The Petros Chronicles Boxset

by Diana Tyler

  “So what you did to them was in self-defense?” Damian recalled the drawings of men’s stone faces contorted in eternal expressions of horror.

  Medusa’s yellow eyes darkened to a softer, more human caramel. With a bony, sunspot-covered hand, she stroked the side of a snake as if it were a tendril of hair. “Most of the time, yes. Other times…” Her wings relaxed along her back, their charcoal tips nearly touching the earth. “Other times my temper got the better of me.”

  She folded her arms across her chest; two ribs protruded from her sunburned sternum. The ochre robe she wore appeared to Damian to be many sizes too big—if ancient robes came in sizes.

  She sauntered back to the outcrop and slid down its black side, snakes standing erect to keep from being squished against it. “I was never proud of what I did,” she said. “I never wanted to become the monster Athena made me out to be.” She drew her knees to her chest and rested her chin upon them, her wings wrapping around her like twin shields.

  Walking backward, Damian approached her and sat a few feet away. He couldn’t let himself become too trusting, no matter how much of a victim she portrayed herself to be.

  Sensing his nearness, Medusa lowered the wing closest to him and wiped rheumy tears from her face. “It’s why I’m here now. I swore I would never frighten another child, nor kill another man.” She looked east toward the halo of sunlight crowning the hills. “My days of terrorizing are over. It’s Leto’s turn now.”

  “How do you know her?” Damian lowered the mirror so he couldn’t see the brood of snakes as they writhed like worms dug from the soil.

  Medusa straightened one leg as she pulled a pear from a fold in her robe and bit into it with her yellow, horse-shaped teeth. “Where are my manners?” she said, her mouth full of half-chewed chunks of fruit. She held the pear out for him to take. “Care for a bite? I promise it’s fresh. Hephaestus brought me bushels of fruit from Hera’s garden years ago. They never go bad.”

  Any appetite Damian might have had was long gone now. Even so, he forced his head to nod. “Thank you,” he said, and reached over his shoulder.

  He watched through the mirror as Medusa handed him the pear, nearly a third of it already gone. Her long fingernails lingered for a moment, hovering over his neck as if she were tempted to touch him. Then she pulled away quickly and crawled behind the rock. She returned seconds later holding a wineskin.

  “Her name alone compels me to take a swig of wine.” Medusa raised the wineskin to her lips. “Let me ask you something before I tell you anything more about Mania.” She intoned the name, drawing out each syllable with unambiguous loathing.

  Damian took a nibble of the pear and swallowed it down fast. “Do you care to know why I want to see her?”

  “No,” said Medusa as she passed him the wine. “I want to know why you have a death wish.”

  Damian took a drink, trying not to wince at the medicinal taste. “I don’t have a death wish.”

  The wing closest to him twitched and Medusa stared at him blankly. He lowered the mirror and turned his profile to her.

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing. It’s just that I was beginning to believe you weren’t mad after all.”

  Damian took a deep breath to quell his nerves. Medusa wasn’t the only one with a temper. “Would you believe me if I told you I’m from the future?”

  Medusa, and all the snakes, looked him up and down. He was still wearing his jeans, sneakers, and navy-blue hoodie. “It would explain a lot if you were.” She gave a wide grin and took another swig of wine. “That makes you either a god”—she drained the wineskin and tossed it aside as she wiped her mouth—“or an Asher.”

  Her pupils dilated as skittish sunlight touched her skin. “You want to join her?” She almost whimpered the words, as if he’d just transformed into another of her enemies.

  Damian shook his head. “No. I just want to see what she’s doing. I want to know how one Asher was able to completely corrupt the world I come from.”

  Medusa’s countenance brightened. Even the knot of snakes relaxed until their heads drooped to her shoulders. “The oracle!” She pushed herself off the wall as her wings, weary and worn, clapped open to their full span. Dead, gray feathers fell to the ground, but she didn’t seem to notice. She closed her eyes and lifted her arms to the sky, muttering inaudibly.

  Damian lowered the mirror; he was curious to look at her without it while her lethal eyes were shut. Turning around, he saw not a fearsome monster but a beautiful woman with golden hair and glowing, sun-kissed skin. Her wings were as white as Olympus’s peaks.

  “You’re beautiful,” he whispered.

  He couldn’t stop himself. He went to her, overcome with unprecedented lust. He knew a spell was compelling him, but he was helpless against it. He yearned to get closer, to smell her hair, to kiss her lips, to see what breathtaking shade her eyes were. But as he reached out to caress her cheek, she grabbed him by the wrist and jerked her face away.

  “Turn away, Asher,” she warned as she squeezed her closed eyes even tighter. “One accidental slip of my eyelids and you’re a dead man.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help it.” With his other hand, he trailed a finger along her heart-shaped jaw. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”

  “How beautiful I was. Another part of Athena’s curse I neglected to mention.”

  “What part of the curse? That when you close your eyes you’re hot again?”

  Medusa’s flawless forehead was furrowed in puzzlement. “Hot? No, the curse has no effect on my temperature.”

  Damian tried not to laugh. “I meant that when you close your eyes you look like your former self.”

  “Indeed.” Medusa dropped his hand and twirled the ends of her silken, honey-colored hair. “In the past, when men looked upon me while I slumbered they were drawn to me as if to a goddess, and then, well, you know what happened next.”

  This was enough to send Damian scrambling for the mirror. He held it up and watched as, in an instant, she transmogrified back into a hybrid witch. He wiped the sweat from his upper lip and unzipped his hoodie. He’d never felt so ashamed.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  Medusa waved him off with her hand. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Asher. Men can hardly control their lusts without the curses of goddesses goading them, much less with them.”

  Awkward seconds ticked by as Damian debated what to say next. How could he resume a normal conversation after embarrassing himself with such an idiotic advance? But this conversation had never been normal in the first place.

  When his tongue finally unglued itself from the roof of his mouth, he asked, “So what’s so exciting about the oracle?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ENEMIES

  Medusa folded her wings as the restless snakes lifted their heads and flicked their tongues at Damian. “You don’t know about the oracle?”

  Damian looked away from her reflection. Dawn’s light was in full bloom and yet the world was as quiet as it had been at midnight. Not so much as a morning bird stirred or made a peep.

  “I don’t know much,” he said. “That’s why I’m out here.”

  “There’s a woman, an Asher like Leto, who received a prophecy long ago. It concerned a future Asher who would finish the business she began with Apollo.”

  “Iris?” Damian returned his gaze to Medusa’s reflection in the mirror as she disappeared into her makeshift shelter in the rocks. “I met her yesterday. She didn’t say anything about an oracle, or Apollo, for that matter.”

  His head was beginning to hurt. First centaurs, then Medusa, and now Apollo; how could all the harmless bedtime stories read to him as a child be undeniable fact?

  Medusa emerged holding a single sheet of weathered parchment. With its ragged edges and severe discoloration, Damian wondered how it was even legible.

  “Iris announced the oracle in Ourania before Leto razed it.” She held the parchment to the sun. The s
nakes eased forward, their eyes focused on the parchment as though they were helping her read. “It’s quite vague, as prophecies invariably are. I thought it nonsense myself. Until you showed up.”

  “Iris gave the oracle to you?”

  “No. I hid atop the roof of the stoa and wrote down her words as she spoke. The historians were there in droves, as was every other Ouranian, from the priests to the prostitutes, all eager to hear what the ‘girl who made fire’ had to say.”

  “And what did she have to say?”

  Medusa eyed him suspiciously, as did her slithering pets. “Perhaps it’s not my place to say. If you had been in her company, I’m sure she would have apprised you of the prophecy already, had it been prudent to do so.”

  Damian sighed and shifted the mirror to the opposite hand. “Is there any good reason I shouldn’t hear it now?”

  Medusa clicked her tongue. “Patience, Asher. If there’s anything I’ve learned in my miserable life, it’s that hastiness gives birth to affliction.” She rolled up the parchment and tucked it into her robe. “Shall I answer your question?”

