Monsters are a boon to gods. Imagine all the prayers.”

I did not know if I was kind, I felt I did not know anything. He spoke carefully, almost tentatively, yet his treason had been so brazen. My mind struggled with the contradiction. Bold action and bold manner are not the

I had said I would do anything for him, and now I would prove it and hold up the sky.

Now that Medea had named my loneliness, it hung from everything, clinging like spiderwebs, unavoidable. I ran along the beach, gasped up and down the forest paths, trying to shake it from

Around me was murk and dark currents. I set Telegonus’ bright face before me. I reached. My hand passed through empty water, touching nothing. The creature was floating in front of me again, its flat gaze on mine. It is finished. My mind was black as that water. It was as if time had skipped. “I do not understand.” You would have touched the poison

“Why did he leave?” The question was like an oak seedling, I thought. A simple, green shoot above, but underneath the taproot burrowed, spreading deep. I took a breath.

I was seeing before me again that rocky mass that had been Scylla. She was gone, truly gone. For the first time in centuries, I was not lashed to that flood of misery and grief. No more souls would walk to the underworld written with my name.

An aunt stayed on hoping to curry favor with my mother and named me Hawk, Circe, for my yellow eyes, and the strange, thin sound of my crying.

You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite.