OPHELIA

  "THANK YOU, merciful Ares." Says Daedalus, head bowed and palms still against the table. "She will bring me much happiness." And though his mouth moves for a smile, the craftsman makes little attempt to hide the misery in his eyes.
He is the moon on a clear summer's night, surrounded by stars, but dreadfully alone. They don't understand him, they never will. Though similar, they are not one piece the same.

My only hope is Andromeda can survive the shadow of being a star.

I do not recall the last time I saw my sister take a breath. Her face is ashen, like a body drained of blood. Breathe, I beg her, breathe. If she collapses it will not do anybody any good — only serve about a great deal of humiliation.

Worst of all I cannot tell how this Northern King would react to such a front. Would he laugh as she slid lifeless from her chair? — Throw up his arms and jeer at the weakness of women.
Or would he rage? — damning her sensitivity as sin. She would not be the first to be condemned for her aversion.

That is if he would even care to acknowledge it at all, for what is a girl to a King really? If she's not to warm his bed or bare his sons then she has no purpose. If her hips are not full and her lips not plump with kindness and a smile that appears only for him, then she may as well be dead, for she is unworthy of notice.

  Men believe being unnoticed to be a woman's greatest nightmare, — how could they not wish to be desired by them? Held by them? Thrust into and filled by them?
  In reality, being ignored by men is the greatest gift a woman could ask for. If I had been unnoticed by men I certainly would not be sitting here now.

In that same way that to a God, a King is not worthy of being glanced upon. Other than the hunk of metal atop his head, to a God, a King is the same as any other mortal.
  I have yet to decide what I believe this Northerner to be, if either. Maybe it is only that he is something entirely other.

Because to a non-believer God, King and girl are all the same. Power is no tangible thing, though it can be given and taken, a thing may only have as much power as you allow it.
This King, for example, is might incarnate, and yet, at the bare bones of him, he is no different than any other man.
No matter how vile, beating in the cavity of his chest he has a heart, flowing through his veins he has blood, and in his palms, he holds humane warmth. He lives and breathes by the same mechanisms as us, only he sits at the head of the table whilst we worship below.

All men are only any more than the sum of their parts if they are allowed to believe so.

"Enyo," If this King is capable of affection then this is it; a shining devastation to his cold calculation. The hag creature enters and sits, not too close but certainly not far away for my liking. From here I can see the sagging grey of her skin, like that of a corpse— perhaps she stole that too — and her teeth too jagged for her mouth.

The skin of the old woman's lips is stretched threadbare, struggling to cover dagger-like canines far too sharp to possibly be inborn. My hunger dissipates.

"Kingling," She grins. I wish she wouldn't. The little food I've consumed threatens to reappear, "It is done, Perseus the bastard child has been struck out, reborn in all his true, cowardly glory!"

  "I am glad to hear it." He gives a small, patient smile back; but it is radiant as the evening sun that cries about his crown. He is night. He is day. He is navy and gold. He is every monstrous thing that lingers after dark. He is those first and fleeting rays of sunrise. He is the danger, and yet somehow, the safety.

  I feel it in that secret, forbidden warmth that finds his eyes when he thinks no one is looking, when he looks at Enyo and I find myself wishing it was me he was looking upon instead. It's in that look that is not and never will be for me — but feels like home. Feels like it should be mine. I want it to be mine.

  I want to take it, steal it, feel its softness between my palms and hold it tight to my chest. It is there I'd hold it, like a selfish child, so that it could be mine and mine alone.

  It is that human desperation to be something of significance, to someone, no matter how monstrous, no matter how fleeting. If only for a moment, to be loved.

  Enyo's gaze is not at all like the King's. She watches me with a distinct clarity that is knowing what any woman might. We are united in our thoughts at least, our loathing, hateful and bitter for this life we've been given. Still, she stays, staring, studying every draw of breath as if through them she may head my mind.

  "Such a pretty little thing," She muses, like a cat with a mouse between its paws. Though divinely born, perhaps time has stolen away the last of her feminine loyalty. Like anyone else cursed by the Gods, she cares for no one but herself. I do not blame her, it is the best way to be. "She is yours, Sir Deimos?"

  Look away. Look away. Look away. My skin seers; the King is watching, rabid amusement about him. A dog watching the cats play.