  “Which question?” Damian had asked her to read the oracle, but clearly that wasn’t happening now that the parchment was out of sight.

  “How I know Leto.” Medusa pointed to a copse of olive trees near the hilltop he’d spotted earlier. “Let us fetch some water and escape this sun. In the shade I shall tell you my story, beginning to end, if you wish to indulge a desert hag. At the very least, it will orientate you with the time in which you find yourself aimlessly drifting.” She raised an eyebrow at him as her amber eyes flashed with jest.

  “Sounds fun,” said Damian.

  “Excellent!” Medusa exclaimed, as though she were a schoolgirl who’d won a new playmate.

  “But I’m not aimlessly drifting,” he added.

  Ignoring him, Medusa snatched the empty wineskin, spread her wings, and took off flying toward the trees.

  Awestruck, Damian lowered the mirror as he watched the half-woman, half-bird soar as effortlessly as an eagle across the plain. He wished his cellphone wasn’t dead; he would’ve snapped a million pictures, if only to convince himself later that what he had seen hadn’t been a dream.

  His mouth helplessly agape, he followed her a quarter mile to an old stone well overgrown with moss.

  “Only the cultists know of this well,” Medusa said. She was sitting on the edge of the well. The snakes hissed and curled themselves into coils, evidently chilled beneath the shade. “Well, cultists and outcasts, I should say. Prior to Ourania’s destruction, it was used to invoke Apollo through the dark art of hydromancy.”

  “Do you invoke him?”

  By the look on Medusa’s face, it was as though she’d just been slapped. “Duna forbid it. Channeling is what created it in the first place. Her father communed with Apollo, who then corrupted her when she reached womanhood.” She paused and wrung the wineskin in her hands. “I would rather be torn to pieces by three-headed Cerberus than confer with any so-called god.”

  “You’re just saying that because it was a god you fell in love with, a god who broke your heart, and a goddess who stole your beauty.” Damian watched in the mirror as Medusa’s ashen face became snow-white with fear. “What’s the matt—”

  “Leto…” she whispered.

  Behind Medusa, a tall, statuesque woman with striking blond hair stood blindfolded. She wore a scarlet robe that fell to just above her knees and leather sandals that laced up her shins. On the outer sides of each sandal was embroidered a serpent wrapping itself around a crescent moon.

  “Medusa,” said Leto. “It would break my heart to learn you’ve been speaking ill of me to my own relative.”

  Damian set down the mirror and looked at Leto. “How do you know I’m related to you?”

  “I don’t live under a rock, as some do.” Leto smiled and waved a hand toward the branches, causing a breeze to blow through them. “What is your doma? Wait, let me guess. Invisibility?”

  Damian’s heart beat faster. “How do you know that?”

  “You had no trouble passing through the wall that prevented me from requesting the conference I wish to have with you now.”

  “Everyone can go out of it,” said Damian. “But not everyone can go in. As you probably know by now.”

  “But my guess was correct.” Leto smiled.

  “Don’t you listen to her, Asher,” Medusa begged. “She speaks honeyed words. They will surely poison you if you let them.”

  “Honeyed words, deadly eyes…all of us have our gifts.” Leto took a step closer and looked, though she couldn’t see, directly at Medusa. “It’s how we use them that determines whether they’ll become poison or salve.”

  Damian saw goosebumps rise on Medusa’s neck. Her wings fell forward, now a coat around her shoulders.

  “You’ve got your friend Hermes with you, haven’t you?” said Medusa. “Do you feel it, Asher? The air’s got a chill.”

  “I can’t feel anything.” Damian was starting to wonder how many hours had passed. “Not while I’m invisible.”

  “Are you really invisible?” Medusa got up from the well. “Then how am I able to see you now? Quite plainly, I see a young man, no older than twenty, wearing a queer shrunken cloak and the strangest trousers I’ve ever seen.”

  Damian pointed to the snakes still coiled tightly on her head. “Animals seem to see me just fine.” He bit his lip. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to imply that you’re an animal. I just meant—”

  “Oh, but isn’t she one?” Leto asked cruelly. “Forget the nest of snakes she has for hair and that mangy pair of gryphon’s wings. What else would you call a woman with the blood of hundreds on her hands?”

