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Chapter Text

When Zoë Nightshade wakes up in the Temple of Stars, back cushioned against the soft curves of a cloud nymph, the first thing she does is try to breathe, and white-hot agony replaces the blue-painted vaulted ceiling above her. 

“OH! Oh dear, dying does do that to you, doesn’t it!” the cloud nymph yelps over her screams. Smoky arms pat her down, looking for an injury. “It’s been a while since we’ve had a new arrival. Of course, I’m not complaining about it—it’s my job not to complain, after all—and the new constellations always have such interesting stories to tell. So, how did you die? Affair with the God King of Olympus? You’re a pretty one, it wouldn’t be so far-fetched.”

“My injury,” Zoë grits out, blood pooling over her heavy tongue, “is internal. A rib has pierced my lung.”

“Well, this is beyond my means. I’m simply here as a couch in the reception area. Should I call for someone?”

“That would be much appreciated. My thanks.” Another wheeze. Ladon’s poison exits her body in the icy-cold sweat rolling down her temples. 

“You’re bleeding and sweating all over the grass dryads!”

“Ah. I am poisoned as well.”

“Interesting! Five drachmas on a spiteful concoction made by our Lady’s daughter!”

Zoë means to ask which one of the Titaness Asteria’s daughters the cloud nymph is referring to, but the warm blood in her mouth suddenly surges up, its fierceness anew, to the back of her nose, and the next thing she knows, the blue vaulted ceiling comes back into sight. The cloud nymph beneath her shakes in excitement when the rich cobalt of the afternoon sky is ripped apart, and a night sky of gem-studded black velvet greets them by raining onto the reception area a million little lights. 

Warmth, so unlike the searing discomfort that Ladon’s poison in her veins, cradles her, taking her from the cloud nymph’s embrace, and Zoë can feel her chest righting itself again. A shard of bone clicks back into its place on her sternum, the delicate sacs of her lung purge themselves of blood and close up. But most importantly, a feeling like nectar solidifying in her muscles crawls all over her—she gasps, and silvery light spills out of her mouth, catching onto the ethereal sheen of her skin, which looks like it was newly bronzed in her rebirth. 

Her eyes quiver against the light, and shimmering droplets of heat trail down the sides of her nose. 

“Congratulations, you’re officially a constellation! Welcome to the Temple of Stars!” squeals the cloud nymph when all that’s left is the vaulted ceiling above them, a friendly cobalt blue once more, and the unnatural glow on Zoë's skin. “That was magnificent to watch, truly magnificent! In the olden times, it would take the constellations fifty years after their deaths to be transformed—the line and paperwork was ridiculous, you see—so we cloud nymphs would have to watch them marinate in their own deaths… Now, though, the Lady receives not as many requests—”

Zoë struggles out of the cloud nymph’s embrace and falls into her own puddle of blood. It splatters onto her remade cheeks, still warm, but all she can think of is how large the reception hall of the Temple of Stars is. At least a hundred more cloud nymph couches, silent in their disuse, line her side of the hall; a hundred more line the other side. Leading up to the front of the hall is a carpet of grass—dryads, if she hadn’t hallucinated the cloud nymph’s words earlier in her feverish state—rolling as far as her eye could see. 

And as a Huntress of Artemis, Zoë could spot the movement of a mouse in the thick underbrush of a rainforest from five hundred feet away. 

Well. Not that she was one now. 

Why? she thinks despairingly. Have I not served thee well enough to deserve a proper rest?

 Without the cloud nymph’s chatter to fill her ears, the infinite sky’s deafening silence is her only companion. And to her chagrin, Zoë finds that no matter how hard she tries to will it, her absurdly shiny tears do not revert back into the human ones she’d grown familiar with over the course of her too-long life. 

Constellations are bound by the same divine orders that restrain the gods of Olympus. They are not to interact with mortals unless mortals make first contact, and meddling in major events on Earth is looked down upon. 

Zoë thinks back to the events leading up to her own death and snorts coldly. The divine laws do not restrain the gods so much as further excite them into breaking it, she thinks. For all the other constellations know, Asteria is off playing in Kronos’ war. Lady Artemis had whispered to her that Hecate had long picked sides; it would be of no surprise if Asteria lent a hand to her daughter. 

Still, while the constellations are near-immortal by virtue of the permanence of their bodies in the heavens, to group them with gods and Titans would be faulty. All the constellations possess is time, and lots of it. Ganymede, the beautiful youth of the Aquarius constellation, spent his being flown between the Temple of Stars and Olympus on Aquila’s (the eagle whose constellation Zeus had placed in the sky for this exact reason) back. Amalthea, the ram of the Capricornus constellation, peacefully grazed on the illusionary hills rolling down from the back of the Temple. Perseus and Andromeda spent theirs arguing and making up repeatedly. Loudly. (Zoë wished to scrub her ears clean of the sounds a man made in the throes of carnal pleasure.)

To her relief, the two constellations she dreads meeting the most turn out to prefer spending time on Gaea’s territory: Heracles guards some entrance or the other, and no one has heard from Orion since he last left the Temple of Stars for a leisurely hunt some centuries ago. 

On the other hand, those whom she might have gotten along with always seem to be lost within the Temple, its expanse tens of thousand times bigger than necessary to accommodate them. 

"Let the world honor you, my Huntress," Lady Artemis had said. "Live forever in the stars."

Zoë had always known that she would fall in battle someday, and she’d had two millennia of waking, living, breathing for Lady Artemis to prepare herself for it. But now, with no prey to hunt in the skies and no sisters to turn to, Zoë allows herself the privilege of doubt. 

What did Lady Artemis think she would achieve, wonders Zoë as she runs herself ragged across the heavens, making her a constellation? The clouds do not split beneath her footfalls, and her chest does not burn with exhaustion even as Apollo’s chariot touches the sky and turns the deep black into ribbons of coral. She runs for days until watching the sky change becomes monotonous; she launches arrows at unfortunate birds and shoots at non-existent bullseyes. Her arrows sail away and disappear, and yet the quiver permanently slung across her hip never seems to run out of them. 

She tries counting them on her way back to the Temple. Always three arrows. With a frustrated cry, she flings them all over the great threshold, watching them dissipate with a shimmer.

“It’s useless. They will come back.”

Zoë notches an arrow on instinct—her supply had indeed refilled on its own—and points it at the intruder. 

Then guilt compels her to lower her bow. The Ursa Major had suffered enough at her behest in their previous lifetime. 

“Hello, Lieutenant,” Kallisto says. “I hope your stay has been thus fulfilling.”

“Thou speaks as though I am of superior rank,” Zoë replies stiffly. “Thou wast once a Lieutenant as well.”

“That makes both of us, doesn’t it?” Kallisto heads back into the reception area, and Zöe, starved of conversation, follows her against good judgment. “How fares the Hunt?”

“Our—Their ranks are satisfactory. Though they have thinned considerably in the last few years, given the Great Stirring, I’ve never been witness to a more skilled batch of Hunters.”

“Ah yes, there’s talk of a Second Titanomachy.” They round their way into the courtyard, located at the Temple’s Center. Kallisto produces a goblet from the pouch at her hip and dips it into the fountain of nectar. “Artemis leads the infantry of the gods as usual.”

Zoë's brow furrows. “Does Artemis not visit thee?”

Kallisto offers her the goblet, and Zoë recognizes it for what it is: a peace offering. 

When she takes it, Kallisto says, “Would you claim to understand the workings of Artemis’ mind?”

“No. Never.”

“Hm. Then it should be not difficult for you to accept that she has not paid me a visit nor summoned me since—”

“—I killed thee,” Zoë finishes. The nectar, tasting of the blood oranges that she once plucked from her sisters’ garden, sours in her mouth. “But Lady Artemis must have had a reason—”

“Maybe so.” Kallisto waves her concerns away. “Nevertheless, we stand here, and not in the Fields of Elysium nor Asphodel.”

It was by Zoë's arrow that Kallisto, transformed by Artemis into a bear for daring to deceive the Hunt’s oath of maidenhood, was slain. Zeus, for once in his life, felt guilty for having deceived the innocent Huntress and granted Kallisto and her son a place among the stars, making them into the Ursa Major and the Ursa Minor. 

“Curious,” Kallisto snorts. “One would think that Artemis’ Lieutenant after two thousand years would have a guess at why she would be granted a place among the stars.”

“Lady Artemis is a goddess, and I was a mere Lieutenant. I would not dare.”

“And that’s the heart of the matter, isn’t it?” 

Suddenly, Kallisto has her bracketed against the frame of the fountain, her beautiful face glowing in the Temple’s perpetual light. “I thought I understood Artemis, and that must have been my mistake, yes? I hid the rape from her, but never did I dream that she would turn me into a bear and give the rest of you free rein to hunt me down. For deceiving her, she said. Pah! What protector of young women? I loved her, you see, so when her father came to me in her form—well, what could I do but embrace her willingly?”

“Get off me,” Zoë says lowly, pushing at Kallisto. 

Kallisto’s eyes shine with the effervescent tears unique only to them, the constellations of the skies, the ornaments of the gods. “My only sin was loving her. No,” she scoffs, “my only sin was daring to presume that she loved me back.”

“I have no such sin,” Zoë sneers. “I hunted thee down. I slew thee. Then and there as I looked into the black eyes of thy bear form, I knew that no matter how close Lady Artemis and I would grow, it would be futile.”

“We’re the same,” Kallisto whispers. “Even now, you defend her despite your doubts. I did the same thing when I carried my human son in the womb of a she-bear. I suffered the lowest humiliation possible at her hands, and I still love her.”

“Mama?”

They both freeze, and Kallisto’s face softens. She takes a moment to wipe her tears and turns around with a smile. “Yes, Arkas?”

Arkas, Kallisto’s son and the hunter of the Ursa Minor constellation, is lean and brown-skinned from his mortal days of surviving solely on hunting in the forest. Zoë averts her eyes—the set of his mouth resembles the downturn of Artemis’ lips. 

“Who’s this?”

“A new constellation,” Kallisto informs him as he steps in front of her in a protective gesture. “Zoë Nightshade, the Huntress.”

Surprise, then fury registers on Arkas’ delicate face. “One of her followers,” he spits, and Kallisto soothes him with a pat on his back. “I think I recognize her face, even—”

One of Zöe’s hands flies to her bow. Kallisto hastily says, “How was your time in the mortal realm, Arkas?”

“Ah—Uh—Stinky, mostly. The pollution and noise have reached even the forests. It’s quite upsetting—”

Zoë is unable to stop herself. “Descending into the mortal realm is possible?” she blurts. 

Mother and son turn to look at her in surprise. Arkas quickly recovers: “Why, would you rather spend the rest of your life being spirited away to Zeus’ bedchambers, like our dear Ganymede?”

Kallisto spares her son the indulgent chastisement of a tsk . “Watch how that mouth of yours runs, Arkas. And yes, Lieutenant, it is possible.”

“But—we are not to interact with mortals—” flounders Zoë. “I thought—”

“This is what two millennia of being Lieutenant does to you,” scoffs Kallisto. “Head filled with nothing but orders and rules. You’re a constellation, dear, you’re immortal. We may not be gods, but there is yet a repository of powers now available to you. Shroud yourself within the Mist, wear a disguise, what have you.” 

“Oh.” The weight of the revelation floors Zoë, and she crouches, weak in the knees. 

She could see Lady Artemis and the Hunters again—

“I know what you’re thinking,” Kallisto interrupts. “You cannot.”

“What?” Zoë springs to her feet, indignant. “Why not?!”

Arkas rolls his eyes. “Why do you think? If mortals ever found out that they could rendezvous with their dead loved ones if they became constellations, the heavens would never hear the end of it. Although I do have to say, it might finally get Hades to revolt against Zeus.”

“Arkas,” Kallisto sighs. “And, Lieutenant, it is for our own safety as well. The Olympians are not a fan of their playthings running around and meddling in the mortal realm. Best to keep it an open secret among us constellations.”

“Please stop addressing me as ‘Lieutenant,’” mutters Zoë, already striding past them. “I am no longer one.”

“Once a Lieutenant, always a Lieutenant.”

Zoë whirls around, levelling a shaking finger at Kallisto. “We are not the same. Stop trying to make me doubt Lady Artemis.”

She flees the Temple, leaping off the bright threshold and down through the clouds. But even the addictive rush of her weightless stomach plunging to the ground cannot drown out Kallisto’s parting words, echoing in her ears long after they ceased to bounce off white columns.

“Are we not, Lieutenant? We’re both here because of her. As for doubt—only time will tell.”

If there is one thing the residents of the Temple of Stars possess, it’s time. 

Lots of it. 

Lady Artemis took her in when the Hesperides had cast her out of the garden and blotted her name from the records. To avoid the fury of Pleione’s water nymphs, Zoë sought refuge deep within the dense forests of Macedonia, away from the sunset and the sea. But run-ins with especially vengeful river nymphs were inevitable; she quickly learned to anticipate struggle whenever she would dip in a river bank to take a drink or wash herself. 

On one such occasion, she barely managed to crawl back to the bank, and as she disgorged what felt like an entire ocean from her lungs, she thought about ending her shame right then and there. She held a bunch of nightshade berries she’d been keeping on her to her mouth. 

And that was how Lady Artemis found her. 

In the meantime, Zoë busies herself with helping young girls to shake off the encounter with Kallisto—because that’s what Lady Artemis does. Like this, she remembers why she had taken the nightshade berries away from her mouth and joined the Hunt. Unseen by mortal eyes, she whispers into the ears of downtrodden women, gives them the strength and wit to evade their husbands and fathers and boyfriends, lends them a soothing assurance on which their tears drip and dry up. 

Sometimes, when she feels particularly brave, she takes on an unassuming form and casually offers them little gifts to get them by. A fallen dollar bill, a bag of still-warm and untouched sandwiches, a bottle of concealer for their bruises. For one especially young girl around the age of six, she buys a fur coat to drape over the shivering form and starts a fire in the January winter-frosted alley. Long after the child falls asleep, Zöe keeps watch, whisking the child away to a different location when suspicious figures and cruel-looking policemen approach. 

But for all the help she affords girls from all walks of life, it’s fleeting. Zoë can only stay and operate in secret for so long. The frustration piles on her, and with each passing man that acts more like an animal, her restraint to not kill any one of them crumbles. After unintentionally compelling her latest victim to scratch out her brother’s eyes for taking yet more money for… e-gambling?—what did “e” stand for?—she ascends back to the heavens, too flustered for her liking. 

Regardless, that’s when she hears cries from the sea. Halfway to the lowest clouds, Zoë pauses and strains her ears. 

“What are two young ones doing so far from the land?” she murmurs to herself, flying in the voices’ direction. 

In a few minutes, she sights a massive galley that belongs to an era five centuries past. The great bow slices through the glass-like waters, and the billowing sails sway against their masts. Zoë cannot make sense of it, so she heads straight to the ship’s hold, where the cries are coming from. 

When she passes through the walls, the sight that greets her makes her blood boil. 

In the dark corners of the putrid hold huddle around two dozen women, a handful of them still mid-adolescence and most of them in their early twenties. They’re all bound and gagged with rope as thick as Zoë's fist to wooden posts, and judging from the smell, they haven’t been granted any hygienic privileges for quite some time now. Screams fill the enclosed space as the captives struggle towards the center of the hold. There, about fifteen or so pirates, all built like colossal sequoia trees, crowd around two girls. 

