My father was king, Jason says. Murdered by his brother after seeing his wife and younger son also murdered. Acastus is stained in that blood.

And you are stained in my father’s blood, Acastus yells, murdered by your barbarian wife.

Jason lets his arms fall and watches Medea. All have gone silent. The sky brightening, her grandfather climbing the far side of the world. Her fate will be decided now, she knows, and not by her. Very strange. She didn’t foresee this moment.

True, Jason says for all to hear. Medea blames Peisidike, but we all know the daughters of Pelias must have been tricked. Medea worships Hekate, worships night and darkness. She cut her own brother into pieces and has murdered Pelias in the same way. This is my barbarian wife, covered in blood. If the people of Iolcus tell us to leave, we will leave.

Voices everywhere, eruption like birds on an island, rookery without wings. These people just as stupid as birds, flaring up and veering as a group, settling again, then rising. Anyone could rule them, but she has restored true birthright, given the one destined to be king, and for this he has betrayed her. Father of her children, the man for whom she killed her own brother and left everything.

Statue cut from stone, a man without blood, without pulse, without feeling. He stands watching her as the birds circle. Medea and Jason the only two still points, all else in motion. All will happen too quickly. All her work will be undone. And there’s nothing she can do, betrayed so completely.

Acastus is gathering men, his father’s guards, surrounded by spear points. Jason only waits. Something in him not meant to rule. He willed this moment. He wants to be outcast.

Sky white and burning, the sun nearly risen. Medea must go to her children. But she’s looking for Asteropeia, the only one true. Swallowed somewhere in this crowd. Voices rising, saying the name of Acastus, choosing slavery again. The comfort of spear and throne and all ordered as it was. She will never see Asteropeia again.

Medea runs for her children, away from this crowd, through stone streets abandoned and foreign, city that could have been hers. She expects to find them killed, throats slit, left to bleed out in the dirt. If there is enough of Pelias in Acastus, this will have been done already.

Hillside of hovels, home for years, endured for nothing, her life held in suspension, whipped and burned and wasted, and she knows she will find her children slaughtered but runs toward them anyway. Is there any choice?