DEIMOS ROARS WHEN he enters the villa in Phokis, knocking over a weapons rack in the courtyard —chest heaving in his rage. Everything was predicated on a lie. He shouts again, lashing out at the cold, iron brazier. It topples to the tiled floor, spreading ash and coal over the white stone slabs. The words of the Cultists play over in his mind. Tightening the laces of his cuirass, Deimos sets his mind on finding Lesya —he does not know what he will say, nor if he will be able to tell her she is right. He just knows he needs to see her. Sliding the Damoklean sword into the sheath on his hip, Deimos sets off to Kirrha with fury and cold determination.
Kirrha's Harbor is always bustling with merchant ships —pilgrims who come to seek the wisdom of the Pythia. Among them is a trireme with three masts, a gilded figurehead, dark Tyrian red sails. The vessel once belonged to Elpenor, though now it fully belongs to the Cult. The Areion remains a fine ship. "Deimos!" Labdakos exclaims, the captain had not expected to see the champion so soon after Kleon's messenger departed.
"Prepare the ship," Deimos announces, ascending the short staircase to the helm of the trireme. Labdakos barks orders at the crew and they bustle around the deck, securing lines and arranging the barrels of freshly fletched arrows. The horizon is dark, mimicking the rages storm within his heart and mind.
The captain stands behind his chair, hand resting on the carved back. He knows something is wrong —that Deimos is not falling in line with the given orders. "Where do we sail?" Labdakos asks.
"Keos," Deimos answers. He will sail to where Lesya is, or at least where she is rumored to be.
"But Kleon's orders–" Labdakos trails off —a fool to fear Kleon more than the unhinged demigod before him. Deimos seizes the captain by the neck, fingers tightening around his throat until his pitiful cries for air are nigh silent wheezes. "Fuck his orders," Deimos spits, throwing the captain back to the deck. "Take me to Keos or I'll see the sharks have their bellies filled." It is not so much a threat as it is a promise.
Labdakos dips his head low, hand rubbing the tender places of his neck. "Of course, champion." But the appeasement is insincere. Kleon has paid enough to sail the champion to Athens regardless of the champion's wishes to travel to the Pirate Islands. Deimos can tell the captain's loyalty no longer lies with him. He places his hand on the back of the Labdakos' head, forcing him to his knees, then twists to the left with the other —then a little farther. Deimos does not even strain and with a quick, final jerk there is a crack and the captain's head snaps around to face backward. Stepping back, the Labdakos' head loosely rolls back to the front, then lolls —his neck hanging at an angle with white bones poking through the skin, leaking scarlet blood.
The body flops forward onto the deck. Deimos looks at the frightened deckhands and the lieutenant of the vessel —he steps toward the second-in-command and motions at the captain's chair with his bloody hand. "You've just been promoted to captain," he announces with a grim smile.
"THANKS," LESYA SAYS when Kassandra hands her the other blade. It had been buried to the hilt in the back of an Athenian spy. Save for the corpses, the camp on Keos has been emptied. Xenia's lieutenant will offer a hefty reward for helping him remove the Athenian thorn from her side and it will put Kass closer to earning the drachmae to pay for information about Myrrine.
Kass eyes the pair of daggers again —she has noticed the strange glint of the metal several times, it is similar to her spear and the sword Deimos had carried. There had been a cast for a dagger the same shape and size in the Ancient Forge as the two Lesya carries. "What's so special about them?" She asks, though she knows they never need to be sharpened or honed, much like the Spear of Leonidas.
Lesya holds out the blade, balancing it on two fingers. She remembers the stories Chrysis told about the daggers and the Damokles sword. Mighty weapons from long ago. It was only after she and Deimos had been named champion that the Cult gave them the blades. "They belonged to the Amazon Penthesilea," Lesya explains —a daughter of Ares and queen of the Amazons but slain in battle by Achilles. "Or at least that is what the Cult claims." With ease, Lesya spins the dagger between her fingers and sighs. There is something special about the weapons, she can feel the difference with a normal spear or kopis in hand. "I believe it though, whenever I use these it's like I can see my opponent's next move before it comes."
Smoke lingers in the battered streets of Koressia, masking the foul stench of death. Barnabas had spoken of the horrors committed in the polis before the Adrestia docks three days ago. Pirates had taken the city by force, but a shortage in food could mean starvation and the rise of sickness. The elder denizens within the city were forced to drink hemlock tea, culling the population of the city. Merchants said Aphrodite had forsaken Keos after that. The misthios leaves to report their success to the lieutenant and collect on the deed, but Lesya wanders the ravaged town.