The obvious conclusion here is that the two girls are being mercilessly assaulted, one that Zoë might have come to if she weren’t so experienced in brawling herself. But despite being outnumbered and still being bound by ropes, it’s clear that it’s the ten grown men on their defense. 

Amused, Zoë watches on as the smaller girl flings her bound hands around a pirate’s throat, effectively choking him. The taller girl snaps her head backwards against another pirate’s nose and plants her feet into the stomach of the man her sister is holding captive. When the poor bastard crumples to his feet, the smaller girl slices the ropes binding her wrists across the sword hanging from his hip. 

Unfortunately, it costs her a precious second; the taller girl roars in rage as she watches the smaller girl get backhanded across the hold, blood spilling across the wooden floorboards. “REYNA!” —then a string of desperate curses in a foreign tongue Zoë hasn’t learned. 

Zoë does not know what comes over her; perhaps it is the adrenaline from the earlier situation with the “e-gaming” brother, or the fact that she had grown to root for the girls in the few minutes she had watched them. Either way, anger deafens all her prudence, and the world erupts in a silvery flash as her energy knocks the pirates ten meters away from the girls. 

The taller girl wastes no time rushing to her sister—for they look so alike that it is impossible for them to not be related. “Reyna, baby sister,” she breathes. “Wake up.”

Reyna’s dark brows scrunch together as she lets out a slurred, “Hylla…”

“Stay here,” Hylla hisses, crouching over Reyna’s figure like an impenetrable dome. “I’ll take care of them.”

A knot of dread settles in Zoë's chest. For all the sisters’ natural fighting prowess, the duo is down to one, and Hylla is clearly clinging onto the last vestiges of her energy. If she is to fight her way out of the hold, there will be untold waves of new opponents, all likely to be freshly rested and even more in number. 

She should turn back. Leave the girls alone, pray fervently that they escape the situation. 

Zoë thinks back on one of her first conversations with Artemis: “Should I not dispose of these infernal berries, milady?” she had asked. 

Artemis had only smiled at her, and for the first time, Zoë realized why the black night tides reach for the full moon. How could they not, in the face of such radiance? “It’s your choice, my dear Huntress.”

Zoë takes a breath that she no longer needs and lets her presence descend on Hylla. She notes the tremor of fatigue lining the muscles of Hylla’s shoulders and extending all the way down to her fingertips. 

If you ask for help, Zoë whispers into Hylla’s ear, it shall be given. 

Hylla whirls around, and the pirates who had just begun working up the courage to approach her again yelp and scramble backwards. She pays them no heed. Who is there?!

No god that thou knows of, Zoë snorts. A sympathetic spirit, if thou would be so kind. 

What price am I to pay?

Which arm was it?

Hylla blinks. Which arm was what? 

Which arm was your sister slapped with, dost thou recall?

An echo of laughter in their shared mental space. It was the right arm. Unfortunately, I don’t remember which one in particular did it… 

Unnecessary. They all suffer, then. That would be payment enough. 

Hylla’s laughter grows louder. Her mind opens up to let Zoë in, and Zoë feels the earlier bloodlust creep back in, dyeing their vision red and sharper than ever. I really like you, mysterious voice. 

Hylla lunges at the nearest pirate, and Zoë seizes him with Hylla’s hands. Without much further ado, Zoë jerks the man’s right arm out of his shoulder then shatters the cartilage of his elbow in two swift strikes. The moment the pain registers enough for him to scream, Zoë decks him in the throat and kicks him back onto the next approaching pirate. 

I’ll take it from here! Hylla snarls, snatching back control to break another pirate’s ulna clean in half. Next thing Zoë knows, Hylla’s fists are flying everywhere, resounding cracks trailing in her wake around the ship’s hold. 

Bruises layer on her dark skin, but Hylla is unstoppable, seemingly unfeeling of her injuries. Red layers so thick on her knuckles that even Zoë cannot tell Hylla’s blood apart from the pirates’, and she marvels at the girl’s strength. Even when three men attempt to gang up on her, two holding her down while one runs at her with a cudgel, she does not give for a single second into fear. With a burst of strength that Zoë sends her way, Hylla plants her feet onto the approaching man’s chest and flips overhead. The two men stand no chance; before they can blink, Hylla uses her momentum to bash their heads into their third compatriot’s. The three of them fall into a grunting heap, joining the rest of the pirates who dared approach Hylla. 

The daughter of Bellona huffs stray hair out of her face. Time for your tribute, mysterious voice? She looks for the pirates who still have their arms intact and quickly remedies that travesty. When the screams become bothersome, she dashes their heads into the side of the ship for good measure. 

After they clear the level, Hylla takes into each of her hands a fallen pirate’s cutlass and takes a breather, leaning on the blades for support. 

Do you even know how to use these? Zoë asks drily. 

Not yet. In a moment; weapons have always come easy to me. These pathetic swords will be no exception.

Then the moment Hylla lifts her foot to walk forth, her knees give out under her. 

“Ow,” she mumbles against the floor.

Zoë considers manifesting physically, but she has already both overstayed her welcome and revealed her powers, so she decides against it. Instead, she says, Let me take over.

“No,” Hylla grunts. “This is something I have to do myself. Just… give me a minute.”

Hylla inhales the foul air of the hold, and all at once, Zoë feels as if she herself is the air: Hylla has somehow latched onto her presence, draining Zöe of her energy to make it into her own. 

What are you doing?!

Haha… How are your energy reserves so deep? I guess you really are a god. 

If I were a god, I would have half a mind to incinerate thee by now! Zöe thinks furiously. 

But you haven’t. Oh, that feels great. Perks of being the daughter of a war goddess; I’m capable of making my allies’ strength my own. 

Hylla rises to her feet, brimming with Zoë's energy, and busies herself cutting at the captives’ ropes. “We will be free soon,” she promises them. 

“You say this everytime you start a fight in the hold,” one of them says shakily. “You and Reyna might be the daughters of Bellona, but there’s only so much the two of you can do against a whole ship of pirates!”

“And the pirates that you do kill always come back the next day!” another cries. “Remember what Lady Circe told us? This crew was cursed by Poseidon to forever sail the seas. It’s a futile mission.”

“I suppose you’re fine with serving as their desk scrubbers and bed warmers for eternity, then,” Hylla sharply rebukes. “Suit yourselves. But mark your words, I will succeed this time, and I’ll know no greater pleasure than seeing you eat your words and beg for my forgiveness when this ship docks and I unboard with only Reyna in tow.”

The captive women glance at each other with unease. “... How are you so sure this time?”

“I’ve got a secret weapon,” Hylla laughs, earlier temper suddenly nowhere to be found. “Don’t worry, all you have to do is stay down here, not get in my way, and take care of Reyna. ¿Entendido? ”

Zoë has not felt so unnerved by another person in several centuries now. Something about the discomfiture Hylla brings her is familiar, but even as they head out to face the other pirates, she fails to put a name to it. 

Thou reminds me of myself, millennia ago, she instead tells Hylla, for lack of anything else to say.

Oh? What a compliment. 

Hardly. I sincerely hope thou hast never thought of ingesting nightshade berries to end thy own life. 

… I have my sister to take care of. Still, you’re here, so I assume the berries either failed or you didn’t take them. 

Thou art knowledgeable, Zöe says approvingly. As expected of an apprentice of Circe. They climb the wooden ladder to the next level: the forecastle. I crushed the nightshade berries, dipped my arrows into their essence, and slew my goddess’ enemies with them. 

A Huntress of Artemis. Maybe you should teach me how to use a bow. 

I may; you would make a fine Huntress, indeed. But learn to use these cutlasses first , Zöe replies. 

Hylla kicks open the door to the forecastle and beheads the first pirate that comes near her. Way ahead of you. 

Hylla’s ordeal on the Queen Anne’s Revenge lasts five days and four nights. Each morning, every single pirate who they had maimed or killed comes back freshly healed and recovered to face them, rushing Hylla in whatever part of the ship she is from back and front. 

Thanks to Zoë's near limitless energy as a newly immortal constellation, Hylla outlasts them all. She’s a quick study of a warrior, immediately being able to correct the shift of her momentum and the angle of her wrist according to Zoë's instruction, and she slices through the never-ending pirates like they were the waters upon which they sail. Her hands change weapons like underclothes, given how much blood and bits of flesh collect on the handles every few minutes. Regardless if Hylla holds a mace, dual cutlasses, old-fashioned pistols, or even a wide butcher’s knife, all weapons came to her naturally. 

She’d been born to shed blood, and watching her stride through rotting, blood-soaked wooden planks like it is her kingdom is magnificent. Still, Zoë mourns the thick scarring that quickly envelopes Hylla’s fine hands, once dedicated to pampering and being pampered in a peaceful land. 

I thought Reyna and I would finally find peace and refuge on Circe’s island, Hylla confides to Zoë on the third night. They’d reached the deck, but Zoë had forced Hylla to rest for the night in a small compartment just beneath the floor, only accessible by a trapdoor. It is the first good night’s sleep Hylla had been convinced to take since she seemed to have little regard for how she took and took and took from Zoë's energy. I even became one of Circe’s favorite attendants. But then some… twerps on a quest showed up six months ago and undid Circe’s enchantment on the pirates. They used to be adorable guinea pigs we attendants fed for fun during our breaks but now… well. 

Zoë has a horrible inkling of the identity of the said “twerps.” Percy Jackson. 

You know him? Well, he got turned into a guinea pig, too. It was his blonde friend that got him and the rest of them changed back. I’ll kill them if they ever cross my path. 

Perhaps Zoë had been wrong in her assessment of Percy Jackson. It seemed that however decent heroes seemed to be, they would always recklessly leave behind a trail of casualties that they gave not a second thought to. Men, she says derisively. 

Hylla laughs. It suits her; it’s sharp, loud, and it demands . Just like how Hylla demands so much: for freedom, for bloodshed, for Zoë's energy. 

The more glorious a hero is, the higher the mountain of bodies that he stands upon. I learned that early on. 

Zoë ponders Hylla’s words, then her thoughts turn back to male heroes, and a horrible realization about Hylla strikes like the arrows that had earned her her title. 

… Mysterious voice? Have you left me?

Zoë is still reeling, but she answers back, No, I have not. I will see you and your sister to the end, until you gain freedom. I guarantee it. I am a woman of my word. 

I would accept nothing less, replies Hylla, as though Zoë's given help was her birthright.

The next morning, when Hylla publicly demands for a duel with Blackbeard himself, Zoë remains silent, only piping up to point out various weaknesses in his left flank. It hardly stops Hylla from taking her fill of Zoë's vitality when her strikes start to slow or when Blackbeard manages a good hit on her. Blood and sweat splatters all over the deck, and by the time Hylla slits Blackbeard’s throat, the sun is just about to set. 

“I will see your captain in the morning then,” she declares to the first mate. “By noon I expect to be on my knees kissing the sweet, sweet ground.” Hylla pauses, then smirks. “Something you pendejos won’t ever be able to do.’

And that starts up another round of fighting. Zoë sighs as she feels Hylla siphon yet more energy from her. Thou art being reckless , she snaps. 

Breathless with thrill and exhaustion, Hylla whirls with her blades, forming a circle of destruction. You were so silent the whole day, is the coy reply Zoë receives. Ah, so Hylla had noticed. Maybe I just want to spend more time with you. 

Zoë's frustration implodes in a blinding burst of starlight. The remaining pirates fall to their knees, clutching their eyes and screaming. ENOUGH! It is already bad enough that they are being beaten by a nineteen-year-old mortal girl. It is in thy best interests to prevent grudges. 

But—

“Hylla!” Just as the pirates get on their feet, another figure joins the melee. “How—”

“Reyna!” Hylla shouts in horror, leaping to her sister’s side. “I told the manicurists to keep you in the hold!”

“And leave you?” With a grunt, Reyna swings the machete in her hands down on a woozy pirate’s skull. “I don’t know how you managed to do this all on your own, but we are not in Father’s house anymore. You can’t keep shielding me from the world!”

“FUCK!” Hylla shouts in frustration. “I shouldn’t have started another fight—”

Told you so. 

“SHUT UP!” Hylla plunges her sword into a man’s stomach and cuts so deep into another’s thigh Zoë thinks she sees a flash of white bone.  “Not you, Reyna—get out of here—”

“Hylla,” Reyna insists. “Listen to me. We can keep fighting these pirates forever, but as long as they hold power over us on this ship, they have no reason to let us go.”

Hylla pauses for the briefest second, then grabs Reyna to hurl her into the small compartment she (and Zoë) had spent the night in. Once in the dark room, the two sisters work fast to secure the rattling door with various layers of knotted ropes and a blade holding them together for good measure. 

“Open up, you little bitches!” shouts a pirate, spittle dripping from behind his yellowing teeth. His ten or so mates all echo his call, pounding their bulging fists on the door. Inwardly, Zoë clicks her teeth and floats out of the small compartment. 

“Men,” she seethes disdainfully with a physical mouth, a tangible tongue. The pirates just about jump out of their skin to look at her. 

Unfamiliar and unassuming as Zoë's human disguise might be, they have learned these past few days that even frail-looking girls are capable of monstrous things. Zoë's lip curls up to bare her teeth. 

“Leave them alone,” she mocks. “Perhaps then you would recharge sufficiently enough to be a legitimate threat by the morrow.”

She disappears in a flurry of stardust, and the men scatter like the cockroaches they are. Zoë is pleased to note that she has not lost her affinity for intimidation, judging by the smell of urine that twirls into the air.

She cannot bring herself to go back to the Temple of Stars just yet, however. She instead runs the path that the stars of her constellation form, alighting from one to the other with divine ease as the night deepens, right before the rays of Eos split the sky. 

That is how the fourth night transpires. By the fifth morning, Zoë hovers at a distance as the two daughters of Bellona drag out chests of Blackbeard’s riches and hold it over the side, all the while coolly negotiating for their freedom. By noon, Hylla threatens Blackbeard where it hurts: he is to grant them their freedom lest his crew suffer an eternity of dying and resurrecting at the sisters’ blades in between their hard-earned loot being pillaged. 

Faced with such a threat, Blackbeard directs his crew to make haste for the nearest piece of land with civilization. By nightfall, all twenty-four of the former attendants of C.C’s Resort and Spa are crying in jubilation on the grounds of San Francisco, and Zoë makes her way back to the Temple of Stars. 

(She may have dallied a bit leaving Hylla to herself. Against her good judgement, she perched at Hylla’s side as the women disembarked the Queen Anne’s Revenge , waiting for Hylla to perhaps reach out and ask for assistance or even just wonder where the mysterious voice in her head had gone. 

Hylla smiled and cheered and went along in group hugs with the rest of the freed captives like nothing had happened. 

The taste in Zoë's mouth soured, much like the nectar Kallisto had offered her. 

But Reyna, sharp as a silver arrow even at thirteen years old, pressed her sister: “You had help. What demonic deal did you make?”

The smile faded from Hylla’s lips. “I… do not know,” she confessed. 

“What do you mean you do not know?!”

“She called herself a ‘sympathetic spirit.’ So maybe she’d been in our situation before and just wanted to help.”

“No one offers help for free, Hylla.”

Hylla smiled and ruffled Reyna’s hair. “That was what I said, too, Reynita. But she seemed to genuinely not desire any form of reward or payment. She would not even reveal her identity.”

“But you have bits of information about her.”

