1
THE UNBEATABLE SON OF ZEUS
PERSEUS
To the right. The left. Feint. Cut off her head. Save Andromeda. Save Mother.
This had been going on for too long. It was time to end it.
Perseus took a deep breath and ran full steam at his foe of the day, Medusa the Gorgon. He feinted right, then feinted left, just as he’d planned. But when he leaped in with a broad stroke, she stepped into him and their metal clashed, sword versus spear. He pressed forward and swept her with his foot but on her way down, her spear cracked against the back of his ankles, scooping him in the air. He fell, hard, and lay there with her spear tip at his throat. Heart thudding, he waited, but, as she’d done before, she merely nicked him and walked away, not even bothering to watch her back anymore.
Sighing, Perseus rose with his broad back to the sun. Apollo’s disapproving stare burned into him as he squared off for what he hoped would be a last round with the Gorgon. A dark lock of hair fell into his eye, crossing his leather headband which was doing nothing to catch the sweat pouring out of his skin. Some of it ran across many of his fresh cuts, which weren’t deep, already healing, but enough to sing with pain when the salt mixed into the wounds. It dawned on him, in an awful way he’d never experienced before, that he might actually lose this fight.
He couldn’t indulge the thought of defeat. Medusa had to die. There was no other way to save Andromeda and then his mother, Denaë.
Across the open plain, on an outcropping of rocks, Medusa stood glaring at him. Skin tinged like the deep green grass that surrounded the boulders, she was tall and well-built, body honed from what must have been centuries of defending herself from challengers. Her hair was a platinum-white color that gleamed in the sun. From a distance, the strands didn’t look like the rumored snakes, but he’d seen them up close during their battle, hissing at him in anger. Her legs were long and lithe, not a reptile’s tail as he’d been told.
And her wings.Wow. In a world like his where one saw interesting things regularly, they were still spectacular. So white they seemed to be made of the snow on Mount Olympus itself. On closer inspection, as she had gotten a lock on his neck during a particularly intense moment of struggle, he’d seen that the tips of the wings were sheathed in shining metal. Razor-tipped, by the look of their edges. He wished to Zeus he had a pair; they looked so much better than the cheap, kitschy looking winged sandals Hermes had loaned him. Were they by Hephaestus & Co?
Now those gorgeous wings were spreading, carrying her across the plain toward him in a lightning-fast blur. Midair, she realigned herself, and the soles of her leather boots landed firmly in the center of his chest. Then it was his turn to fly. With the wind knocked out of him, Perseus lay prone on the grass for several minutes, then shook his head and stood, wincing and stretching, realigning broken bones as he did. If his father hadn’t been God of Gods, he’d be dead right now. Being one of Zeus’s many bastards did have its advantages, no matter how much misery it caused otherwise.
“Do you yield?” she asked, pointing her gold tipped spear at him as he wiped down the back of his leather battle kilt.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he answered, bending to scoop up his curved sword from the ground, yet another gift from Hermes specifically for this mission.
Perseus marched toward her, determined and sort of fucking angry too. Yes, he’d started this, and yes, she had centuries of experience on him, but she didn’t have to hit so hard. She was showing off with that last move. Her spies, the grinning murder of crows perched on nearby trees, were witnesses who would surely fly off and tell everyone what had happened. It was embarrassing and nothing irked his soul more than being an object of ridicule. Narcissism was also an unfortunate trait inherited from Zeus.
“Alright, look. We’ve been at this all morning and all afternoon,” she said, exhaling with her hand on her hip. “Tell me why you’re here to kill me and maybe we can work out something less violent.”
“Oh,nowyou’re a pacifist? After you nearly kicked my ribs through my back?” he exclaimed with wide eyes. “I thinkyou’rethe one who’s having a little too much fun to stop.”
Surprised, she paused at his words, and he swore her mouth trembled at the corner as if she was holding back a laugh. Gorgons laughed? He never would have imagined that. Never would have thought that her lips would be so luscious or that her dark eyes would sparkle when she was amused.
Suddenly unsure of himself in the face of a Gorgon’s mirth, Perseus nodded, then glanced around before looking back at her. In addition to the story about a reptilian tail, he’d always heard her described as ugly, twisted into deformity by wrath. Her great beauty obliterated.
Wrong again. She was fearsome but still gorgeous beneath the green tint. People were such goddamned liars.
When they were devising this plan to finally destroy Medusa, his half-sister Athena had strongly advised him to approach his enemy while she slept. To spare him, she’d said, from the deadly stare that could turn him into a rock. At the time, that suggestion hadn’t sat well with him. Although it made sense, it had struck him as cowardly to creep up on someone without giving them a chance to fight back. He’d purposely ignored that advice and faced Medusa head on. Now he had to wonder if her comely and very human appearance was the real reason behind Athena’s “helpful” tip.
“Okay.” He gave in with a sigh. “Here’s the story. I need the powers you hold inside you to conquer my real enemy and rescue my mother, Denaë. You see, there’s this creepy king named Polydectes who wants to marry her, so I came this way to, um, procure something I need to defeat him. On my way here, I met the Princess Andromeda right before she was taken as a sacrifice and held captive.”
“By who?” Medusa asked in a bored tone.
“By the mighty beast, the one, the only, Cetus, he who dwells at the bottom of the sea, who has slain mighty sailors of manly men, etcetera. I thought it was a myth until it was sent to capture Andromeda and kill her on the night of the full moon which is coming soon. Either she dies or he’ll drown the kingdom of Ethiopia with a tidal wave. So, I need to killhimto saveherand the kingdom, and then go rescue my mother from the creepy guy who wants to marry her.”
Locked in thought, Medusa tilted her head, studying him as she listened to his story. A breeze blew her hair across her shoulder and now, at this much closer range, he saw the tiny snakes again, their scales shining like diamonds every time they caught the sun. Medusa, uncomfortable with him staring at her hair, took a strap and tied it back into a long ponytail. Then she crossed her arms and shook her head.
“I’m familiar with unwanted attention from creeps. But what did Andromeda do that got her the misfortune of being noticed by the Great Ones?” she asked wryly.
“Being a princess of fabled Ethiopia would be enough, but she was also born with the gift of beauty. Her mother, unfortunately, bought into the hype of her and Andri’s outer appearance and wouldn’t shut up about it. The queen boasted in public that Andromeda’s beauty outshone the Nereids. As punishment, Poseidon told them they either give up the princess as a sacrifice or they all die. And he sent Cetus to make it happen.”
Medusa shook her head with an expression of disbelief. “Poseidon’s daughters? I know them. They’re really not that cute.”
“I know you have, er…historywith him and others in my family,” Perseus said, his face burning.
Poseidon’s abuse of her, followed by Athena’s interference, had led to Medusa’s current state of being. Her two sisters, who had nothing to do with it at all, were also cursed. And now here he was, doing his part to uphold the family tradition of being a bastard to her.
“Mighty Poseidon. Of course,” she said with a scornful curl of her lip. “You people are so petty.”
