My brother was murdered. The Athenians killed him, and my father punished them: he demanded that fourteen of their children were sacrificed every seven years, sent to Crete and never seen again.
My father stole a bull. He stole it from the sea god, and the sea god punished him: my mother gave birth to a son, half-bull, half-man. A creature which craved human flesh.
We housed him in a maze, and sent in criminals, traitors, and the Athenians we received. My newest brother feasts upon the tributes of my oldest brother's killers. The gods had punished my father for the bull, but they did not punish him for this. Their cruel and twisted sense of justice was the same.
When I grew old enough to act, I knew I couldn't watch this cycle of revenge spin on. My brother was unjustly killed, but too many innocents have died to line his funeral pyre. I took one tribute aside, and provided him with a solution to the labyrinth: a ball of thread, which I taught him to tie to the door. Rather than being trapped and hunted by the minotaur, he would be able to escape. I told him to save the others with him. He promised he'd take me away as well.
The tribute killed my younger brother, the monster, and led his peers to freedom with the thread guiding their way. I saved him. He took me to the ship with him, but they left me on an island whilst I slept. I saved all of them. He returned to Athens, paraded as a hero, whilst I was left to die of thirst, of hunger, or perhaps of my misplaced trust.
The broken promise stung the most. I do not need to be a hero, but the hero should not lie.
The god of wine found me on that empty shore. He wasted no time in making me his wife, knowing I had little other choice: I could hardly return to my father, whom I had betrayed, to watch my mutant brother buried in his labyrinth turned tomb. I had expected to find a new life in Athens, having thrown my life in Crete away, but instead I had been left with none at all. My new husband was the only soul I knew.
The converse wasn't true. My drunken consort had scores of lovers across the country, to which he added my own aunt. I followed him through towns and fields where people worshipped him, ignored in his shadow, getting used to being no-one. I almost welcomed death when it came, a confirmation of my non-existence: an invading king slew me himself, granting my death a form of glory I had never had in life.
When my husband returned from his cult, he came to save me from the crypt. The wine god restored my pitiful life, but he sent me away to live in the clouds, where he imagined I would wait whilst he continued to ravish mortal women. Instead, I ran away. Death was a wake-up call, beseeching me to make my new life better than the last. I knew I couldn't watch this cycle of betrayal turn again. I came up from the labyrinth to wait for a deceitful man. When I rose from the underworld, I made sure I did so for myself.
I could not find the vanishing hero, but I found the man who killed me. King Perseus. I had been caught up in his war, one of many: I learnt about the man as I walked to his realm, and knew that he had left a trail of blood across the whole of Greece. I found it easy to slip into his palace. A great warrior needs no guards. When I reached the king, however, he was trailing blood of his own.
The woman who stood over him was beautiful. I knew that death had changed me, my grey skin now forever slashed in two, but I had never looked like she did now. She startled as I approached, not expecting to be caught red handed in these empty halls.
"Who are you?" She asked. "What are you?"
"One of his victims."
"Me too." The queen looked down at her husband's corpse. "I have spent my whole life a victim of heroes and gods."
"Me too," I said. "But not any more."