“Of course. What do you think of me?”

“ I came up with the idea of blackmailing the pirates instead of just using brute force against them,” quipped Reyna. 

“Yes, yes, and I’ll never forget it.” Hylla took a breath, and her eyes gleamed. Zoë swore those eyes darted up to her constellation for the briefest second, but it was dark, and the night often played tricks on even the visions of huntresses. “Anyway, I do intend to find her and thank her as she deserves. And maybe scold her a bit for leaving me so suddenly.”

The rest of the conversation that followed, Zoë did not hear. At that point, she’d fled, once again flustered beyond what she knew to do with. 

Heracles had never thanked her, or shown her any sign of his gratitude, for that matter. 

So perhaps she’d been wrong to associate helping Hylla with helping Heracles. Hylla did have the same bloodlust, the same greed for glory and victory, but beneath all her disillusionment with the world… she had a good soul yet.

Zoë's cheeks warm in shame.)

She finds Kallisto sitting on the threshold upon her return. “Lieutenant,” Kallisto greets, voice tired and resigned. 

Zoë bites back the bitterness surging in her heart at the sight of her. “What are you doing out so late?”

“Ah, don’t mind me. This… This is just something I do everyday,” she sighs. Kallisto tries for a smile and fails. “A pointless habit, really… I’d appreciate it if you don’t poke fun at me for it.”

Kallisto looks like a child with the way her knees are tucked under her chin. Her fist is tightly clenched around a glint of silver. The very portrait of longing, anticipating. Waiting. 

As potent as her dislike for the former Huntress is, Zoë has no more energy left in her to be resentful. “Of course not,” she says, moving to stride past her. “Good night, Kallisto.”

“Good night, Lieutenant,” Kallisto mumbles, gaze once more distant and yearning at the shrouded half-moon. 

Zoë tries to avoid demigods and fellow mythological beings after Hylla. She should help as there is an imminent war, she knows, but despite her opinion of Percy Jackson having fallen slightly, she is still confident in the boy’s and his friends’ competence and courage. If there is anyone who can defeat the Titan Lord Kronos and his allies, it is him. 

The moment Zoë detaches from the mortal realm, time passes by in the Temple of Stars in the blink of an eye. She meets some of the other constellations (Ganymede, in particular, stuns her like he does everyone else—his beauty truly transcends languages), and discovers exactly what “e-gaming” is, thanks to the twins of the Gemini constellation, Castor and Pollux. Olympus knows where they had procured their supplies from, but they proudly show off to her their “gaming system” when the topic comes up. 

 “—and thanks to Hermes, we’ve got pretty good Wi-Fi even up here in the heavens, so the multiplayer options allow us to connect with anyone from Olympus all the way down to the Underworld. Lady Persephone herself does some e-gaming, and she absolutely slays at Tekken,” rambles one twin. 

“You should see the way she pulls off those combos with Lili, it’s so cool!” cries the other. “I’ve never seen someone move so fast, like BAM! BAMBAM! Then flying overhead kick, POW! She beat my avatar in fifteen seconds flat, I was absolutely crushed.”

“I see.” In fact, Zoë does not see, but either way, the twins shepherd her to the nearest chair, shove a strange machine in her hands, and start talking about pressing certain buttons to kick, punch, whatnot. 

Zoë frowns. “If I want to kick, I do not have to press a button. I can merely do it with my own legs.”

Castor and Pollux stare at her before bursting into laughter. 

“What’s so funny?” grunts Arkas, lifting up the gossamer curtain that separates the twins’ bedchamber from the Temple’s corridors. His gaze darkens at Zoë, who politely acknowledges him with a nod. “Why are you trying to teach her how to play Xbox?”

Zoë's patience frays. “Since my presence here seems to be so undesired, I will take my leave from you three unseemly men,” she retorts. 

Castor and Pollux have the look of spectators at gladiator games on their faces as Arkas groans. He grabs a plastic case depicting a burly mercenary hoisting a sniper rifle. “First-person shooting RPGs might be more suited to the Huntress, then.”

Testosterone-driven as Arkas seems to be, he turns out to be right. Zoë… ah, “wings” the game called “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” once she learns which buttons to press to shoot at the on-screen enemies. 

“How are you doing that?!” Castor demands. She knows it is Castor because he has stopped playing, his in-game lives having been used up five rounds ago. Pollux has his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, his avatar barely hanging on by a thread. 

She tries not to sound too smug when she says, “I have not missed a shot in a thousand years.”

Arkas, who has a deep scowl lining his features, jabs at his console’s buttons harder. But after Zoë emerges as the undeniable victor among them, having the most kills, he offers her a begrudging handshake.  

“Normally I don’t shake hands with men,” she sneers at him. 

“Normally I don’t shake hands with Huntresses,” he sneers right back, but he drops the topic afterwards in a rare show of respect. Castor and Pollux give her simultaneous thumbs-ups with identically broad grins. 

Zoë is baffled, more than anything. “You men seek validation from such asinine sources.”

Really, she has no choice of companion here, up in the Temple of Stars. Glory back in the days, after all, was mostly given to men. And the women that do reside here… well. Zoë is hardly inclined to speak to Kallisto of her own initiative; Andromeda seems to be constantly occupied in marital bliss; and the seven Pleiades are simply not an option. What thousands of years might have done to ease their hatred towards her for betraying Pleione was completely undone by Zoë's final actions, which sealed their father once more under the sky. When Zoë has the misfortune of running into her half-sisters, their glares burn into her back long after she hurriedly rounds the corner, away from them. 

The loneliness from her earlier days comes back, not quite in full force, but present, nonetheless. There is only so much running and gaming one can do until things become monotonous. 

But she cannot bring herself to descend on the mortal realm. Not so soon after the run-in with Hylla had ripped open anew the fear of becoming a tool in a hero’s quest for glory. 

And there’s still the ever-nocked arrow of the question that grows more tense with each passing day: Why did Lady Artemis put her here?

The answer should be obvious, and yet Zoë cannot bring herself to accept that to Lady Artemis, she is nothing more than a trophy to be shown off for eternity. For over two thousand years, Zoë had dedicated every waking breath to her without question. 

Was she to spend the rest of her afterlife in the same manner? Zoë winces at the afterimage of Kallisto, perched on the threshold, eternally waiting. How fitting that the two Huntresses in the skies would teach different lessons: one as a warning against disobeying Artemis’ contract of maidenhood, and another as a paragon of unwavering loyalty. But even Kallisto had her son to keep her company, just as Castor and Pollux had one another in brotherhood, just as Perseus and Andromeda warmed their marriage bed with much enthusiasm. Hades, Andromeda even had her parents in the Temple, and Perseus, averse to them as he was, would do anything to make his wife happy. 

Zoë had no one, except perhaps the memory of her goddess. She could try to sever their bond, but that would mean returning to the state she was in during the days after her exile: melancholy and rage and nightshade berries. Not that they would work anymore; her body would just heal her right up. 

Kallisto had been right about one thing. Why else would she be thinking these thoughts, if not to make excuses for Lady Artemis? If not for love?

“Huntress,” calls out a voice one night, and Zoë breaks out of her spiralling reverie. She looks over her shoulder from where she is perched on the balcony of her open terrace. 

Perseus maintains a respectful distance from even her front door. Percy Jackson could not have had a better hero to have as a namesake, she thinks. “Huntress, HephaestusTV is live-streaming the Battle of Manhattan, if you are inclined.”

The Battle of Manhattan. Zoë purses her lips. The final stand for Olympus. The constellations know that should the demigods fall, they are expected to defend the home of the gods as well.

She follows Perseus out of her bedchambers and into a facsimile of a modern mortal theater. However, instead of a big flat screen plastered at the front of the room, a smoky sphere is located in the center. Around it run concentric circles of plush leather seats, much like an amphitheater. 

As a cloud nymph Zoë does not recognize fiddles with some remote control or the other, she makes a conscious choice to sit beside Kallisto. 

Zoë now recognizes what the glint of silver Kallisto had been holding that night is. The silver circlet of a Lieutenant of the Huntresses of Artemis. Kallisto now clutches the broken half of one such circlet, likely her own, tightly in her fist. 

They do not exchange a word, but a mutual understanding passes between them. The Huntresses of Artemis are likely to join the battle to aid the demigods. 

And they are likely to suffer high casualties.

Zoë takes a deep breath to steady herself and tries to prepare herself for the inevitable carnage and the grief that will follow. 

Oh, she hopes that Phoebe had been made Lieutenant. 

In the wake of all the violence on Mount Othrys, Hylla had never felt more at peace . Urging the previous Amazonian queen to ride to Camp Jupiter’s aid at the Titan’s stronghold proved to be a high-reward gamble; within hours, the secretaries’ phones had been flooded with bulk orders from New Rome for the new weaponry they had proudly rolled out against the dracaena, as well as profuse thank you’s and discreet IOU’s from relatives of certain legionnaires whose families had served Camp Jupiter for generations. 

She would be right in the fray, handling paperwork with the other Amazons, if she hadn’t just been gifted Hippolyta’s Belt a few hours prior. “You’ve proven yourself today, Hylla,” the previous queen said with a weary smile. “Both in battle and in business. I trust that I’m retiring with the Amazons in good hands.”

Just as well, too. Hylla privately thinks that sooner or later, she would’ve made a challenge for the queenship. The Amazons’ operations had been moving too slowly for her liking, not developing quickly enough beyond forklifts and warehouses. If they had wanted to stick so badly to business, they should’ve just taken on Hermes as their patron god, and not Ares. The corners of her lips quirk up at the thought. 

But logistics and marketing plans could wait. She should be jubilant, celebrating with her compatriots—she had seen Reyna (and a blonde boy, but he was irrelevant) raised on the backs of the Romans’ shields as praetor today, too. As much as it hurt to be separated from her baby sister, it was good to see that Reyna was making a life of her own in Camp Jupiter. 

So she decided to grant her sister some space and sip at her goblet of mead at the edge of one of Mount Tamalpais’ many cliffs. The celebrations would commence with or without the new queen of the Amazons; her absence might even help in creating an intimidating reputation. 

The weather is not all that bad. The summer night wind is crisp on her face, the rolling tides make for an entrancing lullaby, and… oh. There’s a beautiful woman approaching her. 

Hylla puts on the smile she’d learned at Circe’s island. To be a favorite of both customers and boss, one had to be charming—flirtatious, and even seductive, if need be. “Can’t say I’ve seen your face before. And you’re not a face I’d forget, I assure you.”

The woman somehow manages to make an eye roll elegant. Hylla’s heart pounds in her chest. Hylla can’t focus on any single part of her without feeling heat rush to her face; for her molten onyx eyes and the silky black hair starkly contrasting the soft white chiton that wrapped around her lean body—beautiful would be an understatement. 

“I live here,” the woman says pointedly. “Thou oversteps.”

“You’re a Hesperide,” deduces Hylla. “What are you doing out of your garden?”

“So crass,” mumbles the Hesperide. “My curiosity was merely piqued at seeing the Queen of the Amazons stargazing by her lonesome. Here is not so far from home.”

“They’re out in full force tonight. Would be a shame to miss them.” 

“Thou seems particularly interested in that constellation.”

The Hesperide doesn’t have to point for Hylla to know what she’s referring to. “I have a particular attachment to it.”

“Do tell.”

Hylla turns to the Hesperide. “I’m beginning to think that you’re the one overstepping here,” she says. 

“Very well then.” The Hesperide cocks a dark eyebrow at her. “What does it look like to thee?”

“It’s obviously a girl running and shooting arrows,” Hylla replies flatly. 

“Mm. Thou would be correct. She—It is one of the most elaborate constellations there is. My sisters and I have history with it, too.”

Hylla sighs. The Hesperide seems to truly be curious about Hylla’s answer. 

“Two years ago,” Hylla starts, “my sister and I were held captive by pirates, but we managed to escape. The constellation was the first thing I saw when we finally gained our freedom and stepped foot on land.”

A lump forms in Hylla’s throat. “It was shining brightly over our heads, like it had been put there just to watch over me and my sister. Perhaps it was a sign that—”

She cuts herself off. Other than Reyna, she’d never told anyone else about that mysterious voice in her head, the seemingly endless wells of energy from which she drew strength to escape Blackbeard’s ship. She didn’t need to be branded as crazy, or worse, undeserving of her current position.

The Hesperide is staring at her. “Shall I tell thee a story, my Queen?”

Hylla nods. 

“There were once five sisters. They lived harmoniously in a sort of paradise safeguarded from the iniquities of the world, from men. The poor souls who dared disturb this paradise were quickly dealt with by the sisters, for they knew better than to court temptation.

“But one sister was taken in by the charms of a hero, and she betrayed the trust of all her family. For the first time in eons, the paradise was tainted by the touch of a man, the poison of greed. The traitor was cast out of the garden and erased from all memory and record, but the damage had been done.

“Eons passed, and through the different turbulences that shook the world, the paradise once more remained untouched—until the fifth sister returned, and much blood was spilt on sacred ground. 

“But the fifth sister had found a new mistress to follow, and the blood spilt had been in her mistress’ name. And so her mistress granted the fifth sister an eternal life amongst the stars, as a reward for her loyalty, while the four sisters remained bound to the blood-soaked garden and their newly wounded pride. In tending to their duty, the four sisters had become the villains of the story, a mere obstacle overcome by the fifth sister, who now lives among the great constellations of myth.

“So, tell me, my Queen. Doth one need to experience the vileness of the world to become a hero? Must one be tainted to be able to lay claim to the triumph of washing oneself of filth?”

“You talk just like her,” murmurs Hylla in an epiphany. 

“Like who?” the Hesperide says in irritation. 

The story was quite clearly referring to the Hesperides themselves, the “paradise” their garden. The fifth sister, who had a mistress—

Hylla barks out a laugh. The Hesperide flinches. “Restrain thyself,” she hisses. 

“Right,” Hylla coughs, smoothing over her amusement with the new cool facade that she vowed to affect as queen. “Well, as they say, the healthy don’t need a doctor. The sick do, and when they heal, their journey is of course more interesting and gritty than that of the healthy.”

“Hmph.” The answer doesn’t seem to appeal to the Hesperide. 

“I’m curious,” chimes Hylla, “did the fifth sister have a name?”

“Tsk.”

“Oh, please. Humor me. I’ve kept you entertained with my answers and company.”

“I should dance with thee until breath takes leave of thy body,” the Hesperide spits out. “Her name was Zoë. She also had an epithet of ‘Nightshade,’ for Olympus knows what reason. Horrid thing, to be associated with such a repugnant plant.”

“ I crushed the nightshade berries, dipped my arrows into their essence, and slew my goddess’ enemies with them.” 

Hylla smirks. “I can conjure up a few guesses, if you’d like.”

“Pah! I’ll not sully my ears with them.”

In one graceful move, the Hesperide turns and leaps off the edge of the cliff. Hylla follows with her gaze as that lithe body breaks the surface of the sea with hardly a splash. 

She sips at her mead, waiting for the Hesperide to resurface and unsurprised when she doesn’t.

“Zoë Nightshade,” she sighs into her goblet. “I’m looking forward to reuniting with you, then.”

With a toast to the brightly sparkling constellation above her head,  Hylla downs the rest of the mead before making her way back to the celebrations, head buzzing with plans and dreams.

Chapter Text

"Thalia Grace!” cries Zoë for what is probably the sixth time that month. “I still cannot comprehend it, I cannot bear to wrap my mind around it—Thalia Grace as Lieutenant!"

