Read an Excerpt From Medusa's Sisters

Even before they were transformed into Gorgons, Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale were unique among their immortal family…

We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Medusa’s Sisters by Lauren J.A. Bear, a reimagining of the myth of Medusa and the sisters who loved her—available now from Ace Books.

Even before they were transformed into Gorgons, Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale were unique among their immortal family. Curious about mortals and their lives, Medusa and her sisters entered the human world in search of a place to belong, yet quickly found themselves at the perilous center of a dangerous Olympian rivalry and learned—too late—that a god’s love is a violent one.

Forgotten by history and diminished by poets, the other two Gorgons have never been more than horrifying hags, damned and doomed. But they were sisters first, and their journey from lowly sea-born origins to the outskirts of the pantheon is a journey that rests, hidden, underneath their scales.

Monsters, but not monstrous, Stheno and Euryale will step into the light for the first time to tell the story of how all three sisters lived and were changed by each other, as they struggle against the inherent conflict between sisterhood and individuality, myth and truth, vengeance and peace.

After he took Medusa’s head, Perseus threw up.

His bile coated the boulders that were our home; green and yellow chunks of cheese and herb slid viscously into the sea. The resounding splatter both a grotesque knell and a final desecration to our refuge, the altar of our family.

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Medusa’s Sisters

Perhaps the newness of flight upset his stomach—it’s not an easy sensation for anyone, let alone an unpracticed boy. But this day has been consigned to the poets, not the witnesses, and those lofty minds would never allow their Chosen One any deficiency. It was her gut-wrenching reflection in his gods-given shield! Blame the hag, men! I can almost hear the smug chortles.

I was there, though, and must differ. The act itself made Perseus sick. It was compunction, the very wrongness of what he did.

Perseus slaughtered a sleeping woman. An unarmed, innocuous stranger to him and his people.

There was no fight—aren’t warriors forged in battle? She didn’t even scream.

And she was pregnant.

Yes, Medusa was pregnant and asleep, but Perseus became a hero. For she was only a beast, scaled and feathered, a body for Perseus to define himself upon.

Nobody requested our testimony. The voices of ugly women are easily diminished. Perseus could pretend that Medusa charged, threatened to tear open his chest with her claws and suck the life from his still-beating heart. Nobody challenged his account. He was so human, so young and beautiful, and we were… deformed.

Make no mistake, truth and goodness are merely aesthetics. I wish I had known this when I was still pretty.

I have had lifetimes to reflect, and if I ever had a chance of killing him, it was that moment, as he wiped away the runny mess of tears and snot with the back of his hand. But unlike Perseus, I beheld my nemesis in his weakness and, though an inchoate darkness coursed through my veins, I hesitated.

He was no more than a child, younger even than Thales—Oh, Thales. I’m still so sorry—and mucus clung to his beardless chin. Strange how I stared at that putrid discharge, how it consumed my focus, when my youngest sister’s head dangled from his left hand.

I could not meet her eyes and he—of course—would not meet mine. A disconnected triangle.

If only…

But then Euryale broke through my trance with cries bereft and feral: “Stheno, the babies!”

And so I did not sink my fangs into Perseus’s adolescent neck and shred his throat, spilling his life into the blood he took, blending hero and villain for eternity. My remaining sister’s words confounded and overthrew me. Fettered me to a reality I no longer recognized but vaguely recalled.

The baby? No, babies.

And so I faltered, and my enemy remembered to flee.

Perseus grabbed his inherited gifts, and his savage trophy, and escaped into the fog. Disappearing into his name.

Dispel everything the poets—who never met her—penned. Medusa rarely angered. She was ebullient, the paradigm of magnanimity. Liquid sunrise poured into her soul, and she woke each morning full of hope. Even after all her suffering, if she were given the opportunity, I do not think she would have fought back.

I am the vengeful sister. Me, Stheno. The hateful pariah who murdered more men than either of the other two Gorgons combined.

I consider this no accomplishment. I do not gloat, but neither will I atone. I am descended from a brood of sea creatures that humans deem beasts, and isn’t that what monsters do? We maim and torture and feast upon the gore. We delight in destruction, drinking our victims’ blood from golden chalices and dancing circles to their pleas.

But on that day, the one that mattered most, I paused.

I could have effortlessly killed Perseus—the ancestor of Heracles—and forever changed the mythical record of our age, but instead I chose my sisters.