All happening so quickly, everything changed in a single day. Years of slavery, days unnumbered, lost as nothing, slow separation but not final, and now everything slips in an instant. Something in Jason waiting for this.

Women of Korinth, wealthy, watching her but looking away, refusing to catch her eye. They all know what’s happening. Every person in this courtyard, even the men, and every servant, every guard, all know that Jason is being taken from her and that she’s being forced to watch. Glauce the center of all desire, Medea outcast. Both daughters of kings, but Colchis far away, not only in distance but also in time and event. No return possible.

Women, Medea says, just loud enough for the nearest tables to hear. Women with children, how can you watch?

They continue to eat, obscene feast, dressed as Egyptians, headdresses falling in bars of black and gold, finely turned cups of wine, fingers thick with rings. Animals pretending to be gods, daughters of shepherds aping royalty. The luck of a crossroads, city of two seas.

Even gold can burn, Medea says.

They can hear. They don’t respond, but she knows they can hear.

A guard takes her arm, makes her stand. She could howl now, scream and accuse Jason, remind him of all he’s promised and all she’s sacrificed, but she remains silent. Something darker working in her, some rage that refuses anything as slight as words. Led back to her room with Aeson and Promachus, left alone to lie in darkness and form waking dreams of revenge.

Sound of the feast, laughter for hours. Stringed lute and hand drums, dancing and clapping. Jason freed, holding the hand of this girl-child. Medea can see her small mouth, waiting, scent of her bathed in cinnamon, no slave. Their children will inherit Korinth and have a claim, also, to Iolcus, surrounding Athens. Kreon’s dreams, but Jason will want only that ripe young body and release from a wife who has been difficult from the first.

Night without end. Rise and fall of breath, her sons’ hearts beating beneath her hands, feel of their ribs. Her own body engorging, filling with hate and hollowed, void under pressure increasing in her head and chest, unfairness so enormous nothing can be done. Jason does not return. Sounds dying away, no more music, no more shouts, quiet of night, and still no husband but gone to another bed. Medea’s breath fast, in panic, though she only lies here holding her sons. Glauce in some royal bed very close, only a few arm’s lengths away, lit in torchlight, baring herself for Jason, spreading her legs, untorn by children.