Tucked away near the white cliff-face is a sunken pit, with stairs carved into the rock. Pirates surround the pit, watching one of their brethren fend off a wild boar. Wagers are made and collected on who will emerge from the fight victorious. Given the size of the beast and the bloody gash in the man's side, Lesya already knows who will in the fight. It happens quickly when the boar charges —its sharp tusks sinking into the fighter's gut and pinning him against the smooth wall. Red streaks the white marble and when the boar halts the assault a bloody mess of entrails are left strewn across the white sand.
"Are there any other challengers who wish to face this mighty descendant of the Erymanthian?" Lesya looks down into the pit at the beast roaming around its freshest kill. She and Deimos had skewered plenty of boar in the past —and a rasher of fried back fat does sound good. Stepping forward to the edge of the rope fence, she calls out. Accepting the challenge. The organizer thinks her a fool for not taking the leather-and-metal cuirass they offer. All she takes into the pit is a wooden lance affixed with a rusting leaf-shaped spearhead and her twin blades.
The beast does not notice when Lesya steps into the arena —it is busy rooting around the guts of its last victim, but she knows better than to strike first from behind. Moving around in a low crouch, she clicks her tongue —drawing its attention to her. The boar charges and Lesya rolls out of the way and reaches behind her, unsheathing one of the daggers.
Weighing the blade and the opportunity, she throws it. The boar squeals when the dagger buries itself to the hilt in its flank. A wave of chants and cheers sweeps through the rabble above, but she tunes them out —eyes narrowing on the beast as it returns its raging black eyes on her. Stamping its hooves into the sand. When Lesya rolls to the side again, she reaches for the second dagger on her back —cutting a deep line into the boar's side, it rears up and cries as though it had already been skewered.
The beast readies to charge again, but Lesya is done with the spectacle. Crouching, she adjusts her grip on the spear and faces down the boar as it races toward her, bloody mouth agape. Lunging as it nears her, she thrusts the spear forward and up —pressing into the wooden lance with a loud cry. The crowd above grows silent as the boar halts, its squeals of pain turning to silence. Metal glinting with red pushes through the top of the boar's skull —twisting the spear, she jerks it free and drives the bloody point into the ground next to her foot.
Tundareos is there when she emerges from the fighting pit, grinning —his clear blue eyes like a sparkling sea. Sandy blond hair windswept and loosely tied back from his face. He is so much like the lively boy Lesya remembers from a distant childhood, but a pang of despondency rises in her chest. Tundareos has not led a gentle life either, that much is evident from the deep scar running across his left cheek down to his lips —half-hidden by a scruffy beard a shade lighter than his hair. "You're insane," he laughs, clapping her on the shoulder, having watched the fight from above.
The purse is heavy with silver and gold —from the prize and the bets even if the organizer is reluctant to part ways with the pay. Her brother trails along as she returns to the Adrestia, tossing the earnings down at Kassandra's feet. It will put her closer to paying Xenia's hefty price.
FOR WHEN TUNDAREOS is not at sea, he has a small house in Koressia beneath the Temple of Athena Nedousia. He pours two cups of watered wine and lays the thick-cut slices of boar fat into a bronze tagēnon to fry and render over an earthen brazier. The supper of fried back fat, brown bread, olives, figs, and honey is taken in silence —though Tundareos and Lesya exchange quick looks and small smiles. It is the first time either of them has been with family in over a decade and had been longer since sharing a meal.
Lesya does not part ways for the night as she had initially planned, instead, her brother leads her up to the roof. A full moon hangs in the clear dark sky, pocked with the twinkle of a thousand stars. Tundareos looks out over the sea, a deep sorrow washing over him. "Sister," he breathes, "tell me what happened to you after that night." He has heard stories of a ghost with copper hair, fighting like a demon —after witnessing her kill the same beast who gored countless men there is not a doubt in his mind the stories had been about his sister
"Tundareos," Lesya shakes her head, laurel gaze darting down to her palms. Remembering is one of the hardest things to do, but forgetting is even harder. "I–" she pauses and when Lesya begins again, the words come pouring out as a torrent. Lesya tells him everything and it feels good to have someone to confide in without fear of judgment.
His face twists in anger —no one would have hurt his sister if his father had not given her up as a girl. "What can I do to help you stop these people?" He asks but Lesya does not have that answer for herself either. Lucky leads her to some Cultists and Deimos to others. The only way to stop them from choking Hellas was to cut the head from every serpent. "I'll do it. I promise," Tundareos says, voice reflecting his iron will. "They all deserve to die and rot in Tartarus." A good number already were.
Then something stirs in the pit of her stomach, rising to seize her heart. "Deimos doesn't," she says, softly. Deimos was the only person who knew what it was like to be a weapon, to be twisted into something valuable from a young age, to have freedom and humanity stripped away. Lesya cannot stop her heart from aching every time she thinks of him —can not stop hoping their paths will cross sooner rather than later. Tundareos looks at her oddly for a moment before he begins to understand what the pause and the rose color on her cheeks mean. "His name is Alexios," she tells her brother, smiling. I love him.