Series: Willow Winters
Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 94417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 472(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 472(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
I do not speak any of this aloud to Beatrice. She already knows the things I fear, and the things that are coming. She is my confidant and I am hers.
“What is it you ask of Hekate?” I question her, righting my gown and standing taller as I should. My heart still beats savagely from the fears that have only grown stronger.
“Only guidance,” Beatrice answers. “I long to see my sister at peace in her dying days and I struggle with my grief.”
“If you wish to go to her—”
“I will not leave you, my Lady. I only need to hear of her peace.”
“Your sister is merely mortal. She will only be here for a short while. If you change your mind, your departure will be missed but it will be divinely guided and protected.” Before I can add that she should go to her sister before she’s gone, I catch the agony in her stare and I realize it’s for me. I too may not be here much longer. Not as a Goddess. Not in the castles. I’ll be shunned to the forests and lost forever as a garden nymph. So much of what I thought I would be seems so close to being lost forever. Beatrice will lose me as she loses her sister. The choice before her is which one of us to see for the final time.
My throat tightens as I realize her reality. I wonder if my name is in her prayers to Hekate.
“I do not need to go to her; I will see her in other lives. Death becomes us all and it is not an end, merely a crossroad,” Beatrice tells me and I rip my gaze away from her, making my way from the atrium, further back to the broad window with the daybed so I may rest. “What have they foretold?” she asks and her tone is tight with emotion. An anxiousness resides in her eyes. It’s been there far too long. I can barely remember a time in which she did not worry for me. That worry has been stronger in recent days, and there is nothing I can say to comfort her. “What did the prophecy tell you this evening?”
The last rays of sunlight outside Olympus are a deep, rich gold, as they should be in the presence of the Gods. I gaze upon it with a pain in my throat. I will not be able to look upon these sights for much longer. I try to console myself with the thought that I was able to experience them at all, but it does not bring me any comfort. Sometimes I think it might have been better if I were born mortal. If I had been born like Beatrice, I might never have known what I have lost. What is so close to slipping through my grasp.
“Nothing more than a garden nymph,” I make myself say although it’s barely a whisper. “I will not be a powerful Goddess.”
There is nothing I can say to comfort her.
There was no hesitation or question. That is my fate in Olympus, they made that very clear. I will lose my powers in Olympus. And yet they could only offer one reprieve. You will be given a choice and it is only in that moment that your fate may change. Until then it is others that control your destiny. I stare at the mere human whose sole purpose is to tend to me. She has sacrificed for my comfort in the last decades. I have been the most important work of her life, and I know she feels as if I am being taken from her.
Beatrice glances downward, but brings her eyes back to mine as she speaks again. “Have you told your mother?”
Have I told her? Have I gone to the gardens where she spends her days providing harvest and generously giving and giving to the earth realm? She raised me in those gardens, protecting me like she would protect her own heart.
My mother provides so easily. A single prayer is all she needs and abundance reigns for anyone who thinks to whisper her name, Demeter. That is power I thought I could inherit.
She has never had to fear being cast out from Olympus. The people who pray to her are right to love her, because she can give.
I hear the prayers of those who call to me for life, and I can do nothing.
“I have not gone to my mother. It is not a conversation I look forward to having with her.” What would she think of me, losing my powers? She did everything she could to protect me and guide me, so the fault must be mine.
“Your mother is a great Goddess,” Beatrice says quietly. “She may be able to offer you wisdom.” She stands in her black robe with the lights from the candle still flickering around her in the foyer of my quarters.