Chapter 48: The Princess of Betrayal
True to her word, Medea presented the Golden Fleece to her father the very next morning.
King Aeëtes was in his council chamber, a storm cloud of fury and despair. Reports had come in from the sacred grove: the ground was churned and blackened, the air still reeking of ozone and cooked blood. The petrified trees were shattered. And the dragon… the dragon was a colossal, cooling carcass, its chest a ruin. It was a textbook dragon-slaying scene, minus the Fleece.
He'd been ready to tear his hair out. What army could he raise to chase down heroes capable of that? He'd even felt a petty, kingly resentment. If you had the power to butcher the Sleepless One, why bother with my stupid trials? Just take it! You made me look like a fool!
Then the doors had opened, and his daughter walked in, her face pale but composed, holding the familiar, softly glowing bundle in her arms.
Aeëtes shot out of his throne so fast he nearly toppled it.
What followed was the most bizarre debriefing of his reign. Medea laid it all out. Calmly. Clearly. With a disturbing amount of detail.
A hero with snow-white hair, blessed by Apollo and others, had climbed into her tower window.
This same hero had, in a single night, "persuaded" the fire-breathing bulls into docility and sabotaged the arena soil, making the Spartoi brittle.
Then, this hero had gone to the grove and, in a brutal, close-quarters fight, had personally slain the dragon and taken the Fleece.
Aeëtes listened, his initial shock hardening into a cold, sick dread. A group effort he could understand. A lone warrior capable of such a feat? That wasn't a hero; that was a natural disaster in human form. With a weapon like that on Jason's side, the entire quest had been a farce. He'd never stood a chance.
But then, the story twisted.
The hero hadn't given the Fleece to Jason. He'd given it to Medea.
The world, which had been tilting towards a bleak, hopeless future, righted itself with an almost audible click. Sunlight seemed to brighten the room. Most importantly… the hero had asked for nothing. No gold. No land. No… no princess.
No sane Greek hero walked away from such a victory empty-handed. It was unnatural. It was… miraculous.
"We must honor this man!" Aeëtes boomed, his despair transforming into fervent, public-relations-minded gratitude. He wasn't foolish enough to announce that the Fleece had been briefly stolen and then mercifully returned. That was a humiliation best buried. Instead, he commissioned bards and criers to spread the tale of the "Pale Hunter," the foreign hero who had seen the dragon terrorizing Colchis and, out of sheer benevolence, had rid the land of the scourge. A selfless act of bravery for a kingdom not his own.
It was a brilliant piece of political spin. It saved face, generated goodwill, and painted Colchis as a worthy kingdom that attracted the aid of great heroes.
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Back in her tower, Medea leaned on her windowsill, gazing out at the distant sea where the Argo had vanished. A small, secret smile played on her lips.
"Sorry, father. I'm not the obedient daughter you think I am."
Cyd's combination of cunning, strength, and strange, quiet integrity had gotten under her skin. Any girl with a pulse would have been intrigued. But the final act—handing her the Fleece, trusting her with the truth and the solution—that had lit a different kind of fire in her chest.
Part of her had hoped he'd succeed in helping Jason steal it. That would have given her the perfect, dramatic excuse to flee this gilded cage. The treasure is gone, father is enraged, this place is doomed… I must follow the one who I turned a traitor for! It was a romantic, rebellious fantasy.
But Cyd had handed her the Fleece. He'd given her back stability, peace, her father's favor. He'd closed the door on her dramatic exit.
And in doing so, he'd opened another. By returning the prize, he should have been showered with wealth and titles. A man who could solo a dragon would be the ultimate prize for any king—a living siege weapon, a deterrent. Aeëtes would have tried to bind him to Colchis with the oldest currency in the world: a royal marriage. To her. And a part of Medea, the pragmatic, ambitious part, had… anticipated that. Maybe even wanted it.
But Cyd had asked for none of it. No glory. No gold. No girl. He'd walked away. It was the most un-Greek-hero behavior imaginable. And it made him, in her eyes, more heroic than any of the preening braggarts on the Argo.
She couldn't allow it. She couldn't let her hero's deeds be buried, his glory stolen by Jason and his band of opportunistic tourists.