“Please shut up,” groans Arkas from beneath his face mask. At Andromeda’s insistence, Zoë is donning one, too: a cool, damp sheet of linen smelling of aloe and peppermint. “This is supposed to be a day of relaxation, Huntress.”

“Even Naomi has been in the Hunt longer than Thalia Grace, and she looks not even twelve years of age!” rants Zoë, twitching in the lounge chair. “ I became Lieutenant only after one thousand and five hundred years!”

“You became Lieutenant suspiciously soon after you slew me,” points out Kallisto from a divan opposite Zoë’s. “Have you considered, Lieutenant—”

“I am no longer one. Do not call me that while we discuss the most recent one.”

“—that our dear Lady simply is prone to nepotism?”

“Like father, like daughter,” snickers Pollux. “Not that I’m complaining, but remember when Zeus killed Asclepius for resurrecting mortals in the same half-century that he granted Castor immortality at my request?”

“Gods, I’m glad we didn’t have to see the chaos that Apollo stirred up after that,” Castor snorts. “Anyway, Huntress, they do have a point.”

“Damn, wish I received that same favor from dear ol’ dad when I was growing up with a fucking bear . No offense, Mama.”

“None taken, Arkas.”

Zoë sighs and sits up, peeling off the mask. Her face feels tingly. “If I were any more foolish a constellation, I would descend to the mortal realm and have a few choice words with Lady Artemis. As a daughter of Zeus, Thalia Grace is powerful, yes, but…” 

“Too brash with the emotions?” suggests Castor. “Too arrogant, easily swayed by power?”

Zoë looks at him in surprise. “Precisely. My thanks, Castor.”

“No problem. It’s a common trait amongst Zeus’ kids. OW, Pollux! Hey, who’s that coming over—ARKAS, NO—”

Over the sounds of the boys wrestling, Zoë turns to Kallisto. “If thou art ever made to feel uncomfortable by my words, I…”

Kallisto cracks one eye open. “I’ve had three millennia or so to move past it.”

“And yet thou sits on the threshold every night without fail, holding that circlet of thine.”

Kallisto falls silent with no teasingly sharp reply to give. Zoë leaves Arkas’ room and wanders out into the hallway. 

As it always does, the vastness and beauty of the Temple soothes the frustration roiling in Zoë’s veins. Every column-lined hallway seems to stretch on for miles, and each of the Corinthian columns is as wide as five of her long strides. Where the bases of the columns meet the ground, there engraved is the seal of the Titaness Asteria: a quail with its ink-colored wings spread to reveal the gem-like stars strewn out across its back. The ground is painted a spotty off-white in imitation of the clouds on which the Temple so effortlessly perches, reflecting the azure of the skylight streaming in through the crisscrossed marble beams perched on top of the columns. The beams are more for the aesthetic than necessity; from their place far above the rain-bringing clouds, the constellations only know the warm sunlight and the cool wind. 

No matter how hard Zoë tries, no matter how long her excursions throughout the Temple last, she can never seem to map out the entirety of its lot. She ends up wandering into the vast foyer that sprawls outwards to the Temple’s threshold. Similar to a traditional temple, the back of the room hosts a massive, thirty-meter statue made purely of silver depicting the Titaness of their household. The floor space could host a thousand people at her best estimate.

To her surprise, Zoë spots another figure bustling out from the other side of the statue. “Perseus,” she greets. 

“Huntress!” Perseus scratches his head. “Have you seen my wife?”

“Not since she dropped off the face masks in Arkas’ room, no,” she replies. “Perhaps thou could ask a favor of the cloud nymphs who housekeep the Temple?”

“No, it’s not really urgent. Ah…” His full, dark beard quivers. “I have to apologize for Andromeda, speaking of the face masks. She’s been on a ‘self-care, healthy living’ spree ever since our last trip to the mortal world. It seems the humans have got another trend going on.”

“It’s of no concern. The face masks were refreshing.”

“I’d know. She tried them out on me first. And then she—”

Zoë blinks, her face twitching from polite to perplexed. 

Even Perseus, given as he is into another ramble about his wife, notices. “H-Huntress? Have I said something offensive?”

“No, I—” She blinks again. 

“Huntress?”

The first time, the tug in her gut was so light that she’d believed it to be her imagination. Perhaps, she thought, it was a craving for ambrosia, or even for some fresh rabbit straight from the woods. But the second time… It was stronger, as if an intangible hook had grabbed ahold of her stomach and was currently pulling her down to—

“Huntress? Huntress! Miss Nightshade!”

Zoë barely registers her body zipping past the room and out onto the threshold, where the clouds await her descent. Only when the wind whips her hair into her eyes does she realize that she now hovers a few inches above the ground—uncharacteristic of how she would normally walk on her two feet. 

“Miss Nightshade!” Perseus skids to a stop behind her. “Is everything alright?”

Zoë does not know what to say. But before she can formulate an answer, a whisper curls into her ears:

“Zoë. Zoë Nightshade… Hear me.”

“Who’s there?!” Zoë demands, whirling all around like a madwoman. “Show thyself!”

“Huntress. These offerings are for you.”

Then a fragrance like no other fills her entire being. 

Zoë’s eyes widen, and every muscle in her body goes pliant, rejoicing at the offerings. 

Her blood roars. She dares to wonder if this is what being a god must feel like. 

The moment seems to stretch on, but the next breath she takes dispels the euphoria. Stunned, she collapses onto the ground, and Perseus rushes to her side. 

“Offerings?” she mutters to herself, still a little breathless.

Realization dawns on Perseus. “Huntress, a mortal has burnt offerings in your name!” he informs her excitedly. 

She shakes her head. Impossible. 

Perseus frowns. “You felt a pull towards the earth, yes?” Nod. “You heard a voice? Or voices?” Nod. “And—”

“—an inexplicable smell,” she whispers. “I don’t understand. Who would burn offerings to me?”

He shrugs. “Before Dad put me up here, I was king of Mycenae. When they’d heard that their king ascended to become an immortal constellation, the offerings were inevitable. They’ve since died out generations and generations ago, but if anyone here knows the feeling, I do.”

“And what did you do?”

“What could I do? If the common people thought me a god, I would want to think I did my best to not disappoint them.”

Had that response come from anyone else, Zoë might have dashed their head onto the ground for arrogance, but Perseus speaks with such straightforwardness and simplicity—as if all kings cared for the common people, as if all gods did their best by any mortal who burnt them offerings. 

Zoë gnaws on her lip. How ironic it is, that she, an immortal, would be afraid of being taken advantage of by an anonymous worshipper when normally it is the opposite. But between Heracles and Hylla, and then the fresh wounds of the Second Titanomachy… 

“Thou art a good hero, Perseus,” she tells him. 

He smiles. “I try.”

Well. Isn’t that the point? To try? The example set by Heracles had been proven wrong twice now: first by Percy Jackson, and then by Hylla. 

Meanwhile, the cornerstone in which she had believed in for so much of her life seems to have abandoned her. 

Like this, Zoë realizes that she knows nothing. 

The world is new, and perhaps, it is time to try and let go of old grievances. 

The pull leads her to the northwestern region of the United States, to the seaside metropolitan of Seattle. Zoë flies down the steep hills sinking into the city’s downtown hub, a ball of suspicion forming in her chest.

As Lieutenant, she passed through these areas when they had been naught but quiet little settlements of the newly colonized Americas. The quaint bakery to her left was once a European settler’s makeshift cabin, and Zoë still remembers the day a particular brick apartment a few blocks to the east was nothing but a dug-up pit of dirt. Now, where the corporate giants of the technology industry are concentrated in the city, a collection of sleek black buildings tower over the populace like volcanoes at the edge of a village. 

Right in the center of that neighborhood, Zoë’s suspicion is proven right as she comes to a stop in front of a domineering plaza made of black granite and bulletproof glass. The pull in her gut grows yet stronger. 

She sighs, rubs a hand over her face, and disappears into a nearby alley. 

“What in Tartarus’ loincloths is an Amazon doing praying to me?” she grumbles as she takes on a physical form. “As if the girl needs protection… Not even Kronos himself could’ve stormed their headquarters.”

Zoë wills her true face to be hidden under a pedestrian countenance, one so ordinary that anyone who glanced her way would forget her in the next second, and tucks away her silver bow and quiver of arrows. She takes a deep breath and strides out of the alley.

The Amazons and the Huntresses of Artemis have worked closely together through millennia; after all, as kindred women-run societies, they were two sides of the same coin. The Amazons supplied the Huntresses with equipment of the latest magic, technology, or a hybrid of both, while the Huntresses paid through rare spoils from hunts. Their ranks were in a constant state of exchange as well: in times of war, the Amazons sent manpower to assist Lady Artemis, while in times of peace, Lady Artemis recommended Huntresses who no longer wished to uphold their vows to the Amazons. 

Zoë, at the time of her death, had outlived more than a thousand Amazonian queens. Some had been dear friends, some she had barely been able to stay in a room with, but regardless, she commanded great respect from all of them. There had even been a point in time, around the 15th century, when one challenger to the throne thought up the brilliant idea of asking for Zoë’s blessing before the duel for queenship. Zoë gave it, the challenger emerged victorious and became queen, and the next thing she knew, the trend had caught like wildfire. Amazons lined up begging to be included in “Hunter-Amazon team-bonding excursions,” and Zoë didn’t think she had ever entertained so many gifts, courtship, flattery, and bargains from ambitious Amazons. Eventually, she sent out a general threat of cutting off all relations, and the madness ceased. 

But that is besides the point. Perhaps the current queen or a member of her inner circle had heard of her passing and decided to pay her respects. If not, Zoë is sure she could persuade the queen to keep all news about her appearance quiet while she looked into the matter. 

It is with this plan that Zoë pushes past double glass doors and enters the reception area. 

“May I help you?” a voice says as soon as she steps foot within the building.

Zoë has to fight back an audible gasp. Then her mind scatters in a panicked flurry, checking for flaws in her mortal disguise and making very, very sure that any sign of divine energy is tucked away, because at the reception desk stands Hylla, the daughter of Bellona, the captive on Blackbeard’s ship to whom Zoë had supplied energy for five days straight , the woman who reminded her why she feared heroes so much. 

She looks well—shoulders and arms broader with muscles that Zoë could see even underneath the black leather jumpsuit Hylla wore, face clear of any grime and blood but a bit tanner than Zoë remembers—and once again, Zoë catches herself in admiration of her inner strength. It is no easy feat for a demigod to make lives of their own outside of the Greek and Roman camps, and so soon after a traumatic event, too. 

How long had it been since Blackbeard’s ship? Three, four years? And yet, here Hylla stands, trusted to man the Amazons’ first line of defense at their main facilities; she clearly is more than a mere grunt among their ranks. 

“May I help you?” Hylla repeats, a polite smile across her face. Zoë snaps out of her stunned state and moves forth a few steps. Despite the unassuming demeanor that Hylla presents at the moment, there is a steely, hungry look in her eyes as she assesses Zoë. 

“I am here to meet the Queen of the Amazons,” she says stiffly. It’s difficult, not slipping back into her usual way of speaking, but she knows that Hylla is exceedingly sharp. It would be a dead giveaway. “I do not have an appointment, but th–you may tell Queen Riccarda that an old friend is here to visit her.”

Something sparks in Hylla’s dark eyes, and her smile grows. 

“Queen Riccarda, you say,” Hylla hums, studying Zoë. “Is there a name I shall leave for her?”

“Belladonna,” replies Zoë. It was a common alias she had used back then—synonymous with nightshade, but distinct as a name. 

Hylla turns it over in her head. Her eyes cannot seem to part from Zoë’s false face. Zoë cannot bring herself to meet them. 

“I’ll lead you to the queen,” Hylla says after a long beat. “She’s been anticipating a visit, I think.”

Zoë raises an eyebrow but follows Hylla without a protest. Normally, the Amazons were so impenetrable that not even a god could storm their facilities without repercussion, but who is she to look a gift horse in the mouth? If Hylla was punished for her oversight, that is hardly Zoë’s problem. 

They descend the dimly lit stairwell behind the reception desk. The first Amazon to cross their path happens upon them after two flights, and to Zoë’s confusion, the girl gives a start and starts to lower her head. “My q—”

Hylla shoots her a glare so intense it should’ve melted through the metal railing. The poor girl squeaks in confusion but silently backs away to the side, head bowed in deference and hands clasped in front of her. 

The next few Amazons react the same way as well, startled by Hylla’s presence and even more startled when she narrows her eyes and strides past without acknowledging them. Zoë is reminded of the way Hylla moved past fallen pirates on Blackbeard’s ship, head held high and and step like a panther’s. Even back then, she walked like the world was merely her footstool. 

Eventually, after the umpteenth flight of stairs, word must get around about Hylla’s odd coldness, because they stop seeing any more Amazons entirely. Only the fall of Zoë’s hiking shoes and the tap of Hylla’s heeled boots fill the silence. Plus an odd jingling sound coming from the pockets of Hylla’s jumpsuit. 

“What is that?”

“Oh, this?” Hylla pats her bulging pocket. There’s a clink-clink sound of metal meeting metal. “Just a few loose drachmas. Never know when you need change.”

A few? It sounds like Hylla had an entire vault in there. Zoë means to ask in what hellsent scenario would an Amazon need spare change inside a warehouse, of all places, but Hylla says, “So what brings you to see the queen?”

“The usual. Business deals, paperwork, contracts to be signed.”

“Not a personal visit, then. Are you representing anyone?”

Zoë frowns. “Shouldn’t you have asked me this in the reception area?”

Hylla waves her hand. “If I had even the smallest suspicion that you were dangerous to the Amazons, you would’ve been long incapacitated. You’re here by my grace. Now, answer the question.”

Well, she was not wrong; Zoë had no intention of harming the Amazons. “No. I represent myself alone.”

“What an interesting individual,” muses Hylla. “Old friend of the Queen Riccarda shows up, says she’s here to do business, but represents her own interests.”

“Am I dangerous yet?” Zoë murmurs, hands curling around the curve of her unseen bow. She could take Hylla in a fight any day. 

Hylla turns to her, white teeth gleaming in the darkness. Zoë cannot tell if it is a smile or a snarl. Either way, her expression is incandescent enough to light the entirety of all the dark stairwells they had descended. “Not so, Belladonna.”

The path widens into a big mouth of a brightly lit cavern, which houses the warehouse and stock rooms of the Amazons’ company. Hylla turns from Zoë to survey the labyrinthine crisscross of catwalks and shelves and forklifts over the massive space, and Zoë suddenly remembers that she needs to breathe. 

Over the din of packaging robots and bubble-wrap machines, Zoë hears Hylla click her tongue. “So noisy.”

Then instead of heading straight through the warehouse, which would lead them to the throne room, Hylla takes a sharp left into the shadowy gap between two towering shelves. The aisle leads them to an unassuming plastic maintenance door. 

When Hylla twists open the doorknob, Zoë purses her lips. “You said you would lead me to the queen,” she says.

“And I did. This is a shortcut to the throne room.”

Zoë had never seen such a “shortcut” before, and she had visited this place innumerable times. She peers down the steep ramp disappearing into total darkness and considers making a run for it. 

Hylla steps inside and holds out her hand. Her dark eyes gleam. “Need some help?”

