These things, and a thousand more flashes all blurred together into mad amalgams that tried to swallow her mind and soul. All of it, his whole history, was a tempest of nightmares. An unfathomable weight borne upon his shoulders, as if all the World was his responsibility.
Physically and emotionally spent, she collapsed onto his chest, not caring that tears leaked from her eyes onto him.
The depth of him stretched so far back, so wide, she imagined no one could grasp the whole of this Titan. But she would try. She had lost him in her time. Maybe here, she could finally have something to hold on to.
18
Athene
1571 Silver Age
“Pandion,” Athene said, when her mother offered her the babe wrapped in a bundle. “His name is Pandion, and one day he shall be king of Kronion.”
Mother smiled knowingly. “You’ll have to raise him as a demigod,” she said.
Athene gaped at her uncomprehending.
“If you don’t want to acknowledge the father, then the father cannot be a Titan.”
Athene balked. It would mean Pandion would never sample Ambrosia, and though his Titan blood would extend his life, he would live and die as a mortal, unless he so impressed Father. But the alternative was impossible. Mother was right …
With a nod, Mother left Athene to recline upon her bed. She nursed the child, then slept with her hand upon his tiny chest, soothed by its regular rise and fall. A dozen times she woke, needing to reassure herself the breaths still came as they ought.
But the child was strong, and she need not fear, she knew. He was a Titan.
In the morn, a wet nurse saw to Pandion, and Athene stretched her legs, walking along the halls of her palace in the acropolis. Father had gifted her the very polis founded by his own father when she came to adulthood, and Athene had strived to rule it well. Before granting her the city, he’d erected both this palace and a temple for the mortals to come and offer her worship and sacrifices. Every so often, the priests would bring in food and wine and goods left in the temple in her honor, and sometimes Athene would even use them, though occasionally the food rotted in the sun before it got to her.
Sometimes the citizens left new sandals or khitons or tiaras or jewelry, and when she would wear their gifts in the agora below, Athene fancied she oft caught cheers or boasting. Look how the goddess wears the sandals I crafted for her! I left her that bracelet on my son’s birth!
Yes, she had to admit, their adoration was intoxicating, and sometimes she extended her strolls just to see if anyone would notice her garb. Now, though, she remained secluded in the palace, preferring to stroll in the courtyard.
Basking in the sunlight, she paused before the fountain, taking solace in its burbling flow. Water cascaded out of the open palms of a mermaid, flowing through her fingers onto a lower shelf of layered seashells. From there, it pitched into the greater basin, in which swam a shoal of goldfish. Athene watched the patterns formed by the falling water, and it was as if those waters massaged the whole of her aching body. As if they flowed over the expanse of her soul, soothing away all the stresses of time.
As if … she … was …
Glamoured to look like any other aristocratic mortal, Athene sat in the assembly, watching as the young prince Theseus, seated beside King Aegeus, took in the assembly in his father’s court. This man, the descendant of Pandion, had his ancestor’s bearing, if not quite his aspect. The way he surveyed the gathered aristoi—and that pompous emissary of Minos—it reminded her of a leopard. He was more than his father had ever been, and Athene couldn’t help but quirk a smile at that.
Ah, but then, she had seen this moment, hadn’t she?
“The nine years have passed,” the emissary intoned, with the air of a speech he had given before. “And upon this, the twenty-seventh anniversary of your crimes”—he stretched the last word with such arrogance Athene rolled her eyes—“the time has come to once again send your seven boys and seven girls to sate the beast.”
Theseus rose, his chair scraping noisily along the stone floor. “No.”
“No?” the emissary asked, as if the very word tasted alien to him and his tongue could not quite wrap itself around the sound of it.
“No,” Theseus repeated. “No more sacrifices. I will walk the labyrinth. Find this Minotaur. I kill it, our debt is paid. I fail, your king has claimed the son of his rival. Fair recompense for the loss of his own heir. Either way, Athenai owes no more sacrifices after this.”
The men and women gathered in Aegeus’s throne room gaped at the young man, as if unable to imagine their prince would put forth such an idea. Indeed, Aegeus, too, paled. Perhaps, had he suspected Theseus of such a play, he would not have invited his newly found son to this assembly.
No, but Athene had known it would come to this, long ago, and it was as it should be.
Whatever resulted in the labyrinth beneath Knosós, Theseus had saved his polis. This was the true heir of Pandion. Athene’s heir.
Three days later, Athene felt almost as though she had never been pregnant. Perhaps it was the extra draught of Ambrosia her mother had arranged for her, or perhaps her Titan nature, but she thought mortal women took longer to recoup. Then again, what did she know?
With Mother by her side, she walked the Long Wall that connected Kronion proper to the harbor district well beyond the main gates. She had built this wall long ago and walked its twenty-mile circumference so many times she had lost count, but it felt different now.
“I saw things again,” she admitted. “This time in the waters of my fountain.”
“Hydromancy is a common