And so, the tale she'd carefully seeded in her telling, the image of the "Pure White Hero," began to spread from the palace. Not as the thief of the Fleece, but as its savior. The story raced across Colchis, then jumped to trading ships, and soon whispers of the pale-haired dragonslayer were winding their way across the Aegean towards Greece itself.
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When the story reached the Argo, the reaction among the crew was a chorus of grumbles and muttered curses.
"That glory-hogging king!" one hero spat. "We get the Fleece, and he makes a saint out of some phantom?"
Their plan had been simple: return home, be vague about the dragon. Let rumor do the work. A collective, unspoken agreement to share the credit. Now this Colchian fool was handing out individual accolades to a man who wasn't even on the ship!
Jason's reaction was different. Deeper. He stood at the rail, listening to the report from a shore-bound merchant, and felt a cold wash of understanding. The pieces fell into place—Cyd's confidence, his cryptic promises, his exhaustion when he delivered the Fleece. The man hadn't just retrieved it; he'd fought a war for it. Alone.
A sharp pang of envy stabbed Jason, followed immediately by a heavier wave of shame. He envied the pure, undisputed glory. But he couldn't bring himself to hate the man who'd literally pulled him from the fire. Cyd had asked for nothing, taken no credit on the spot, and was now being celebrated in a foreign land for a deed that had secured Jason's own success. The generosity of it was staggering.
So Jason did something that left his crew speechless.
As they sailed home, he began commissioning poets and storytellers at every port. This wasn't unusual; every hero was polishing his own legend. But Jason's tales had a new, persistent character: the Pale Companion. He never detailed Cyd's actions—he was too smart for that, and honestly, he didn't know the half of it—but he wove him into the narrative as a pivotal, almost spectral force. A counselor in the dark, a steady hand when hope faded. The unspoken heart of the quest.
When his crew objected, muttering about diluting their own fame, Jason shut them down with a single, icy question.
"Which of you," he asked, his gaze sweeping over them, "volunteered to go into that grove and bring me the Fleece? Which of you could have done what he did?"
The deck fell silent. There were no takers. Boasting about fighting a dragon was easy from the safety of a ship's deck. Actually facing it was another matter entirely.
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Oblivious to the fame now trailing in his wake like the wake of a ship, Cyd was following the gentle, insistent pull of Hermes's compass. It led him not towards any known city or temple, but into the wild, rolling hills between kingdoms, along forgotten shepherd's paths.
The business of blessings was frustratingly inconsistent. Hephaestus had set a clear, if daunting, quota: twelve others. Hestia's had come without even a meeting. Poseidon's had been a gift for a choice well-made. But Ares's… that had nearly killed him, immortal body or not. Athena's "trials" were intellectual traps that paid in favors, not crystals.
Now, directionless, he was forced to choose his next target. And he was stumped.
Artemis was… involved. That was a situation waiting to explode. Athena was a permanent fixture in his life now, he was sure of it. The big names—Zeus, Hera—were untouchable, distant monarchs. Aphrodite? The mere thought gave him a headache. Demeter, goddess of the harvest, seemed like a safe bet. She was benevolent, tied to mortal life. She probably wouldn't ask him to strangle a hydra or outwit a sphinx.
But the one that loomed largest, the one Hephaestus had singled out as particularly daunting, was the true roadblock.
Hades. Lord of the Underworld.
Myths spoke of living men who had walked the sunless paths and returned—Orpheus, Heracles. But they'd had reasons, divine mandates, or impossible music. Cyd had… a request. Hello, God of the Dead, I'm collecting divine favors. Can I have one? Also, can Cerberus not eat me on the way out?
He stared at the compass needle, which spun lazily, reflecting his own indecision.
"Demeter first," he muttered to himself, as if making a grocery list. "Harvests. Wheat. Nice, safe, agricultural blessings. Then… we'll figure out the whole 'journey to the land of the dead' thing."
Somewhere behind him, Medusa, who had been quietly shadowing him, let out a soft sigh that was equal parts resignation and unwavering loyalty. She'd followed him into a dragon's gullet. The Underworld, she supposed, was just the next logical step.