Zoë’s heart skips a beat. She takes Hylla’s hand as she feels for stable footing. She can feel the remnants of the blisters Hylla gained when she had learned how to use weapons on Blackbeard’s ship, now thick with scarring many times over. 

When the door closes behind them, all that is left is the sound of their breaths, their footsteps, and Hylla’s warm, calloused hand in hers. She’s gently led through twists and turns in the total darkness, and the ramp seemingly goes up and down at random. 

If this is a trap , Zoë reasons to herself, I can simply disappear. It’s not like she can see in the dark. 

So she waits, senses prickling for any signs that Hylla might spring into action and murder her.

Fortunately, it does not come; Hylla seems to have been genuine about her duty, and the path comes to a stop. She opens another door, which spits them out into another brightly lit cavern that Zoë recognizes as the throne room. 

It is smaller than the main warehouse, and barer, too. Normally, the rarest specimens like the live creatures the Huntresses usually gave would be stocked here, but today, there is nothing save for a cage a few feet from the queen’s throne that held a sleeping chestnut-colored horse and…

A tall, ornamental brazier made of cast iron. 

Zoë’s jaw drops. Letting go of Hylla’s hand (she’d been holding it all the while?), she stalks towards the gently dancing flames and, almost hesitantly, inhales the smoke.

It should have smelt like burnt food, but instead, Zoë catches a whiff of roasted pig—there’s hints of sweet apple wood melting into the decadence of the fat lining the tender meat within. It tastes like heaven on her mouth; it feels like power in her veins . 

A rattle of metal against metal reminds Zoë she is not alone. She jumps back from the brazier, turning to look at Hylla, who is standing on the dais.

“Where is the quee—”

Hylla looks up at her from where she is fastening the jingling Belt of Hippolyta around her waist. Then she elegantly sinks down onto the throne, one leg crossed over the other. 

“I did say I’d take you to see the queen,” she says. “And I have.”

The odd look in Hylla’s eyes when Zoë mentioned the old queen’s name. The frightened Amazons they’d met on the way. The shortcut to the throne room that not even Zoë knew about. The jingling from Hylla’s pocket, which apparently had been the Belt of Hippolyta this whole damn time. 

It all falls into place. 

“What is this charade all about,” Zoë asks icily, “Queen Hylla?”

Under the stark fluorescent lights of the warehouse, Hylla’s smile turns even more incandescent. Like a moth drawn to flame, Zoë takes a step towards the throne.

“Just a small token of gratitude for your aid years ago,” Hylla tells her, mouth curling around her words like a cat that’s caught the canary. Then, in a more vulnerable tone, “You like it?”

“How…” Zoë trails off, body trembling from the euphoria of the offerings. She doesn’t know where to start. She’s unsure of what to be more surprised at: that Hylla had uncovered enough of her identity to burn offerings to her, or that Hylla had become Queen of the Amazons in less than three years. 

“I’m going to assume you know of the gods and their Roman aspects.”

“I stayed loyal to the Hunt for millennia, whether my Lady was Artemis or Diana,” Zoë says. 

“Good.” Hylla nods. “The Romans, too, had their lot in the Second Titan War. I convinced the Amazons to march with them, and despite the casualties, the business deals we got out of them were hefty enough to give me political leverage. So, as a reward, Riccarda made me Queen and peacefully retired.

“But I digress. The Roman demigod camp marched on Mount Othrys—which, if I gathered correctly from your sister, is your final resting place.”

“My sister?” exclaims Zoë. “Which one?”

Hylla shrugs. “I’m not sure. We never got to exchanging names. What is vital is that she told me your story, and… Well, I learned enough about you from that lovely time we had on Blackbeard’s ship to put some pieces together. What few missing pieces of information there were, I quickly filled in with some research from the Amazons’ ancient archives.”

“I’m surprised one of them deigned to befoul the insides of their holy mouth with my name and story,” mumbles Zoë. Then she composes herself: “How did thou know I would come?”

“I didn’t.”

Zoë raises an eyebrow. “Normally, queens do not man reception desks.”

“My word is law; no one here would question my wish to hold the frontline, if it came to it. And I would’ve just kept burning you offerings,” Hylla quips back with ease. “But my plan worked, and you’re here now.”

“Thy plan. The charade,” Zoë says flatly. “I never took thee as one for theatrics.”

Hylla steeples her fingers. “Were you surprised?” she inquires, trying to sound casual. But the excited tremor in her voice and the gleam in her eyes betray her. “I am the Queen of the Amazons now; anything you want, I can get it for you. A simple token of gratitude.”

The mortification Zoë feels from having fallen for Hylla’s whole charade is slightly mollified as she takes in the sight of the Queen. She thinks she understands: Zoë had seen Hylla at her lowest and had been the springboard from which her meteoric rise had begun. 

And now that Hylla had such power at her disposal like never before, Hylla is hungry to finally prove herself to Zoë the best way she can. 

“Yes,” replies Zoë. Then, as honestly as she can, “I meant what I said on Blackbeard’s ship: I want for nothing. Seeing thee stand before me as queen is reward enough.”

Hylla frowns and looks at the brazier over Zoë’s shoulder. “Do you not like the offerings?”

“I do like them,” amends Zoë. “But I say this with the greatest respect—I am a deceased soul, now a constellation in the sky. There is nothing material I might possibly need that I cannot obtain by myself, Queen Hylla. Thy gratitude is appreciated, but unnecessary.”

Hylla leans back. “You… really want nothing?”

“My kind…” Zoë sighs and looks off to the side. “For what other purpose do constellations exist, if not to serve as eternal reminders to humankind of the graces and wraths that gods can bestow? My aid was a transgression against the divine laws, if I am to be so straightforward; we are not supposed to dally with mortals. Even if I wanted to accept thy gifts, it would be unwise for me to do so, lest I catch someone’s attention.”

“That just makes my debt all the larger,” Hylla cuts in, clearly upset. “You didn’t just save my life. You saved my sister’s life, too, as well as my fellow attendants’. Many of them followed me into the Amazons and supported my campaign for the throne.”

“And knowing that my aid has brought you women a successful life is more than enough for me,” Zoë tells her gently. 

That visibly sours Hylla’s mood even more. Zoë feels bad. “How is thy sister, Reyna?”

“We parted ways sometime after escaping Blackbeard’s ship,” mumbles Hylla. “She made her own way into the Roman demigod camp in California, and was made their praetor in the very same battle I was made queen.”

“Oh. I apologize.”

“It’s alright,” Hylla says, obviously lying. 

Silence falls between them. Zoë huffs. “My Queen.”

“Belladonna,” Hylla snarks. 

 Zoë feels heat rush to her face. “Please do not take offense to what I said.”

A snort. “I’m not so much upset at you for being so saintly as upset at myself for not having seen this coming. It’s just my luck that you’re one of those genuinely altruistic types.”

… Is that a pout Zoë sees on Hylla’s face? “Did thou have hopes of bribing me into an alliance of sorts?” she teases.

“If there’s one thing Amazons know how to do, it’s repaying debts in full with interest,” Hylla grumbles. “What good’s being Queen if I can’t properly thank the one person I’m willing to be beholden to?”

“Life does not have to be so transactional, my Queen,” Zoë says. “Some things, such as friendship and loyalty, after all, are priceless.”

Hylla raises a dark, well-groomed brow. “So you do want something, after all.” 

Before Zoë can react, Hylla rises from the throne and bounds down the steps of the dais. “Is it lonely, being a constellation?”

“I—What?”

“You said that your ‘kind’ was nothing more than the gods’ trophies. There are only so many of you from the myths, and you technically have to sneak around with mortals for extra companionship.” Hylla tilts her head. “Is that your future for the rest of eternity, Belladonna?”

“Tsk.” Zoë doesn’t know if she should laugh or cry. “Thou art as shrewd as ever.”

The delighted grin returns to Hylla’s face in full force. “You don’t deny it. You long for companionship; I can offer it, since it seems that nothing I burn to you will please you.”

“Does my Queen wish me to be honest with her?”

“That would be a good start to our friendship.” 

“Well…” Zoë clears her throat. “Then yes. To all of what thou has spoken of.”

Pleased would be an understatement for the expression that crosses Hylla’s face. “Good. I like to think I make decent company. Anyway, you’ve already had a trial run of me on Blackbeard’s ship.”

“Who’s to say I liked it?” Zoë shoots back, but there’s no heat behind her words. 

“If you say so,” smoothly agrees Hylla, her smile only growing. Zoë’s spirits sing at how easy conversation with Hylla’s blade-like wit is. “Also, I think I’d like complete honesty between us, Belladonna.” She gives Zoë’s form a critical look. 

It takes Zoë a few moments to understand that Hylla is referring to her mortal disguise. Closing her eyes in spite of her confusion, she sheds the appearance like it is nothing more than a simple change of clothes. 

There’s a sharp intake of breath a few feet away from her, and when Zoë opens her eyes, Hylla is slack-jawed and wide-eyed. 

“I—” Hylla swallows. “Huntress.”

Zoë fidgets. Surely her appearance is not so displeasing so as to make Hylla speechless? “My Queen?” she cautiously says. 

Hylla closes her mouth and transfers her gaze to some unseen point over Zoë’s shoulder. Wondering if she should call for an Amazon to bring their queen a glass of water, Zoë’s eyes track the hollow along the column of Hylla’s graceful neck as she swallows again.

“You… You resemble your sister very much,” manages Hylla. Then she hurriedly adds, “Not! Not that you two are identical—you are unique, despite the very, very strong family resemblance. I simply didn’t expect—I wasn’t prepared for—”

She stops talking entirely and hastily tucks her hands behind her back in an attempt to regain some of her regal composure. Zoë blinks several times, her perplexion only growing by the minute—the warehouse’s fluorescent lights must be damaging her sight, to make her see a vague red tinge crawling up Hylla’s neck.

“I take no offense,” she assures Hylla. “As unfathomable the divide between me and my sisters is, it is an honor to have their beauty likened to my looks.” Zoë smiles self-deprecatingly. “As poor a comparison as it can be.”

Hylla glances at Zoë from her periphery, as if afraid to look at her for too long. “The comparison is indeed poor, but not for the reasons you think,” she mumbles. 

In Zoë’s unassuming mortal disguise, she’d only come up to Hylla’s broad shoulders. But like this, Zoë realizes that they are of a height—or would be, were it not for the inches on Hylla’s heeled boots. She walks towards Hylla, secretly pleased that she no longer has to tilt her head up to be able to make eye contact. “Flattery will get thee nowhere,” she laughs. 

“I should make you laugh more,” ribs Hylla, “though it would be more to my benefit than yours.”

“We’ll see, my Queen. It’s not so easy to elicit them.”

“I’m taking that as a personal challenge.” At this point, Hylla has re-gathered herself. “Now, what do immortals like you do to pass time? I cleared my entire day just for this; we best not waste it.”

Zoë rolls her eyes. “Ridiculous,” she mutters under her breath. “I would’ve thanked thee, and thou could have simply sent me on my merry way.”

“But here we are,” Hylla proclaims, “so why waste it? What would you like to do?”

Zoë narrows her eyes at her, rifling through activities mortals usually did in their leisure time. But Hylla is no ordinary mortal, and Zoë has little experience with said leisure activities, so she falls back onto the one activity she will never grow tired of: “Hunt.”

Hylla bursts into laughter. “Why am I surprised?” she says through chuckles. “We Amazons have some private property cordoned off in this state’s forests. Monsters here are rare, but we can always hunt for some rabbits and have them for dinner.”

“I am amenable.” Zoë nods. “Shall we depart?”

“Yes.” Just before they exit the throne room, Zoë disappears into the air again to avoid crossing paths with any senior Amazons that might recognize her. Hylla doesn’t so much as bat an eye as she says, “I’m excited to see how the Huntress hunts.”

They take an elevator that takes them to the building’s helipad, where Hylla’s personal helicopter waits for her, pilot and bodyguards and all. Within a few minutes, Hylla boards and has them brought to a clearing with minimal foliage for them to land upon. 

The pilot lowers the aircraft close enough to the ground that the helicopter’s ladder sufficiently covers the distance to the ground.

The escort team moves to suit up,  but Hylla stops them. “I’ll be making this excursion on my own,” she says into the headset. 

The bodyguards, all seasoned women, look at each other in uncertainty. “But, my Queen—”

“Do I have to repeat myself?” Hylla says boredly, unfurling the ladder at the helicopter door. “I wear the Belt. I do not need defending.” She scoots over to the edge and removes her headset. “And I do not tolerate disobedience either.”

Hylla scales down the ladder without further ado and lands on the soft soil. “Let’s go, Belladonna.”

When the helicopter is a safe distance away, Zoë reappears and scowls at her. “Don’t call me that.”

“What else should I call you then?” She grins and darts off into the dense forest before Zoë can formulate an answer. Zoë yells and bounds after her as if they are in some sort of competition.

"You look… worn out,” comments Andromeda when Zoë returns.

After millennia of living in the natural elements and making do with the barest of necessities on hunt after hunt, Zoë has unlearnt vanity. But in front of Andromeda, who is always so well-put together and as cheerful as a morning lark, Zoë suddenly is aware of the various leaves tangled in her hair and the clumps of soil smudged on her shimmering chiton and skin. She is in the middle of plucking out an errant leaf when she notices that Andromeda is not alone on the Temple’s threshold. 

“Is she alright?” she asks, crouching down next to Kallisto, whom she hadn’t seen in the dim torchlight barely lighting the steps of the threshold. Kallisto’s head is pillowed on Andromeda’s lap, and her full lips are tightly drawn together, like she is holding back a scream. 

“They say time heals all wounds,” begins Andromeda by way of reply, “but either Kallisto has not had enough time to heal fully, or her life here among the stars is, for her, a wound that will last for eternity. Being ravaged by nightmares is a constant occurrence for her.”

Zoë’s chest caves in with sorrow. While she did find life as a constellation exceedingly lonely, it was still another chance for her to be another person apart from the Hesperide then the Huntress she had been in her lifetime. 

But for Kallisto, her immortalization in the stars was a permanent reminder of the tragedy that befell her, a mockery of an attempt to set things right. Zeus had taken advantage of her feelings and her body, and then did away with her like this; and now Kallisto was meant to be grateful to the god who had ruined her life for seemingly having saved it. And there, too, is the matter of Lady Artemis. 

Zoë just about feels like laying her head in Andromeda’s lap as well at the mere thought of that whole affair. 

As monstrous as the gods could be, Zoë had loved Lady Artemis, anyway, and looking at Kallisto’s face makes her hate herself for it. “Love is a plague,” she whispers into the night air. “It makes you someone you are not; it makes you do irrational, stupid things.” 

She rubs a thumb over the back of Kallisto’s hand and gently pries that clenched fist open. The vice grip Kallisto has on her half of the Lieutenant’s circlet, even in her sleep, has left deep indentations in the meat of her palms. “Thou… Thou amazes me. Does it not scare thee? Loving someone for so long?”

The torchlight latches onto Andromeda’s curls, turning them into molten amber. Lost in thought, the former queen almost looks like a Renaissance sculpture forged in the heat of a forge. Zoë feels young and unwise next to her. 

“Do you know why I married Perseus, Huntress?” Andromeda asks.

Zoë is taken aback. “Because he saved thee from Cetus. So thou was his reward.”

Andromeda lets out a mirthful noise. “Ah, that’s what the myths say. They record him asking my father for my hand, but not him asking me after the ordeal with the sea monster.”

