Archive of Our Own ^beta

Melinoë adjusted the sash at her waist, letting her fingers brush over the fine threads of silk. At least it didn’t wear and fray away with every excursion, unlike the gorgeous dresses Arachne made for her.

She could have used the confidence of one here.

Instead she stepped through the doorway of Ephyra, into another room haunted by its residents.

It was only a few rooms later, a few doorways, that she caught the scent of herbs, of a cauldron boiling. 

Medea.

“You’ve come again. Good. You’ve finally an air of proper vengeance about you.” Medea stirred her cauldron as she spoke.

“I’ve always been here seeking vengeance.” Melinoë squared her shoulders and gave a look over the cauldron with her usual care.

“For a family you don’t remembered and a house you never knew? No, you had to understand what you’ve lost for it be your vengeance.”

Melinoë let herself taste the steam in the air. As bitter as all Medea’s work, and no doubt as useful. “There is a mural in the House of Hades, shattered but not yet gone. They were happy there once.”

“And so you start to comprehend what was lost.” Medea had a familiar edge to her voice, the bite of recognizing poison only after you’d imbibed it.

“To see a gap only hints at what filled it before. Lake, swamp, or void.”

“Hecate has taught you well. But everything she’s given you is still a mirror of water, shifted by her own currents. Fears and joys and memories.”

Melinoë stared back down at the cauldron, but she could barely see any hint of her reflection in the boiling water. A hint of laurels, of the red and green of her eyes. She was only a shadow there, amid herbs of death and sharp reprimand.

She lowered her hand toward that reflection and smiled as Medea caught it.

“I need the taste of your bitterness first.” Medea ran her hand up Melinoë’s arm, her touch cold and firm, green reflecting from her dress, the cauldron, perhaps even the sky above them. 

“There are too many flavors to that to speak of.” Most of which Melinoë would name there. Not all, for if Chronos could appear to her in Oceanus or at the edges of Erebus then she did not know where else he might listen.

Not to Eris, apparently, but then Discord could not be managed, only redirected.

“Good.” Medea’s words lingered, weighty with power, anger, desire. “Tell me of your last encounter with the Cyclops.”

Ah, that. Polyphemus had vexed Melinoë less than others, less than the music of sirens and the endless march of Time. But the sting of it felt new, still. 

“He can hear me even when I bear no more weight than the Sister Blades, when my footsteps are near as light as the Huntress beneath the moon. There is no grace to him, no caring for anything other than the taste of meat. A petty thing to cast me down.”

Medea’s hand slid upward, to the silk over Melinoë’s shoulder, the firm line of collarbone, the fragility of her throat, the jut of her chin. A single finger tipped Melinoë’s chin back. “Time haunts you still.”

And then, the kiss. Medea only let their lips touch, the parting of breath, the green vibrant within her eyes. When she inhaled Melinoë felt something go with it, the smallest portion of her burden.

“Only a little,” Medea said. “You’ll overpower the concoction otherwise. Though I may have more need of it in the future.”

“A fraction then as well?”

“It depends on what other ingredients are there. A touch of sorrow, an infusion of darkness and retribution. You know such matters well, I think.”

Melinoë did not speak, but it was an agreeing silence.