Zeus’s icy eyes seemed have grown cloudy. Pandora whimpered, and Hekate’s grip upon her elbow grew painfully tight.
“A name, a name, a fucking name, you ingrate cunt!” Zeus waved his arms in the air, and galvanic arcs actually leapt between his fingers, coruscating through the air.
Now Pandora wanted to weep. Not this. Not this again.
“I have no names for you this day, King,” Prometheus said, the defiance—the disdain—in his voice so palpable Pandora might have choked on it. Might have cheered for it, had she not known what would follow.
“You would try to serve as the very hand of Ananke,” Zeus bellowed, the spittle flying from his lips visible even from so far back. “You think yourself of a level with the Moirai? We shall see, Fatespinner. Your torment shall be the stuff of legend. Bards shall weep as they tell tale of fallen Prometheus, who thought himself wiser than even Zeus. Mothers shall frighten their contumacious offspring with bare hints of what you shall suffer!”
A wave of his hand, and a trio of Titans surged forward—all of them pushing seven feet tall and bulging with muscle—seizing Prometheus. Two females and a male, their posture and gesture lit with zealous malignancy, so clearly delighted were they to execute Zeus’s mockery of justice.
“Who are they?” Pandora rasped.
“Kratos, Bia, and Zelus,” Hekate said, voice trembling ever so slightly. “Styx’s brood.”
“Bind him over the black walls of Tartarus itself!” Zeus screamed, half cackling. “Let the ruination of his flesh serve as eternal reminder of the cost of treason!”
The male, Kratos, slammed his fist into Prometheus’s gut. Pandora’s friend doubled over, even as the two females dragged him backward. He looked up at her, though, his sapphire eyes locked upon her in silent warning and, perhaps, even sympathy. For her. As if he knew the pain she’d suffer at having another she cared for ripped away from her.
Pandora opened her mouth to scream and Hekate’s grip on her tightened to the point it stole her breath. “He wanted you protected,” she grated, dragging Pandora toward an archway behind the column. “I shall honor that.”
The Titan witch guided Pandora roughly into a side corridor, not quite hiding the trembling in her free hand.
“Please,” Pandora whimpered. “Please don’t let this happen.”
“Simpering imbecile,” the witch snapped. “You speak as though the will of Zeus could be circumvented. One does not stand against him—one weathers his whims as best one is able.”
Spoken like someone who had suffered her share beneath him. “They call you his dog,” Pandora blurted, no longer even caring about the consequences. “More deserving still because I can see you loathe his paroxysms!”
The passageway they took fed back into the vestibule, and the witch shoved her onto the floor. Pandora landed on her elbow, the cold marble surface sending a knife of white pain shooting through her whole arm, stealing further words.
“He gave you freedom by focusing the whole of the king’s wrath upon himself. Use the gift wisely. Do not return to Olympus.” The witch stormed back toward the interior hall, giving Pandora not another look.
There was ravishing of the flesh that might scour down to the very soul. These wounds Pandora had suffered so oft she could no longer count their hidden scars. Then there was the savaging of the soul itself, direct and unmitigated by corporeal transmission. Such trauma sundered the very self.
The murder of Uncle Phoenix before her eyes.
The abduction and rape of Europa.
The eternal damnation of the one Titan who had ever shown her true empathy or friendship.
Upon the agora landing, Pandora stumbled, seized by her silent screams of defiance. Of rejection of Zeus and Fate and the sum of the World that could lead to this.
Almost, she could see herself tearing her very heart from her chest and casting it down the mountain, if only she could cease to feel these moments of fathomless anguish.
Some few onlookers peered at her, but none moved to help her in the least. Perhaps broken people descending this slope were too common a sight. Perhaps they could not be moved to care regardless.
No, but she would mend this. She would not surrender Prometheus to his fate. Swallowing, panting, she turned to face the repugnant palace on the acropolis. “I swear I’ll fix it. I swear.”
The temptation arose, of course, on the long climb down, to think her own words futile. Pandora refused to surrender to such thoughts. She refused to surrender any kernel of hope. Her desperation could not be allowed to give way to despair.
Slowly, her mind a roil, she descended the mountain. There would be long miles back to Delphi to brood over all that had transpired. As minds were wont to do, hers would revisit every moment from the time they left Ogygia to the moment Kratos and the others dragged Prometheus away. Would look, pointlessly, for somewhere she might have acted differently, spoken differently, led him to another end. More importantly, she searched for a way forward.
She would find one.
I rather think, Pandora, that you can accomplish aught you truly desire.
Now she had the truest of desires.
In Delphi she found a boatman awaiting her. Or at least he waved her over when she approached the docks.
“You’re Pandora?” he asked.
She nodded.
“He thought you might come, might seek passage back to Ogygia.”
Pandora shut her eyes. Had the flames told him so very much? Had he known he would ascend the steps of Olympus and not return? And he had gone anyway, even while making arrangements for her return.
“You know him?”
The boatman nodded. “Off and on, as his wanderings and mine cross. The name’s Enki, and I can take you back, if you wish.”
Ogygia was his place, even if Kalypso officially ruled the island. It was
