Page 13 of The Conquest of Medusa

Medusa paused, running her fingers along her hair. “Cut it.”

Perseus went still with shock. “What? But—it’s a part of you. It’s who you are. What if it kills you?”

“I’m not my hair or my wings or my sight,” she said. Medusa placed Perseus’s hand on his scabbard and made him draw his sword. “Do it. Show them the snakes as proof you destroyed me. Tell them even in death, my face was too dangerous to look at, so you cast my head and my body into a fire. Tell them you and you alone saved the princess. Go save your mother next. Be the hero they need you to be.”

As she gazed at him, her lips trembled with a smile, and she whisked away a tear. Medusa turned away from the awful look in his eyes. How far they’d come from when she’d first seen him approach on that field and demand she submit to the sword of Perseus. And how far had she come, from the first time she’d felt the ropes of her thick hair turn into hissing, writhing, living beings, marking her as different for all time. She’d been uncertain when she assured Perseus she didn’t need them to define her. Would she know who she was without them?

“Do it!” she ordered in a strangled voice.

Fear choked her throat as she bowed her head and heard the swish of his sword through the air. There was a sudden, almost unbearable lightness. Looking at the dying mass of white snakes on the soil, the blood soaking the platinum strands, she turned and was sick. She felt their wild, unfamiliar terror, the fading of their magic and their life force. A part of her was dying with them, and she scrambled to hold on until she could no longer feel them. The unquenchable thirst for vengeance, the rage, the pain, all that unrelenting hatred spilled on the ground with them. She was naked now. Alone. Utterly lost.

Perseus gripped her before she could fall and held her, soothing her as sobs wracked her body. Her arms wrapped around him, and she pressed a kiss to his mouth. But before he could stop her, she whispered, “Goodbye, Son of Zeus. I’ll never forget you.”

With a beat of her wings, Medusa lifted into the air and sped away, with the sun full upon her face, not looking back.

7

LOST AND FOUND

PERSEUS

One year later…

With a hood covering his head and a cloak on his shoulders, Perseus walked into a bar as scurrilous types scowled at him from all sides. This particular tavern was brighter than usual, the nicest he’d found on this huge, hot island covered in swaying palm trees. He couldn’t do much to disguise the fact that he looked nothing like the locals. It didn’t concern him. He’d traveled an entire continent, encountering many such people, and he’d managed to get along. Mostly.

Perseus spent probably fifteen minutes in the place with a drink in hand before he found someone who would point him in the right direction. The fermented beverage was strong, but he was still steady on his feet as he left to follow the route the kindly barfly had indicated. It was a dusty little path that led downriver to an earthen hut where a line of smoke curled up from a hole in the straw ceiling.

A woman sat on a thick futon, busily crafting a clay pot with a small stick. She didn’t look up at his approach, but a faint, familiar smile pulled at the corners of her full lips. Short white coils sprung from her head in a cheerful halo. There were no new snakes growing from what he could see. Perseus couldn’t wait to caress those coils or the smooth, dear face beneath. A face that shone in his every dream.

He cleared his throat with his hands on his hips. “It certainly took me some time to find your hometown.”

“I can only imagine, with all the unnecessary fights you must have stopped to instigate along the way,” she murmured. She still wouldn’t look at him.

“I won those fights. That’s what matters,” Perseus said with a chin raise.

"Of course. I’m assuming you saved your mother.”

“I did.”

“Good. And how is Andromeda? Did she go off to live in that little village she mentioned?”

“It didn’t work out. Her parents wouldn’t leave her in peace, so I took her to an island where they couldn’t get to her. It’s hidden from humans, but you know, I’ve got that demigod pass. Only women live there, the toughest fighters I’ve ever met. After you, of course,” he amended. “She and the baby will be happy there.”

“Who does he look like?” Medusa asked quietly. “Is he…?”

“Helios looks like Andromeda. Not like Cetus at all. He’ll be fine.”

“Good. Good for him.”

She nodded and sighed, although the future of Andromeda’s baby had been something she’d worried about. That touched him. He’d worried too.

“Anyway, I reached the warrior woman island on this horse that has wings. There’s some crazy talk that he’s your son, born of your blood when I supposedly took your head. In fact, they’re saying you had twins.”

“Twins! What’s the other twin, a three-headed dog?” she asked with a short laugh.

“No, the other one is a man. Chris-something. He’s supposed to be a pretty good swordsman, born fully grown with it already in his hand. I mean I’ve personally seen some incredible things but that was too much,” he said with a smirk and a shake of his head. “People come up with the wildest stories.”

Medusa laughed, still looking at the pot she held in her hands instead of him, as though he was the one who had the power to turn her to stone with a glance. He paused to stare at that gleaming white smile against the evergreen tint. Yearning to hold her almost overcame him but he held back. She still needed time to accept that he was here and not going anywhere.

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