“He asked you?”

“That was how I reacted, too.” Andromeda strokes Kallisto’s hair. “He could have claimed me right away as his wife; the customs back then would have certainly allowed for it, but he chose to take my feelings into consideration. Poor thing, said he didn’t want his mother’s predicament to become mine.

“My point is, Huntress, love—well, the healthy, reciprocated kind, anyway—allows for choice. I have only managed to keep loving my husband for so long because I know that I am free to choose him. And I do, every single day, because I know he does the same for me. If your love is the kind that makes you feel that you have neither choice nor control over your thoughts and actions, it may not be for you.”

Zoë sighs and starts to gather Kallisto’s body into her arms. “Just as Kallisto felt that she had to stay by Lady Artemis’ side to love and be loved,” she surmises. Just like I did. “All that for… for nothing.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that her Lady does not love her.”

Zoë scoffs. “Lady Artemis has not shown her face for thousands of years now. Is Kallisto supposed to take that as her so-called choice?”

“Lady Artemis reaches out in different ways Kallisto does not notice,” Andromeda says mysteriously, “and I expect that you’ll find out exactly how soon enough. They both still love each other, unfortunate as that love is. Why else would Lady Artemis have been so furious at Kallisto’s deception, then never visit her again? Only love can fuel hate that strong. Regardless, Lady Artemis loves Kallisto in a way that leaves Kallisto with no room to reciprocate for herself. So here she is, ravaged by thoughts of things that might have been and things that might be.”

“You don’t like it, do you?” Zoë says. “That Kallisto still holds onto her emotions.”

Andromeda huffs. “I don’t like it, but what can I do? Unless I take over Kallisto’s mind and brainwash her into forgetting about Lady Artemis entirely, there’s little else to be done.”

“I see.” Zoë rises, having taken Kallisto’s lithe body into a bridal carry. “Kallisto deserves a better place to rest in, as well. I bid thee goodnight, Andromeda.”

Andromeda stands to stroke Kallisto’s hair one last time. ”You Huntresses should really take care of yourselves.”

Zoë hums in acknowledgment and makes for Kallisto’s bedchambers. 

When she deposits Kallisto into her bed, Kallisto makes a half-garbled noise and rolls over into the thick leopard fur lining her mattress. “Artyy,” she slurs, tucking her face into the softness of the hide. “Sm’lls good…”

“Good night, Kallisto,” Zoë whispers softly, walking towards the exit. 

Something stops her. Zoë turns around to survey the room for a possible threat, but finds nothing amiss. Puzzled, she lets her eyes drift over Kallisto’s things for a moment longer. 

Embroidery hoops, spools of thread. A heap of chitons scattered across the rug. Zoë clicks her tongue and picks up the pile, uncovering a tiger’s hide sprawled across the floor. 

Zoë stares at the stripes, then takes another look at Kallisto’s room. The skin of a crocodile tailored into a fashionable jacket. The fur of a mink draped over a chair as a scarf. A necklace of polished deer antlers. 

Kallisto was and still is a Huntress at heart—it is not at all odd for her to proudly display trophies of her kills. 

Still, Zoë finds that she cannot deafen Andromeda’s words looping in her memory, and when she closes her eyes back in her own bed, all she sees behind her eyelids is an innocuous yet extravagant necklace made of bone.

The next time Zoë visits, there’s hardly any need for her to put on her pedestrian mortal disguise; Hylla already awaits her in the forests of Washington State, so she drops in from the sky without much more fanfare. When the starlight surrounding her fades, Zoë turns to face Hylla and offers a small bow. “My Queen.

“Belladonna,” Hylla says with a teasing smile. She’s wearing much more practical boots this time, and they stand eye-to-eye. “You don’t need to be so formal with me.”

Zoë busies herself with notching an arrow to hide her smile, and they begin to walk. “Then I’m afraid I will have to ask thee to drop the moniker.”

“But I like it so much,” Hylla sighs with all the mock petulance of a child. “Can’t I convince you to call me by name while keeping my nickname privileges?”

We are not friends, Zoë almost says, but that’s not really true is it? She would not be here if she did not enjoy Hylla’s company, and Zoë is more than self-aware enough to know that the sentiment is not solely due to her post-mortem solitude. 

If Hylla is fazed by Zoë’s lack of an answer, she does not show it. She rolls up the sleeves of her leather jumpsuit and gathers her long black hair into a strict ponytail. “So, which animal are we having for dinner tonight?”

“Did thou truly enjoy the fruits of our last hunt?” Zoë asks, amused. 

“How could I not?” Hylla laughs. “I’ve done a lot of things to survive, but hunting is not one of them. It was quite the novelty, learning how to skin a deer and then roast its meat over a fire. It tasted quite good, too, even without salt and whatnot. Although…”

“Although?”

“I’m a bit embarrassed at exactly how useless I was in the hunting itself,” Hylla admits sheepishly. “The bow is the one weapon I haven’t cared to learn yet.”

“I could teach thee,” Zoë offers, “if thou art alright with slaying a different prey.”

Hylla tilts her head. “Why?”

Zoë passes Hylla her silver bow. “It’s a personal philosophy. Lady Artemis is the goddess of hunting, but she is also the protector of all wild creatures. To hunt wantonly is a sin; to hunt fixedly on one creature for anything other than necessity is a crime. Everything in moderation.”

“I see.” Hylla unlinks the Belt of Hippolyta from around her waist and pours it into her pocket. “Much like how I cannot rely too often on this Belt’s power.”

Zoë nods, pleased. “Thou figured that out much faster than many of the previous Amazon Queens I knew.”

Hylla beams as she experimentally draws Zoë’s bow. “So what are we hunting tonight?”

“We can worry about that later on,” Zoë says, stepping into Hylla’s space. She lays a gentle hand on Hylla’s drawing arm to nudge her elbow downwards. “Thou will strain thy shoulder in that position. Loosen thy grip on the bow as well.”

Hylla obeys, and Zoë pushes her arm to close the draw before she can sprain a muscle. She had known that Hylla was strong even without the Belt, but seeing her hold a full draw for so long is another wonder entirely. 

“Before thou tries again, widen thy stance a bit.” Hylla shifts. Too little. “Wider by a bit.” Too wide. “Ah, bring your right foot forward a step closer.”

It goes on like this for a couple more minutes, Zoë’s brow furrowing in fond consternation. “Thou must learn to do things in halves, my Queen,” she jokes, before grabbing Hylla’s hips to steady her torso’s posture. Her own foot nudges against Hylla’s back foot, nudging it centimeter by centimeter until her stance is the precise distance that satisfies Zoë. “There. Perfect.”

Then Zoë looks up to see sweat beading on the back of Hylla’s neck and realizes: they stand so close that she can feel the way Hylla’s shoulders rise and fall against her chest. 

Hylla’s breaths draw in and out at a glacial pace, the rhythm of it rushing in Zoë’s ears. She does not make a move to look over her shoulder at Zoë. 

Zoë swallows. Hylla’s hair smells like the pearls of night dew slipping off blades of grass. 

She lifts one hand to Hylla’s left shoulder and grips it. “Draw this back a bit, put more tension here,” she says softly. Then her fingers trail to the elbow of Hylla’s bow arm. “But soften up here.”

“Yeah, I got it,” murmurs Hylla, voice gone as breathy as Zoë’s. 

Face alight, Zoë steps back and assesses her form. “Thou art truly a talent.”

Is that… Is that a pout on Hylla’s face? “What should I use for target practice?” Hylla asks. 

Zoë looks around and points out a vine that curls in a nearly perfect spiral around the trunk of a tree, around a hundred yards away. “There. In the center of the third spiral.”

Hylla acquiesces and easily draws the bow, her posture now correct down to the finest of points thanks to Zoë’s instructions. Zoë adds, “Shift the bow upwards to account for gravity.” 

“Won’t you guide me?” 

Zoë huffs and complies, pushing up Hylla’s bow arm. This time, only the tips of her fingers make contact with the bare skin of Hylla’s taut forearm, and she pulls away as soon as she is able to. 

“Breathe in to steady yourself. Then, breathe out—”

Hylla looses an exhale and the glinting arrow. The silver streak zips through the air and buries itself several inches from their intended target. 

“Satisfactory. The arrow shifted to the side due to your follow through; thou must remain stable for a few seconds after the arrow has left thy bowstring, for the slightest shift in its momentum will have a ripple effect.”

Hylla reaches over to pluck another silver arrow out of Zoë’s quiver. “So many rules. Do you know why I never cared to learn the bow?”

Zoë tries not to look too long at the flex of Hylla’s shoulder blades through her leather jumpsuit when she draws the bow. Zoë’s bow. “No.”

“I like being in the fray, the melee, the thick of things.” Hylla shifts the bow upwards, following Zoë’s demonstration from earlier. “I like the rush of having to live from fight to fight, the straightforwardness of fighting up close.”

She exhales and releases the arrow once more. This time, the arrow lands closer to the target, its arrowhead buried a few inches deeper than the first. 

When Hylla presses the bow back into Zoë’s hands, her touch definitely lingers longer than it has to. “Thank you for your guidance. Your teaching’s impeccable as usual.”

Zoë takes the bow and notches her own arrow. “My teachings are only as good as my student’s skill.”

Zoë’s arrow buries itself through the eye socket of an unfortunate rabbit, which makes an audible thud as it keels over. “Still, as exceptional as thou art, thy notion about the bow as a non-confrontational weapon is false. If that were true, I would not be here,” she finishes wryly. 

She fires another arrow further into the distance, and a swift squelch tells her that she has hit her second rabbit. She tucks the bow away into her quiver and approaches the prey, Hylla at her heels. 

When the two carcasses, sans arrows, are deposited into her hands, Hylla dutifully lays them out on the cleanest rock she can find and proceeds to skin the rabbits. 

Skinning a rabbit is a fairly different affair from skinning a deer, which Zoë had taught Hylla last time. Still, Hylla is a perfect study as usual, her dagger quick and precise against the narrow gap between skin and muscle. Zoë needs to do little but lean back and watch as Hylla scoops out innards and cuts out undesirable anatomical parts before neatly laying the rabbits’ pelts flat on another rock. 

Feeling particularly indulgent of the queen, Zoë cobbles together a bunch of nettle and deadwood as kindling and simply shoots a stream of energy at the pile to start a fire. By the time Hylla returns from the stream, her bloodied hands and dagger now washed clean, Zoë has stuck the meat of the rabbits on a stick and is already tending to the roast. 

“Well, that was fast,” Hylla comments as she sits across Zoë. 

Zoë waves her fingers, a flash of silver weaving between her fingers. “Unlike you, I do not have to rub wood together to make a fire.”

“You could have done that last time,” jabs Hylla, and Zoë smiles at the memory of Hylla’s frustration on their first and previous excursion. 

As Zoë rotates the spit, Hylla draws her knees to her chest, and she asks, almost hesitantly, “How, then, did you…”

“Die?” The smile from Zoë’s face fades. “Did my sister, whichever one of them blessed thee with their divine company, not tell the story?”

“No specifics, I’m afraid. Just that you died in the Garden.”

Zoë’s fist clenches around the spit. 

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“No, I…” She sighs. “My memory is quite hazy, if I’m to be honest. I spent that battle nearly incapacitated by Ladon’s poison.”

“The hundred-headed dragon?” Hylla looks ready to wage war all of a sudden. 

“He used to be friendly towards me, but that is besides the point.” Zoë stares intently into the fire. “The Titan Atlas had kidnapped Lady Artemis and forced her to bear his burden. The whole ordeal culminated in a duel between myself and Lady Artemis versus him, and at a critical moment… I put myself between Lady Artemis and his spear. He threw me, I hit rocks, and that was the end of it.”

“And then she turned you into a constellation for your sacrifices.” Hylla looks up at Zoë. “Titan Atlas… Isn’t he your father?”

Zoë has long had no attachment to Atlas. “He impregnated my mother, so yes, he is my father,” she replies simply. “But to think that he had any hand in my upbringing would be a mistake.”

Hylla snorts. “I know a thing or two about patricide, don’t worry.”

Zoë raises an eyebrow. “I would like to hear this story, if thou would like to tell it.”

“Then you must swear on the Styx that you’ll never tell it to anyone.”

“Who in Hades shall I gossip to? The Crab of the Cancer constellation?” snipes Zoë, but she makes the oath anyway. 

Satisfied, Hylla sits up straight, slipping back into the mold that the Amazons must recognize as their queen. “I grew up in Puerto Rico. San Juan. I led a happy life there; my father came from a comfortably affluent family, I had household help to attend to my every need, our neighbors loved their resident señorita. ” Hylla chuckles. “I might have been a mortal child for all the hardships that I experienced.

“I didn’t know my father that well. He had me with my mother just before he left to serve in Iraq. But when I was 5, he came back for good; he’d barely survived being blasted with shrapnel from a bomb. My mother sought him out once more, and a year later, they had Reyna. 

“It was peaceful, for a while. My father did try to make up for lost time with both of us, even if Reyna was too young to understand anything that was happening. He’d take us out to ice cream shops, he personally drove us to school and picked us up, too, and every Sunday, he dismissed the household help so we could all run around the household pretending to be soldiers, the usual ridiculous plays that children do.

“Eventually, though, his past caught up to him. He began seeing enemies where there weren’t any. He might have left the war behind in Iraq, but the war never left him. It began with episodes of delusion, then it devolved into standing guard in our house’s foyer everyday to make sure no enemies were out to assassinate him.”

 Hylla swallows at the memory. “He even locked Reyna and I in our rooms to ensure we were ‘safe.’ Sometimes, when his delusion was particularly bad, he’d forget about us for days on end. We’d go without food for long periods of time with only the pitchers of water on our nightstands to sustain us, not knowing if the other was still alive. Then on Sunday, on the day our family was supposed to be together, Reyna and I would hide in the kitchen of a nearby restaurant, whose chefs took pity on us.”

Zoë sucks in a breath. “How old was Reyna?”

“At the time? She was 7 or 8, I think. She was so small and terribly malnourished.” Hylla’s lip wobbled. “I decided to do something about it and just about destroyed my poor fists to break out of my room and into Reyna’s. 

“We should’ve left the house right away, but we still loved our father and believed that he could still recover. And he did—only from that episode, instead of permanently like we’d hoped. The next relapse, he got it into his head that my escape meant that Reyna and I wanted to harm him. From then on, whenever he caught us escaping our rooms, he’d hurl furniture at us. He became—”

Hylla stops, a tremor racing up her body despite the autumn chill having yet to descend upon Seattle. Wordlessly, Zoë removes her parka and hands it over to Hylla. Hylla reluctantly takes it and buries her face into the collar for a while.

When she resumes, her voice is still muffled by the fabric. “Until today, I still do not know how to describe the thing he became: something less than human, with no more love and empathy left in him. When he was angry, he’d simply command it to fly at us from across the room with his mind. He would telepathically rip out floor tiles and smash them over our heads. And when he thought we couldn’t see, shades of dead soldiers would appear to him and whisper in his ears that Reyna and I would soon overpower him.”

A watery laugh. “I guess it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. One night, he caught me breaking Reyna out of her room yet again. He became so furious that his body started emitting light and floating off the ground. The room… just exploded around us. The floor tiles cracked, the ceiling caved in, the sofas ripped in half. Then he sent a chair flying at my head, and my skull cracked so hard against the floor I thought for sure I was dead. 

