Daughters, Medea says. Daughters of a king. Peisidike is the one who made an old ram young, who bit into what made him old and let him come back as a lamb. I witnessed it here myself. She is favored by Hekate.

All eyes on Peisidike, who is too frightened to speak. Brought close to her father’s mutilated form.

Let me go, Asteropeia yells. His blood must still be hot. Thirteen pieces. Tell them, Medea.

True believer, innocent, terrible to ruin. If only Medea had known Asteropeia in Colchis or anywhere else. Medea says nothing, and Asteropeia breaks free of her guard, grabs an ax and hacks at a shoulder. Dull slap of metal into meat and hollow sound of bone. Peisidike! she screams.

Her sister unable to move, only watching, so Asteropeia is alone. All Pelias’ men pressed back against the walls. Acastus the runt-king afraid. Rising laments outside, some great crowd just beyond the door. Asteropeia swings her ax and brings it down each time with a low grunt, tearing through all that would age her father, releasing death’s hold.

She opens his rib cage and falls to her knees to reach in through lung to tear out his heart. A knife, she yells. Bring me a knife.

Medea only watches, does nothing. No one helps Asteropeia. So she rises and takes her brother’s knife and drops again onto what remains of her father, reaches in and is his blood still hot? Her fingers around slick muscle of his heart and the knife cuts all that would bind, frees it to the air. Our father will be made young again, she tells her brother as she throws new meat into the cauldron.

What is this, Medea? Acastus asks. What have you done?

Your sisters brought me an old ram and cut him into thirteen pieces. Peisidike bit into what had made him old, and I stirred as she and Asteropeia called to Hekate, outside with the moon. I saw a shape forming and called for them as a new lamb sprang from the cauldron, the old ram made young.

You have made my sisters butcher my father. You have bent the world again and distorted all.

Asteropeia wants to make her father young again, a gift, and she is led by Peisidike, who is favored by Hekate or some other dark god more powerful than I have known myself. Bringing a body back to life goes beyond what I can do. I have only stirred, as Evadne has had me do for years now. Everyone is witness that I have not killed the king. I have not brought him here or chopped at him with an ax or ripped out his heart.