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‘But you are not my servant,’ she said. ‘In fact, I am yours.’

Minerva was born from her father’s mind, quite literally.

King Jupiter had been warned that his own child would one day overthrow him, just as he had overthrown his own father, Saturn. When Jupiter heard that the Titan he raped had become pregnant with his child, Jupiter vowed to kill the baby to conceal his infidelity.

She turned into a fly to escape him but Jupiter ate her.

Unfortunately, this had the adverse effect of implanting baby Minerva inside his skull, where she pounded incessantly to get out, giving her father a colossal headache until he freed her.

Born from Jupiter’s forehead, she’d come into the world fully formed and dressed in battle armour, ready to fight for the life her father had tried to take away.

As the aeons went by, she’d become one of his favourites, even joining him and Juno in the Capitoline Triad – chosen over all his other children.

This was the kind of dysfunctional family Minerva came from.

She’d never dared to spy on her father’s mind before, afraid that he’d be able to sense her, but she’d searched the length and breadth of the universe and she couldn’t locate him. Jupiter was a master of disguise, known to take many forms in his pursuit of women and power. This was her only hope.

She needed to know what he was up to, if she was to protect Empress Claudia, and that meant venturing within.

The resistance against Jupiter had gained in numbers and strength in her absence, as more and more goddesses were recruited to their army. Yet others had failed to return to attend further meetings, like Salacia, who’d come to Claudia’s aid at sea. Minerva worried about what might have happened to her, but she worried more about whatever her father was plotting.

Leaving Fortuna, Diana and Venus to their goddess-recruitment drive, Minerva retreated to the privacy of her library palace to meditate.

She thought of Jupiter, her mind following the celestial paths of matter that connected all beings, mortal and immortal alike.

Eventually, she felt herself drawn to him.

Her strange birth meant that she’d retained a pathway into Jupiter’s consciousness, a kind of umbilical cord or omphalos, connecting them together eternally. Just as her mother, Metis, had been swallowed, Minerva entered his mind as a tiny, insignificant fly.

She buzzed around, unnoticed by the gigantic ego of a god, swallowed up by the dark of the ancient Aether.

Minerva hung, suspended like a star, inside the infinite galaxy within Jupiter’s mind. Disconnected fragments of her father’s psyche passed by like galaxies: Fortuna, nursing him as a boy; the sacrifice of a sacred white bull; augurs looking at bird entrails; fire priests burning stalks of wheat…

Minerva spiralled and spun, thrown left and right, trying to correct herself as she thought, Show me what you’re planning, old man.

Eventually, her vision formed a theatre as curved rows of seating built up around her, putting her in the audience at the Theatre of Apollo.

Ruled by Diana’s twin, it doubled as the palace of the god of theatre, music and dance. Apollo often sat in his boxy temple at the top of the structure, watching on as nymphs and fauns waited on him. Today, however, it was empty, though his crows flocked overhead.

The building was a god-sized version of the Theatre of Pompey, its oversized scenery forming an animated backdrop. Here, her father’s memory unfolded like a scene in a play.

Pillars morphed into trees as Jupiter ambled onstage in human form, with greying curls and full beard, surrounded by a posse of lesser deities. She was watching his own memory played back in a theatre of the mind, but the recreation was grandiose, surrealist, imperfect in its reflection. In his recollection of the event, Jupiter was even more fearsome and mighty.

‘If Mars thinks now is the time to launch his own revolution to overthrow me, he is even stupider than he looks.’

Here was her father, speaking ill of another one of his many children. Though Mars was technically her sibling, they shared little familiarity or comradery.

‘He has an army of soldiers at his disposal,’ he raged. ‘He thinks he will be the next ruler of Elysium. I will not stand for it!’

Jupiter’s brother, Pluto, the pale king of the underworld, walked alongside him, dressed in blueish-green robes with a belt made of keys, his long straggly dark curls falling down his back.

‘He believes himself superior: stronger, younger and smarter than me,’ said Jupiter. ‘But Mars won’t be as easy to vanquish as my last victories – Vulcan and my dear brother, Neptune.’

Vulcan and Neptune had stood against him. Their mention sent a signal to the others: all those who stood against him would eventually become his prisoners or his slaves. Now, Vulcan and Neptune were imprisoned in the sky as constellations. Others were chained in Tartarus, along with the beasts of the Titans.

‘I will not allow Mars to convert deities to his side,’ Jupiter raged, hurling his fists into the scenery around him.

Pluto looked weary. He, Jupiter and Neptune were triplets, each receiving a third of the world to reign over, but Neptune had already been punished for his treachery. It was just the two of them now.