“Reyna… Reyna lost it. She also thought I was dead. I can still hear the sound of her unsheathing a pirate’s sword that our father kept on display in that particular room and my father’s last scream of agony.

“When I came to, Reyna didn’t have a speck of blood on her. Our father had been so far gone that there wasn’t even a corpse to incriminate us. Instead, in the air was a dense mass of whirling grey dust, like a mini tornado.

“Do you know how I learned that I could do this?” Hylla’s dark eyes, glinting amber in the firelight, glance up at Zoë. 

An invisible hook latches onto Zoë’s gut. Familiar with the sensation, she only gives the most miniscule of flinches when the familiar sensation of Hylla siphoning energy from her tugs her forward. 

“When I woke up, I knew that in the best case scenario, I would slow down my and Reyna’s escape. Worst case scenario, Reyna would have to deal with another death in front of her eyes. So I looked at my father’s ghostly remains and sucked from him whatever life energy was left of him, destroying his corporal form and his hopes of ever having an afterlife. I healed myself and got us out.”

The hook loosens from Zoë. Hylla’s jaw clenches. “After escaping the house, Reyna and I made our way to Circe’s island. We had a good life there… Well, at least until Percy Jackson came by and freed the pirates.” She shrugs, threading her arms through the sleeves of Zoë’s parka. “You know the rest.”

Like this, Hylla looks nothing like the Queen that Zoë had seen command complete silence from multiple battle-hardened Amazons with just one look. Huddled in Zoë’s parka, she looked just like a frightened woman, barely out of her adolescence and terrified by the world. 

“Dost thou feel remorse?” asks Zoë carefully. 

What?” Hylla snorts. “No. One of the few things that has kept me moving throughout the years is the knowledge that what Reyna killed was not our father. Our father was dead long before Reyna took that sword to his ghost form.”

“Why dost thou seem to be ashamed of this story?” Zoë gently lifts the spit from the fire to blow gently on the freshly cooked rabbit meat. “It is a story of thou and thy sister’s triumph over a man who sought to control your lives completely. Such stories are common among the ranks of the Huntresses, and the Amazons as well, I am sure.”

“I am not ashamed, just cautious.” Hylla quirks a sardonic smile. “It’s for my sister’s sake more than mine. I wouldn’t mind, honestly, if the story got out among the Amazons, but she would mind very much if the same happened in Camp Jupiter. It‘s the least I can do, after failing to protect her back in Puerto Rico.”

“Both of you have attained the highest positions of leadership in your respective parties. What have the two of you to fear?”

“Give that here.” From the outstretched spit, Hylla slides off her share of the rabbit meat and tears off a chunk to stuff into her mouth. “Gods, this is amazing.”

She takes a moment to savor the meat in her mouth, watching Zoë do the same, before answering, “It’s because my sister and I want different things in life.”

“Oh?” Zoë thinks back to the sisters’ synchronicity and likemindedness back on Blackbeard’s ship. Reyna had indeed struck her as more cautious than Hylla, but there was no doubt that the two were cut from the same ruthless, competent cloth. 

“Mhm.” Hylla licks the grease off her fingers. “My sister desires status, prestige, the approval of her peers. I desire power and control—dominance, if you will—over potential threats to me and my sister. Even if Reyna hadn’t been made praetor on Mount Othrys, she would be satisfied so long as she is well-spoken of among the Roman demigods, but I wouldn’t have stopped climbing the Amazons’ ranks. So long as I am subordinate to someone, my life and hers are held in someone else’s hands. Anyhow, Reyna is afraid that were news of our patricide to get around, she would lose her standing in Camp Jupiter.” 

Zoë feels pity towards Reyna. “Her life must have been lonely, save for you. Still, the affection of individuals as impressionable as adolescent demigods—gods forbid, let us not even delve into male approval —” Hylla bursts into laughter at that— “is a fickle thing. It would do her good to not look for it too much.”

“Wise words, Belladonna.” Hylla sighs. “But it’s exactly that sentiment that led to our separation after we escaped the pirates’ ship. I’m not there to guide her anymore, and I don’t think I can ask you to watch over her for me.”

“No,” agrees Zoë. “She is in too conspicuous of a position; a praetor is elected, not appointed, unlike being Queen of the Amazons. Outside help, no matter how discreet, would not go unnoticed. I hope thou does not hold it against me.”

“I’d like to think we’re past the stage of swapping favors,” says Hylla, cleaning off the last of her share of rabbit meat. “If we aren’t, you’re under no obligation to be here at all.”

“I am here of my own volition, worry not,” Zoë deadpans, tossing her stick into the fire. “I’m more worried about thee; thou might already be thinking up plans as ways to pay me back for lending thee my jacket.”

Hylla blinks in surprise, then looks down at Zoë’s parka, as if she’d forgotten that she was wearing it. “Oh,” she breathes, voice tinged in something like delight. “You want it back?”

Zoë shakes her head. “Hardly. I do not feel the cold anymore.”

“Then don’t mind if I keep it,” Hylla says slyly.

“Do as thou likes.” Zoë lowers her lashes to smile at Hylla. “We’ve talked about patricide, out of all things—a jacket is hardly an object.”

Hylla sharply inhales. Her hands clench at the hem of Zoë’s jacket. 

Zoë furrows her brow. “Is there something wrong, my Queen?”

“I think I should like for you to call me by my name,” murmurs Hylla. “You can call me Hylla.”

Zoë is taken aback. Hylla rushes to amend, “Only if you’re comfortable, of course. I can address you formally—”

“Thou has a very good point about the patricide, Hylla,” declares Zoë, and Hylla’s voice cuts off with a sound oddly like a whimper of surprise. “But I will have to ask thee to drop the moniker.”

Hylla laughs, sounding a bit winded. “What moniker?” she teases. Zoë scoffs. 

“Thou knows what moniker!” 

“But it was the name you gave me!” Hylla protests in mock outrage. 

“‘Twas meant to be an alias, nothing more,” groans Zoë. 

Hylla lets out a soft snicker. “Very well. Zoë. Is that alright?”

Zoë opens her mouth to reply, but she finds that her brain has gone blank. 

Hylla tilts her head. “You’re… glowing silver.”

Zoë just barely manages to stop the glow from imploding as she hastily stands up. “Night has fallen. I must return to the heavens.”

“What about the deerskin you had me tan last time? It’s still back at the Amazon headquarters, waiting for you.”

“Ah. Yes.” Zoë clears her throat. “A quick errand it should be, then, before I return.”

“Alright. Off we go, Zoë.”

Zoë trips over the log she’d been sitting on. 

Once a week, Zoë dashes out of the Temple of Stars, goes on hunts with Hylla, and returns just when the night is at its darkest. She begins looking forward to these trips. Hylla takes the chance to be unprofessional and complain about the more mundane problems with the Amazons, and Zoë waxes furious soliloquies at the men responsible for the problems of the women she most recently aids. Zoë points out to Hylla certain plants that delineate life from death in the unlikely circumstance that Hylla ever gets lost in a forest. Hylla laughs and plays along and stares a bit longer when Zoë goes off on a tangent on certain plants she particularly likes, and together, they hunt for their food that night. When the kill is clean and the animal’s hide is of good quality, Zoë helps Hylla skin it, and Hylla takes it back that night for the Amazons’ machines and manpower to transform into a beautiful leather.

Shielded from the eyes of mortals, monsters, and gods alike by the rows upon rows of towering trees as wide as the both of their bodies combined, Zoë and Hylla are little else other than Zoë and Hylla. Between them, there is no Queen nor immortal Huntress—only two women whose greatest concern was their prey and enjoyed each other’s company. 

Much to Zoë’s relief, Hylla never asks where the fabric goes when Zoë takes it with her back to the heavens the next week; she probably dismisses it as a rare instance of Zoë indulging in vanity, and Zoë does nothing to correct that assumption. For all that Hylla has become a balm to her heart, Zoë is not sure she is ready to open the can of worms that is Kallisto, and by extension, Lady Artemis. (She finds that thinking about her former mistress in Hylla’s company brings her some sort of inexplicable guilt, which is yet another conundrum Zoë cannot bring herself to face.)

However, Zoë’s luck can only last so long. After the first few times that she hastily drops off newly tanned animal hides in Kallisto’s room, the former Huntress finally catches up to her on the threshold of the Temple just as she is about to depart.

“Lieutenant!” Kallisto catches her by the arm, and Zoë sighs, already mentally preparing herself for this conversation. “I haven’t gotten the chance to thank you yet for your gifts. They’re simply wonderful; I had the deerskin made into boots the last time I went down into the mortal realm.”  

“It felt only right to bring thee gifts,” Zoë answers. “Thou has been very accommodating to me, and I’m very grateful.” 

Kallisto beams. “Well, when one has nothing to do but hang around for the rest of eternity, grudges become meaningless. It took me a long time to learn that. Still, I’m amused at how everyone brings me animal hides every time they come back here. Everyone but Arkas, that is.”

Zoë presses her lips together. 

Kallisto continues talking. “At this point, I’ll need to ask Lady Asteria to commission yet another storage room for me—it’s only because I’m immortal that the wonderful leathers and furs that have been made into clothing aren’t just collecting dust somewhere. Only Arkas ever seems to have the common sense to not bring me any of those, seeing as how they pile up.”

“Do they ever get thee other gifts as well?” Zoë blurts out. The itch in the deepest recesses of her mind refuses to be sated, nagging on and on about the source of all these gifts to Kallisto. 

Kallisto is a bit taken aback at the non-sequitur. “Oh. Yes, of course. Andromeda and I currently have a sort of competition going on at the moment, a competition of who can gift the other with increasingly unsettling antiquities. At the moment, she’s winning with a row of Victorian-era porcelain dolls.” She shudders. “I tried putting it in Arkas’ rooms for a night—those glass eyes truly are frightening—and he set fire to them then pitched their ashes off the Temple’s roof himself the morning after.”

Zoë rubs the bridge of her nose. “And yet the common gift is always animal hides,” she mumbles. 

“I’m afraid I’m not following,” Kallisto slowly says. 

Zoë looks up at her. “Dost thou like them?”

“Of course I do.” Kallisto huffs. “What kind of question is that, Lieutenant?”

Zoë cannot come up with any retort to that. “I must take leave now,” she instead tells Kallisto. She does not wait for a response before leaping off into the clouds below. 

It’s only through millennia of self-restraint and discipline that Zoë does not let loose a string of profanities generally directed at the skies, hopefully at Olympus, which is yet hidden from her eyes. She’s not sure at whom she should be more furious: Lady Artemis, for her callousness, or Kallisto, for her obtuseness. 

Temper still roiling by the time she reaches the forest, she lands a little harder than necessary in front of Hylla, which kicks up a cloud of dust.

“Hello, Zoë,” wheezes Hylla. “Should we call off this excursion?”

Zoë growls as she dusts soil off her clothes. “I am in no mood to hunt today, Hylla. Perhaps—”

She stops as she processes Hylla’s figure. Hylla has her usual get-up on: black leather jumpsuit, the gold links of the Belt cinched around her waist, and sturdy trekking boots laced up tight against her ankles. However, today features an eye-catching addition—

Hylla fingers the hem of Zoë’s silver parka. “The chill’s beginning to set in here,” Hylla says. “It’s almost winter, after all; I hope you don’t mind me using this for an extra layer. It’s very warm, and—”

Zoë’s hands twitch with the urge to touch. “And?”

Hylla blinks, and the corner of her mouth tugs up in a crooked smirk. “It smells a bit like you, if you don’t mind me saying so.” Then she suddenly looks unsure of herself and drops the jacket. “Ah. If you’re in no mood to hunt, it’s fine. I can call my women to pick me up earlier.”

Forget the whole Artemis-Kallisto debacle; Zoë’s already inwardly preening, her earlier irritation long gone. “No, no,” she rushes to assure Hylla, “I simply meant—simply meant that we might have a change in routine? But we are already here in a forest, so perhaps we should go ahead and hunt as usual.”

“Hm.” Hylla ponders on this for a few moments. “Would you like to play a game?”

“A game?”

Hylla crosses her arms. “It’s a bit childish, honestly, but something tells me playing hide-or-seek in a massive forest with you would be fun.”

Zoë can’t help it; she laughs, beset by memories of playing babysitter to younger Huntresses and similarly having to run through entire forests just to track errant ones down. “Childish it may be for you, but it is a good source of amusement and exercise as well.  It’s not so different from hunting, if thou thinks about it. The only difference is that I am the predator and thou art the prey.”

“So it’s decided, then?” Hylla’s smirk turns into a full grin. “Don’t mind if I keep the Belt on for this. I’m going to need every bit of strength I have to outwit you, of all people.”

“I’ll find thee by sundown,” Zoë promises. “And I will grant thee a two-minute headstart.”

“You insult me and the Amazons.”

“Fine, one minute.”

“Better.” Hylla makes a twirly motion with her finger, and Zoë obediently turns around and closes her eyes.  

“One, two…”

“No peeking, Zoë,” Hylla laughs. 

The earth beneath them trembles: Hylla has stomped on the ground to leap into the air, and the branches that obscure her way to the forest’s top cover snap in half. By the time Zoë counts down to the last ten seconds of Hylla’s headstart, twigs and leaves are still raining down on the sunken pit upon which Hylla had planted her foot. 

“... fifty-nine, sixty.”

Zoë wastes no time zipping up to above the forest through the hole Hylla had created in the foliage. To the east, birds are arising in flocks and twittering their confusion to each other, and there’s a trail of similar gaps in the forest cover. 

It’s an obvious lead, but for all that Hylla’s temper is as quick as the ebb and flow of the tides under a full moon, her mind and wit are even quicker. Evasion by sheer speed would only work for so long on Zoë. However fast the Belt of Hippolyta might make Hylla, Zoë is even faster. 

The question is if Hylla is aware that Zoë would try to actively oppose her plans. Hera’s cows, for all Zoë knows, Hylla is indeed where the trail indicates she is because she knows that Zoë’s first instinct would be to defy the obvious lead. And there’s also the question of whether Hylla would hide in the treetops or take cover on the ground since both had its advantages…

Zoë considers this for a while, hovering in her spot above the forest. Above her, fiery orange slowly lengthens across the sky, first dyeing the hot white sun, then the afternoon sky. She watches for any more disturbances in the distance, any clue as to where Hylla might be, but the earlier burst of chaos had long settled. 

Zoë decides on descending onto the ground and following the obvious trail that Hylla had left on foot. Every hundred or so yards, she’s met with a recurring sight: pits of bare soil, rings and stacks of broken branches and fallen leaves, flustered wildlife running away from the area. 

As the sun descends towards the horizon, its rays begin to turn increasingly intense, streaming through the gaps between leaves and reaching out to Zoë. 

Millennia ago, when she was newly sworn into Lady Artemis’ service, she’d hide from the setting sun like it was a plague, fearful of being mysteriously struck down by some spear of light fashioned by her sisters.

Under the luminosity of the sunset, a golden luster begins to radiate from the veins under her russet arms. It spreads from her fingertips to her elbows and races up her shoulders. Within seconds, the glow fully envelopes her body, but Zoë continues to walk like nothing has happened. 