  "Yes." Says the soldier, and though his plate is piled high with meat and fruit and honey, he has not eaten a thing.

  Enyo's eyes bulge, and bile rises in the back of my throat. I stare back at those dead man's eyes, curdled decay eating away at the edges of her irises, and her whites like milky rot.
  Before I had thought the hag nothing more than a storyteller — winding words of torture together, like a weaver with a loom, to create a tale so hideous it could not possibly be true. But up close, I see her for what she is, the truth of her threads.

  She grins, dog-toothed and rabid with unbridled anticipation, "How exciting. You plan to breed her yourself?"

  "In time, yes."

  Blood, warm and thick trails down my wrists from flesh wounds scored into my palms. I hide them beneath the table but I don't stop, I can't, clenching my fists so tightly that my nails dig deeper and deeper until they bend and break and there is nothing left to bury. I hate so entirely, so completely and utterly, that it becomes me, fills me up and swallows me whole. I do not fight the taking, willingly drowning myself beneath these scarlet waves. Desperate for sedation. Rage is far easier to fight than tears.

  Rage is strength here. A fighter's weapon — a man's greatest pride and a woman's greatest weakness. But it will be my strength, I'll make it so. They'll see, if only when it is too late.

  I will not be bedded. I will not be prised apart and bred like some sacrificial lamb. I will die before I let him have any part of me, mind, body or soul. There are one thousand ways I could do it — throw myself from the cliffs, jump from the highest tower, hang myself from the orchard. I could do it now, right here, there's the balcony and an endless drop to the city below. Would it be painful?  Would anyone try to stop me? — Even so, I could make it if I moved fast before they realised what was going on. And any moment of agony would be better than a lifetime of this ache.

  "Fascinating..." Muses the hag. All this while she has not once blinked. "I have never known a mind like it, so defiant — so hateful." She speaks as if about a plaything, a curious lamb, a broken bone. Not a person, not a woman. Not me. "I say you watch yourself, Sir Deimos — for even the greatest warriors are vulnerable in sleep." And there it is — the seed to a most terrible plan. Enyo smiles, knowing full well the murderous crop she has sown. "Tell me, girl, do you wish to be bred like a common whore? Were you not born a little better than that?"

  I would rather die a thousand deaths. There is no real answer that I can speak allowed and she knows this. The question was asked with no real expectation of an answer, and so it floats there in the silence, hanging above our heads like some ruddy storm cloud. The rest of the table has fallen silent now, lord and lady alike craning their heads to hear.

   I feel Enyo's seed begin to grow, latched deep inside the barren hollows of my womb like some grotesque child made only from the malice of a mother. It whispers to me, hellish in its intent, and fed by only the nectar of the most wicked parts of me. It grows. Stronger by the second until it shouts, screams, riots with inhuman dishonesty.

  It says; why should I condemn myself to live a thousand deaths, when I may damn him to only one? — For even the greatest warriors are vulnerable in sleep.

  If he takes me to his bed I will not go easy. And even then, should his spawn set itself inside me, I will claw it out. I would tear myself apart, piece by bloody piece to get rid of him. I'll drink all the poisons, curse every fertile deity, I will scorn the world before I let myself become complicit in the creation of the world's next conquerer. The soldier snarls, "It does not matter what she wants."

  "Perhaps." Says the creature, with her smile so sinful, so knowing. She juts a crooked finger at the man, "But maybe, you should fear a woman so fiercely hateful that she is willing to tear herself apart — rip the babe from right within her — out of spite, for you."

  "Is that what you see?" Asks the King, suddenly interested, "She will bear no sons?"

  The look Enyo gives him is strange, and if I didn't know any better I would've penned it as suspicion. She says slowly, "She will, in time, daughters too, fit and healthy... However not until she is content and her mortal love safe beside her."

"Love!" The King laughs as if this is the most foolish thing he has ever heard, "There is no such thing!"

"Oh my dear Kingling, how wrong you are." Clouds drift across the horizon, suffocating the sun. The light drowns there, muted and struggling to break through the mist that arrives. Shadows limn the old woman into a most horrifying thing, all sharp angles and cruelty, "It is only because you have not known it yet, and when you do, it will be the death of you."