to bring you the head of the sea monster Scylla by year's end. In exchange, I request the chance to earn your daughter's hand in marriage and to receive tutelage in the magical arts. This I swear upon the River Styx."
The words struck the throne room like a thrown spear.
Styx.
Even Father's court went still at that. A vow on the Styx was not theater. It was a chain—one the gods themselves enforced. For a moment, no one breathed.
All I could think was: Arrogant fool. A hero drunk on his own legend mistook my father's court for a stage meant to applaud him.
Father, however, seemed delighted. A low chuckle rumbled from his chest, and his mirth echoed through the hall like something ugly.
"You are a fool, Alkaios of Stymphalos," he said. "If you are so eager to damn your soul, then throw your life away. I shall not stop you. I eagerly await news of your demise."
Alkaios laughed as if they shared a joke.
"I shouldn't keep Scylla waiting, my king," he said, turning as though he had already decided the matter. "I advise you to find a suitable place to display her head for all to see."
He left the throne room with the ease of a man walking out of a tavern—bold, unscathed. And at the threshold, he glanced back at me. Just a heartbeat. Just long enough.
He smiled. And traitor that it was, my heart answered.
Three months later, Alkaios returned. The throne room filled again, crowded so tightly the air itself felt pressed. Father sat high on his throne, confident—almost bored—wearing the expression of a man waiting to be proven right.
Alkaios stepped forward, travel-worn, sun-bright, and far too alive. Without ceremony, he reached into his haversack and hauled something heavy into view.
Scylla's head.
The stench hit first—salt and rot and something older than the sea itself. The sight of it made more than one courtier flinch back. A priest muttered a prayer under his breath like a reflex.
Father's composure shattered. All etiquette slipped from him in an instant as he stared, disbelief cracking his features.
Alkaios's smile only widened at the reaction.
"Princess Medea," he said, as if we were speaking in a quiet garden instead of a throne room choking on shock, "I aspire to be a worthy student under your tutelage."
Then, with shameless ease, he added, "After all, I expect nothing less than excellence from my future wife."
My face went hot beneath the veil. Before I could gather myself, he knelt—right there, in front of everyone—and took my hand as if it already belonged to him. His touch was warm, steady, and entirely too familiar for a stranger.
Then Alkaios smiled up at me.
Oh…
Oh, I was in trouble.
Prologue: The Smile That Spelled Trouble End