Before she had been a Huntress, she had been a Hesperide, in spite of her sisters’ best efforts to erase that truth from all records of history and knowledge, and her connection the sunset that made her radiant is no more negotiable than the liquid silver of starlight that now runs through her veins. She might not be numbered among her sister’s ranks any longer, nor accepted into their Garden, but  Zoë is still a nymph of the sunset. Her swiftest and most successful hunts always occurred just as the sun descended beneath the horizon, when her senses would be heightened and prey cowered before her. 

The glow coalesces in an almost tangible-looking second skin over her frame, and when Zoë turns her head, the whole forest comes alive around her. Specks of dust leave shivers on her neck when they land, a leaf two hundred yards away sways from its branch, and a snake’s scales rasp against the soil as it slithers towards an unsuspecting toad.

Somewhere in the treetops, just a leap away, a very human gasp reaches Zoë’s ears. 

Zoë’s eyesight zeroes in on the glint of a golden link, hidden behind countless rows of leaves and branches. 

“There you are.” 

And she rips through the forest. 

Hylla guffaws and starts running from treetop to treetop. “It’s almost sundown! You better hurry up!” her voice echoes. 

So it was an attempt at reverse psychology. Zoë’s feet drive her forward meters at a time, and when she gains enough momentum, she jumps onto the side of a tree to push herself up onto a narrow branch. 

The distance between them is closing. Hylla springs up onto a higher, feebler branch, and tears through a tree as she swerves left. 

At this point, the trees are so dense that both of them are slashing at hanging plants every two seconds, Hylla with her dagger and Zoë with an arrow. Trunks creak beneath the weight of their landing, and disgruntled birds flutter around them. 

Zoë’s breaths begin to come into harsh heaves, their volume only drowned out by the single-mindedness of her focus on Hylla’s. There’s a laugh half-gasped in each of them, as if Hylla’s truly so confident about winning this little game of theirs. It makes Zoë’s blood roar faster and higher, a coil of anticipation curling in her stomach and butterflies of adrenaline flapping their wings in her chest. With every footfall both of their heartbeats escalate, pumping in equal parts scalding blood and hair-trigger reflexes. 

“Come on, come on,” Zoë grumbles to herself, pushing her legs to the limit. The sunlight was dying. She had little time left. 

Hylla dares a look over her shoulder. In a split-second decision, she launches from the towering height like an Olympic diver. 

“What are you doing?!” Zoë yelps in horror. 

Thankfully, Hylla lands in a roll, absorbing all the impact with grace. “Winning!” she yells with too much glee. 

There’s too much distance between them again, and Zoë’s source of power is fading. She forsakes running on branches and leaps off entirely, but even flight fails to catch her up to Hylla’s supernaturally long strides in time. Growling in frustration, she glances at the darkening rays of sun and whips out her bow. 

Zoë gives herself no time to slow down. With the wind whipping her hair into her eyes, she grits her teeth and notches an arrow. 

Then draws her bow to full strength. 

The second that Hylla turns her head to look over once more, she’s met with a silver blur whizzing straight for her midsection. 

She doesn’t dodge it; she doesn’t get the chance to. The arrow hooks through an airborne link on the Belt of Hippolyta, and with its momentum, the arrow’s flight drags the Belt and its owner to a nearby tree. Hylla’s back collides with the trunk. 

Pinned in place like a butterfly, Hylla swears and tries to dislodge the arrow, but it costs her a precious second: Zoë lands in front of her in the next instant. 

“I win,” Zoë pants, shoving Hylla’s shoulder against the tree to prevent her from getting up. 

Eyes wide with utter disbelief from beneath her lashes, Hylla retorts, “You could’ve shot me!” 

“Worry not, I was aiming for the Belt, not thy organs. I don’t miss shots.”

“I didn’t know you glowed orange, too. I thought you only glowed silver,” Hylla presses on, still sore about losing. 

“I am a nymph of the sunset.” Zoë hangs her head, trying to even out her breaths. In front of her, Hylla is doing the same. “I do not just ‘glow orange.’ I harness the energy of the sunset.”

“Which you used to blindside me, then pick me out from far away. How unfair.”

“Thou used the Belt to decimate an unfortunate number of trees in thy escape. I would hardly call that advantage unfair.”

Hylla wipes the sweat dripping off her jaw. “Fine. Are you going to free me?”

Zoë looks down at her hand, which is still pressing Hylla flat against the tree. “Ah.” She removes it, then sees the arrow responsible for pinning her there in the first place. “ Ah. ” She yanks out the arrow, which is buried so deeply into the tree that only half of its stem could be seen. The corners of the arrowhead catch against the links of the Belt, and under Zoë’s strength, Hylla is tugged forward onto Zoë’s body. The two of them land hard on the ground with twin surprised shouts. 

“Oh. Oh. My gods, I am so sorry, so sorry,” Zoë hastily apologizes, because this is honestly very distracting, “this” being Hylla’s whole body laying on top of hers, and Hylla’s body being the one clad in Zoë’s silver parka at the moment, and Zoë can feel everything —

“The arrow—” says Hylla, hand flying to the offending object, except Zoë’s hand is also right there, and Hylla’s hand perfectly closes over Zoë’s. It is—a lot of skin contact—

Crack!

The two of them freeze and look at the silver arrow under their hands, now split in half from the combined strength of their vice grips. 

As if she’s been shot through with lightning, Hylla jerks onto her hands and knees to create some space between them. 

But honestly, it makes everything worse; like this, Hylla’s dark black hair waterfalls from her ponytail and falls around them like some sacred curtain shielding a god’s altar from its worshippers. Zoë’s world tunnels down to Hylla’s face, high with color and soaked with sweat from exertion, and their conjoined hands at Hylla’s waist burns through to her deepest nerves like no burst of luminescence, sunset or starlight, ever could. 

“The jacket,” she finds herself saying. Every nerve in her body is quavering. “It suits thee.”

Hylla’s throat bobs as she swallows. There’s—a bead of sweat that’s caught in the dip of her clavicle, just visible above the collar of her jumpsuit. 

“Really?” Hylla rasps above her. “Maybe I’d make a great Hunter.”

Hylla’s words do not help matters. Zoë feels like her senses have been bathed in a thousand sunsets, and every fiber in her being screams at her to—

Instinctively, her tongue darts out to wet her lips. Her mouth has gone very, very dry. 

“Thou would not enjoy it, I think,” Zoë manages. “The Hunt can be a bit monotonous after a few hundred years, and I think thou art quite happy in your position with the Amazons—”

“Oh, fuck, you’re bleeding!” Hylla blurts out, and that breaks the spell. She scurries off Zoë’s lap and loosens her grip on the hand that holds the split arrow. Silver has begun to well up and run across the meat of Zoë’s palm, which was punctured by the jagged ends of the arrow. 

“I don’t have any medical supplies, but I can take you back to the Amazon compound and have your hand treated there,” Hylla hurriedly says, already rising to her feet. 

Zoë shakes her head. “My thanks, but there is no need.” As the gash on her hand begins to close up at a thought, she wipes the silver blood off on her camouflage-patterned pants. It leaves a faintly shimmering streak on the fabric. 

Hylla watches in awe, then crosses her arms. “Well that’s awfully convenient,” she says. “No need to take you back to the headquarters, then?”

“Did thou wish to?” 

“You always leave when our hunts end,” Hylla says. “I should build you a living complex in one of our many spare wings; maybe you’d actually stay the night.”

Zoë is amused. “I had no idea Queen Hylla enjoyed my company so much,” she gently ribs.

Despite the red spreading across her face, Hylla takes it all in stride. “Of course I do.”

“Had I stayed alive a bit longer, I assure thee, I would’ve stopped at nothing to recruit thee into the Hunt,” chuckles Zoë. “Thou art a peerless warrior and a strong woman. A good friend, too.”

“I might have been convinced to join,” admits Hylla, “and you being the one to persuade me definitely would’ve done the job. But you’re right in that I wouldn’t have enjoyed it for long. I love my life here with the Amazons—all the power and, ahem, other benefits it has afforded me.” She sits back down beside Zoë, nudging their shoulders together. “I might not be young forever, but I’ll live my life to the fullest.”

Zoë tilts her head. “‘Other benefits?’”

Hylla turns her face to Zoë’s. “To love romantically?” Hylla says. “To date, to…” She cocks her eyebrow meaningfully. “Are you really going to make me say it, Zoë?”

Zoë stares at her, then purposefully leans in. Their noses are so close they almost touch. “What makes thee think that we’re forbidden from indulging in romance?” she breathes. She bites back a laugh when she pulls away and sees that Hylla’s dark eyes have grown as wide as dinner plates. 

“... You certainly weren’t that confident when I was straddling you.”

“I was simply taken by surprise.” Well, the fact that it was Hylla might have contributed as well, but Zoë could hardly say that to her. “But regardless—where did that ludicrous notion of Hunters being loveless come from?”

“Well…” Hylla cannot seem to look her in the eye. “Don’t you all swear to be maidens for eternity?”

A snort escapes Zoë. Then after that, an avalanche of coughs. Hylla miserably receives Zoë’s restrained laughter, 

“Maiden—” Zoë tries, before falling to a series of wheezes. “Maidenhood simply means that we cannot have sex with men—” Her shoulders are shaking so hard she falls back to the ground in fits. 

“Alright, I get it,” Hylla sighs. “The traditional definition of ‘maidenhood.’ It seems that the demarcation between Hunters and Amazons is thinner than I thought.”

Zoë’s mirth quickly subsides at that. “Yes, Amazons are permitted to have physical and romantic relations with men.”

“If we deign to be interested, of course,” Hylla interjects. 

“And art thou? Interested?”

A beat passes. Hylla’s lips curve upwards. 

“When I say that Amazons enjoy the company of men, I speak for them. But not for myself.”

Zoë’s stomach flutters. “I see.”

Oh, Hylla’s smile is truly incandescent. Zoë feels like she could burn if she dared look for too long. 

“And here I thought you were a soul recently released from the shackles of forbidden love. It certainly explained the unceasing gifting of the animal hides.”

Zoë can’t help but chuckle again. “And who did thou think the recipient was?”

At that, Hylla’s face shutters, and she looks off to the side. 

“Who else?” she says, tone careful and distant. “We all worship our own gods in our own ways.”

Zoë’s smile fades.

“Lady Artemis has not so much spoken to me since my death,” she tells Hylla. “Ironically enough, those little gifts thou thought were for her are actually for her beloved.”

Hylla shakes her head at the convolution of it all. “What?”

“‘Tis a long story.”

Suddenly, the strange shadow over Hylla’s mood lifts, and she rises. “Then you can accompany me on the way back to the Amazon headquarters, and you can tell me.”

“Night has already fallen,” says Zoë, without any real heat. 

“What’s a few more minutes to an immortal being such as yourself?” laughs Hylla, grasping Zoë’s hand. Zoë lets herself be pulled up and dragged to the edge of the forest. “Indulge me, just this one time.”

"So let me get this clear,” Hylla sputters over her cup of steaming chamomile tea. “You suspect that Artemis is accosting the other constellations every time they leave the Temple to—to discreetly deliver these gifts to Kallisto?

The scent of chamomile and Hylla’s listening ear have Zoë’s posture slackening for what feels like the first time in centuries. She shrugs. “It would certainly explain why different personalities have these common gifts for her when they return, save for her son. Lady Artemis would not dare approach him, and for all the eons that she has lived, she still fumbles with love. There is a reason she and Lady Aphrodite are in a constant state of feuding, up on Olympus.”

“You sound awfully sure,” Hylla notes. “What if you’re wrong?”

“Then I will have done no harm in gifting Kallisto those hides, other than giving her more trouble when she next chooses which one to wear.”

“Please don’t tell me you have plans of interfering with that whole affair.”

“Would it be dangerous to?” Even if she wished to stay out of the matter, Zoë knows that she would never be able to steer clear of both Kallisto and Lady Artemis completely. Her past is too intertwined with theirs, and it is only a matter of time before the ugly truth rears its head. 

“There are…” Hylla runs her fingers across the rim of her teacup. “There are whispers from Olympus of discord among the gods. Of unrest. They are not happy with Percy Jackson.”

It takes all of Zoë’s willpower to not roll her eyes. These past few days have done nothing but make her question the gods, Lady Artemis chief among them. “After he, the Hunters, and Camp Half-Blood prevented the dawn of another Titan Age?”

“If the rumors are true, the Olympian Council offered him immortality. And he refused.” Hylla shakes her head. “Either way, tensions are high, and everyone treads on thin ice.”

Zoë clicks her tongue. “I find it ridiculous that thou knows about this, yet no trace of this has reached the Temple of Stars, despite us being closer to the heavens. The gods truly see us as nothing more than mere ornaments.”

The chair scrapes against the floor as Hylla rises to pace towards the window. Darkness shrouds Hylla’s face just as the clouds tonight shroud the beaming moon. 

“... The Temple of Stars. Are you happy there?”

Zoë does not need to ask Hylla to expound. “... I am grateful, I suppose. I met thee,” she adds on afterwards, trying to lighten the mood. 

Hylla leans her forehead against the pane of the wide window of her private quarters. Her gaze is tilted towards Zoë. It’s nearly pitch black—they had foregone turning on lights to catch the last vestiges of the sun’s rays before it completely descended beneath the horizon—but through the darkness, Zoë can see the naked uncertainty in Hylla’s eyes. 

It should shake her, to see someone so self-assured and powerful have no qualms about being this easy to read. But Zoë feels just as naked, soul stripped bare before Hylla as she walks towards her and rests her elbows on the windowsill. 

“Is there something thou wishes to say to me?” Zoë prompts. 

Hylla drops her gaze. 

“Stay here.”

Astonishment blooms in Zoë’s chest like a flower. “With thee?”

“You don’t have to keep returning up there, if you dislike it anyway. Why should you let your life be held in the sway of—” Hylla presses her lips together. “You’ve told me that you lack nothing up in the Temple. I could take care of you, too, if you let me.”

“Hylla,” Zoë says. “Thou are dear to me, but I must refuse.”

“It doesn’t have to be for a long time, just… At least this time, just stay the night?” Hylla bargains. “You protected me on Blackbeard’s ship, and I only want to do the same for you. I can’t—I won’t rest easy knowing that you could get caught up in another mess, when the last war got you killed.”

“Hylla—”

“I can’t bear to be a passive bystander. Not again. Never again. I failed my sister back in Puerto Rico, and if it weren’t for you, I would’ve failed again—”

“Hylla.” Zoë rests a hand on Hylla’s shoulder while the other reaches up to turn Hylla’s face to hers. “If there is truly unrest on Olympus, then it is my duty to keep watch over the heavens, just as thine is to prioritize thy Amazons. And who knows, should the Roman demigods be embroiled in chaos once more, thy sister may be in need of assistance. I would be yet another burden to thee.”

“You’d never be a burden,” Hylla insists, a furious growl lacing her words. “I can take care of both you and Reyna. The gods, on the other hand, can take care of themselves.”

“When whatever is brewing is over, then. I promise to keep thy lonely self company.”

“I’m not lonely, I—”

“We are more alike than thou might think, Queen Hylla,” Zoë snorts. Her hand falls away from Hylla’s face, and Hylla belatedly reaches up to cup the ghost of her touch. 

“I’ll wait for you,” Hylla mumbles with great reluctance. “You better not be caught up in anything before then.”

Zoë smiles at her fondly. “Don’t be so dramatic. ‘Tis but a week that separates us.”

Hylla’s eyes narrow. “A lot can happen in a week.”

“Pray for a peaceful week,” Zoë replies. “Then I will be with thee.”