She rolled over the top, fell with a thud, and huffed.
Gods, she hoped that was the hard part.
Unbelievable though it seemed, her heart pounded more heavily upon drawing into the Aviary than it had sneaking into Kalypso’s estate. She found Prometheus sitting up on the terrace where he oft greeted the dawn. A circle of braziers surrounded him, and he was staring into one, its fires dancing slightly out of accord with the gusts of wind that whipped his hair about.
“You’re back,” he said, not looking up from the flame.
It was hard to swallow. One misstep here could cost her the home she had just made. Could make her fresh enemies. But if he didn’t know, then his grandniece placed him in monumental danger. He deserved the truth and she had to know whether he already knew.
Pandora knelt at his side and unwrapped the cloth she’d mopped up the Nectar and ceramic shards with. Beside it, she put the strange herb.
Now Prometheus looked to it, then picked it up to examine it. “Moly. Very rare, hard to cultivate.”
“Your niece grows it.” She swallowed. “She’s making Nectar and selling it.”
Prometheus’s face remained unreadable, save for a creasing of his brow so subtle she might have imagined it. “Hermes came this morn. He summons me to Olympus, and I cannot refuse.”
The words knocked the wind from her. Pandora actually fell back on her arse and shook from a chill having naught to do with the wind. Zeus. The madman. He had sent for Prometheus. The king knew.
“You have to tell him Kalypso is responsible.”
His visage seemed more weary than irate, and he shook his head. “I’d not cast her adrift to flounder alone, Pandora. I will go and placate the king’s ego, as I have done oft enough in the past.”
“He will hurt you,” Pandora said, hating the tremor in her voice. “I can’t …” She shook her head.
“You have to come with me. If I leave you here alone, Oracles may find you out. Once I’ve waylaid Zeus’s ire, you’ll be safe.”
Come with him. To Olympus. The very haven of the tyrant who had twice destroyed her life. She would be asked to walk into his sanctum and grovel before his person, hoping to conceal the loathing in her eyes.
Pandora’s breath caught. Her chest ached.
They sailed from Ogygia all the way to Delphi, Prometheus saying little—though the voyage took several days—no doubt lost in the roil of his thoughts. As was Pandora. The Titan believed he could sooth over the King of Olympus, but all Pandora had ever seen of Zeus was lust and madness and charred bodies in his wake.
There was a strange surreality to it all. The sense they walked to their own deaths as they crossed the many miles overland to Olympus, following a well-worn dirt road out of Delphi.
“You seemed closer to Kelaino than your other nieces,” Pandora ventured as the mountains drew ever closer.
“She was my student, long ago.”
“And Kalypso?”
“Her daughter, of course.”
Yes … Well, ask him, then. “But is she your daughter, as well?”
A slight snort escaped him. “Only in spirit.”
“That’s why you won’t allow her to fall, even for her own actions.” Even if it might save himself.
“We try to value all lives, of course, but some invariably come closer to our own souls. Such is life, binding us to others in intricate webs.”
When more miles had passed, they reached the Olympian Mountains. The greatest peak amid them, Olympus pierced the firmament. Swirling storm clouds encircled the summit. Tale claimed they never parted, testament to the implacable will of Zeus.
A paved road led up the lower steps, and as they walked along this, the urge to take his hand once more seized her. She pushed it down. Was he leading them both to their deaths? But he had saved her life in Atlantis, more like than not, and been a friend since then. Even if all he had bought her was a reprieve, she would not leave his side now, in this dire hour.
The path ended at a peristyle-encircled temple. Prometheus ignored this, leading her to a marble staircase, this some forty feet wide, then bent around the mountainside. Had Zeus claimed this towering peak and built his palace upon it merely to show he could? Was this one more gesture of self-aggrandizement meant to share his glory with the whole of Elládos?
He cast a final look at her, then began to ascend the stairs. Before long, she was huffing from the effort. It took much to keep climbing, though Prometheus set a leisurely pace for her.
“Pyromancy,” she panted after climbing more steps than she’d have cared to count. “You see the future in the flames, yes?”
“I see pieces. The future is not always what we think. Just because we see a thread does not mean we can glimpse the whole of the tapestry or guess what it depicts.”
“But do you know what lies ahead of us, atop these stairs?”
Prometheus fell silent a moment. “I know some.”
The stairs led them past cascading cataracts and beyond, to plateaus that housed palaces for other Titans in service to the Olympians. Eventually, when Pandora’s head spun from exhaustion and the thinning air, they came to an agora rimmed by colonnades. Up here, dustings of snow covered the rooftops and painted the stones white.
Prometheus led her to a vendor beneath a colonnade and bought her some spiced wine. Its warmth eased the pain in her chest.
In silence—she wasn’t sure she could have spoken much through her heaving, regardless—they sipped. She wanted to take in the opulence of this place, for beyond the agora lay more temples supported by columns stretching forty, fifty feet into the air. The reliefs depicted scenes of import to each of the twelve Olympians. The hearth-fires of Hestia and there, on Apollon’s temple, the slaying of the ancient drakon, Python. Legends come to life.
She