  “If that’s your definition of an animal, then I think you’d have to put yourself in that category, too,” said Damian.

  Leto’s nostrils flared as her mouth tightened into a straight, humorless line. “Perhaps you have a point, Damian.” She leaned her head ever so slightly to the right. “Did Hermes just tell you what my name is? You know, in my time he betrayed Apollo. Maybe you shouldn’t let him be your puppet master.”

  It was then that the messenger revealed himself, materializing at first as a silhouette, and then as the selfsame person Damian had met in the woods just the morning before.

  “It seems this Asher may also be a scion of Odysseus,” said Hermes, as the wings of his sandals began to flutter. “He’s devised a clever scheme to try and drive a divisive wedge between my betrothed and me.” He turned Leto’s face to his and kissed her softly between her covered eyes.

  “Oh, Leto.” Medusa covered her mouth with her hand. “You would sell your soul for all eternity to become queen for a few fleeting decades?”

  “Nay,” answered Leto. “I swore my allegiance to become queen forever. To commence my endless reign beside Persephone, and to freely roam this realm with my husband whenever I please.”

  “You mentioned a conference,” Damian said to Leto. “What exactly did you want to talk to us about? I assume you know my sister is here, too.”

  “Yes,” answered Leto. “It’s a pity she didn’t accompany you. I am not a foe, Damian, but an ally.”

  “No, no, no. Cover your ears, Damian!” Medusa cried. “You mustn’t let her beguile you.”

  “Oh, shut up, shrew,” shouted Hermes, as he shot up into the air and settled upon a branch. “One more peep out of you and your next breath will be drawn inside that well.”

  The snakes unfurled and stood erect, tongues darting in vain toward Hermes’ heels. Medusa’s yellow eyes glared at him, but he was immune to her curse.

  “Do leave us, Medusa,” said Leto calmly. “I’m grateful for the hospitality you’ve shown my guest heretofore, but your presence is no longer necessary.”

  Medusa turned to Damian, her bleary, bloodshot eyes pleading with him not to engage with Leto a moment longer.

  Damian was torn. But wasn’t this why he had come here? Hadn’t he left the camp w
ith the express purpose of finding out who Leto was, and why Iris and the others were so afraid of her? He couldn’t go back now. The real tale of Medusa would have to remain untold.

  He set the mirror on the well and turned his back to Medusa. “I’ll be all right,” he whispered. “Go now before they hurt you.”

  He listened as Medusa’s wings clapped open and her footsteps padded toward him. He tensed at the feel of her warm breath on the back of his neck.

  “Remember,” she said, “hastiness breeds affliction.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  PROPHECY

  Did he say where he was going?” Ethan asked.

  It was lunchtime and Damian still hadn’t shown up. Charis had spent the morning searching the six square miles of hills and farmland that were protected by the wall, an absurd task considering Damian had very likely gone invisible while abandoning his sister yet again. Charis would still have been searching for him now had her doma not reached its limit; it had taken her an hour to trek back to camp.

  Chloe shook her head. “We didn’t part on the best of terms last night. After I told him about the flashback—or flashforward, I guess I should say—he said that if he had my gift, he’d use it to bring our parents back.”

  “I’m not a betting man,” said Tycho, as he reshafted a spear that had killed the boar now roasting on a spit before them, “but if I were, I would bet he left the perimeter. Young men have an uncanny way of following their noses toward danger.”

  “I guess going to Hades wasn’t enough danger for him, then,” Ethan said, regretting the bite in his words even as he spoke them.

  “He just needs to blow off some steam,” said Chloe, as she fiddled with the girdle of yet another robe, one Iris referred to as a chiton, which was apparently much better suited to campestral life than the heavier himation Carya had gifted her.

  “He won’t get far before Mania finds him,” Iris said. She sat cross-legged while her daughter braided her hair behind her. “She has Apollo’s brother helping her.”