Ariadne

I would not let a man who knew the value of nothing make me doubt the value of myself.

I would be Medusa, if it came to it, I resolved. If the gods held me accountable one day for the sins of someone else, if they came for me to punish a man’s actions, I would not hide away like Pasiphae. I would wear that coronet of snakes, and the world would shrink from me instead.

What I did not know was that I had hit upon a truth of womanhood: However blameless the life we lead, the passions and the greed of men could bring us to ruin, and there was nothing we could do.

I had been a fool to trust in a hero: a man who could only love the mighty echo of his own name throughout the centuries.

You told me once that one lifetime of human love was worth the loss.

It was the women, always the women, be they helpless serving girls or princesses, who paid the price.

I danced for the end of everything I knew and the beginning of everything I did not.

The stories of Perseus did not allow for a Medusa with a story of her own.

Mortals may age, but the gods are prisoners of their own infantile whimsies, never capable of change and never knowing what it is to love because they dare not risk the suffering of loss.

I know that human life shines more brightly because it is but a shimmering candle against an eternity of darkness, and it can be extinguished with the faintest breeze.

The gods do not know love, because they cannot imagine an end to anything they enjoy. Their passions do not burn brightly as a mortal’s passions do, because they can have whatever they desire for the rest of eternity. How could they cherish or treasure anything? Nothing to them is more than a passing amusement, and when they have done with it, there will be another

Because if I had learned anything, I had learned enough to know that a god in pain is dangerous.

No longer was my world one of brave heroes; I was learning all too swiftly the women's pain that throbbed unspoken through the tales of their feats.

Was this my punishment? To live the reality of my dream and find out that its glittering beauty faded to nothing when I stepped close?

Asterion. A distant light in an infinity of darkness. A raging fire if you came too close. A guide that would lead my family on the path to immortality. A divine vengeance upon us all.

Why mortals bloomed like flowers and crumbled to nothing? Why their absence left a gnawing ache, a hollow void that could never be filled? And how everything they once were, the spark within them, could be extinguished so completely yet the world did not collapse under the weight of so much pain and grief.

Why did I, Phaedra of Knossos and Athens, put my faith in a man? When I should have seen that what I truly wanted was simply to run away.

We might only have a mortal lifetime, but it will belong to us, and no one else.

I had hit upon a truth of womanhood: however blameless a life we led, the passions and the greed of men could bring us to ruin, and there was nothing we could do.

It did not feel momentous, yet when I tore my eyes away from his I found that nothing looked quite the same, as though the world had fractured and sheared away from itself to reshape in almost - but not quite - the same formation. As though I had looked at a waterfall and realised with a faint jolt that the water flowing over the rock was ever-changing, that it would never be the same water again.

My thoughts are slow and ponderous now, rumbling deep in the heart of eternity, but I see the whole of life beneath me.

There were many such stories. It seemed the night skies were littered with mortals who had encountered the gods and now stood as blazing examples of what the immortals could do.

I wonder if the heroes the bards sang of that evening knew before they triumphed what they would become. In those crucial moments when a fateful decision was made, did they feel the air brighten with the zing of destiny? Or did they blunder on, not realising the pivotal moment in which destiny swung and the fates were forged?

A fallen woman is the sweetest entertainment they know; I saw it before, in Crete. I will not let it happen to me.

I had fallen asleep in his arms and woken to cold ashes, a desolate dawn.

All mortals live and die by the threads they spin - and each mortal shall die when they cut that thread.

They are the cause of their own suffering, and yet they will never see it. They will rage against the gods all day long, and pray to them and plead for their mercy in the darkness of night.

He was not yet the Minotaur. He was just a baby. He was my brother.

You have always known this,” I reminded him. “You told me once that one lifetime of human love was worth the loss.” “I was a fool,” he said.

a terrible picture when viewed from our mortal perspective, like the beauty of a spider’s web that must look so horrifying to the fly.