“So if Hera shows up again, what will you do?”
There was a beat of silence, and Hecate started walking off. Aeëtes could hear her murmuring under her breath. He chuckled to himself and followed after her.
“What will you do?”he repeated, gazing up at her with an expression that did look more like that of a puppy than a ram’s. Hecate refused to turn towards him but kept her back ramrod straight and her head held high as she responded.
“I’d beat her again.”
“I love to hear it,”Aeëtes bleated in satisfaction, doubly proud of himself when Hecate suddenly had to stifle a laugh at the noise. Her hand came up quickly and covered her mouth, but the crack in that facade was there. He saw it.“So relax a little. Don’t look for trouble. You don’t always have to be watching, waiting, all the time.”
“You don’t know what I’m like all the time,”Hecate quipped back, still playful but the edge had returned to her voice. Aeëtes wasn’t really mad about either version of the goddess.
“I know that look. It’s seasoned. I’ve seen it on sailors, princes, and soldiers, Goddess. That’s the look of someone who is evaluating a threat.”
Hecate turned at that sharply and stared down at him with that emblazoned look in her eyes—now directed at him.
“Is it?”Her eyes glowed, the edges of her irises lighting up in a red ring.“What do you think I see when I look at you, Aeëtes?”It was a threat.
Aeëtes didn’t take the bait.
“Obviously, the most handsome ram that you’ve ever seen. You’re worried you’re attracted to a sheep. It’s okay. I won’t tell.”
“I thought it was a ram.”
“It can be whatever you want.”
“You are the most utterly insufferable person I have ever met. You aren’t eventalkingfor the god’s sake…”
“If you took on the life debt for someone insufferable, I can’t imagine what happens when you meet someone you actually like.”
There was a beat of silence between them that went on for longer than Aeëtes’s liking before Hecate responded. Her voice had gone cold, like one of her ghosts had taken her place.
“It’s been a long time.”
They fell into silence, and Aeëtes didn’t push. He knew better. There was a fine line between goading Hecate into something more frivolous and distracting and knowing when he had struck a nerve. It had only been a few more paces when there was a shift in the wind…and Aeëtes smelled it. Rotting flowers.
He turned around as he tried to locate the source of the scent, but Hecate was way ahead of him. He felt her power ripple through the earth beneath them, as if she was pulling it up from the Underworld itself. That red, sparkling current was running in waves over her body. This time, when the heads of the maiden and the crone appeared, a circlet with the triple moon appeared on each of Hecate’s three heads. Her crown. A crown fit for a queen. As if she was making a statement— a very purposeful statement—while she was waiting to square off with the queen of the gods.
Aeëtes couldn’t help but feel thatmaybehe had a little bit to do with that.
There was a cracking sound, and they turned to the road’s edge. A sharp wind burst through the trees that framed the path as trees began snapping left and right, as if invisible hands were breaking them in half. It got closer and closer, and Hecate’s power flared up, the dogs appearing at her sides and the snakes winding around her arms.
There was a very primal part of Aeëtes’s brain that suddenly wanted to run from the dogs—he rightfully assumed that this was the sheep’s brain—but he greeted them like old friends. Hecate’s magic smelled like rosemary, cinnamon, and death, and it made Aeëtes feel rooted. Grounded. He would no sooner run from her magic than he would run towards Hera’s.
Aeëtes watched as Hecate moved her hands slowly in a circle, her gaze so focused that it almost looked vacant. Yet, ever so still, her lips moved, and so did those of the maiden and the crone. He could feel her magic pulse every time she uttered another word in a language that even he didn’t understand—something that likely only the primordials would even recognize. Hecate’s power moved like an element, cresting and crashing in front of her like water. It was enthralling to watch, and no matter how terrifying that cloying scent of flowers was, Aeëtes was not afraid.
The snapping sound got closer, and the last of the trees in front of them tumbled to the ground. Hecate threw her hands up in the air with a great shout. There was another torrent of wind all around them, and it began moving in a rapid vortex. Hecate’s hair and the ends of her himation whipped around her, and she screamed—not out of fear or terror, but vengeance and anger. Aeëtes didn’t know what she was saying, but it didn’t matter.
She was illuminated in the center of the dangerous winds, her face obscured by her hair, but her eyes aflame and overcome with a blood red glow. Each of her heads was twisted into an expression of deadly terror, and Aeëtes saw it. This was the face of Hecate the Necromancer, Hecate the Goddess of ghosts, Hecate who lived in the Underworld…
Aeëtes didn’t even realize that his heart had been on an edge, then suddenly, he fell off it. In his most foolish, reckless, and premature adventure yet, he fell in love.
He was unable to rip himself away from staring at Hecate, from looking up at her dark magic, the waves of power that undulated off of her. He was losing himself in it; it wrapped up around him like it circled Hera, both of them having very different experiences.
Because that was the essence of witchcraft.
It would meet every person, every soul, exactly where they were—and would return their sentiments back to them. It never interfered, never touched free will. Those who saw death and horror in Hecate’s magic where the ones who were only ever the most terrified of themselves.
The world seemed to stop on its axis around them as the goddesses’ magic collided into one another, causing the broken trees on the ground to shake. Hera was unseen, in the atmosphere around them, choking on the taste of Hecate’s magic. Aeëtes was crippled at her feet, drinking willingly, and praying that the moment would never end.
