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)
At first, I follow the path we took before, it’s thoroughly lit and familiar as well. The hallway outside Hades’s rooms has a door out to the makings of what could be gardens but is crystals instead, and from there it is easy to find the cobblestoned path with the dark blooms growing thickly on either side. I do not know the mechanism by which the path works—all I know is that if I walk on it with the intention of travelling through the Underworld, I can pass by the Fields of Mourning and the Isle of Achilles and the other realms Hades took me to see before.
I find myself burning with curiosity about the other rooms—the darker rooms. But I do not visit those places. I tell myself it is because there are too many other things for me to consider, but the truth is that I do not want to visit those places without Hades at my side.
Fear keeps my feet planted on paths I know well. Even if those paths aren’t where I crave to be.
I know how that would seem, if I were telling this story to another person. It makes very little sense to think of him as a protective presence, and perhaps that is not the way I think of him at all.
Perhaps it is that the emotions and sensations that move through my body when I am watching those things—experiencing those things from such a short distance—were overwhelming in the moment, and if I were to go back…
Well. It is not something I need to think about. I’m too busy making my way in the Underworld. Learning how it operates silently and on my own. There is little to no company for me. And the guards who line the halls are silent apart from the bow of their heads as I pass. The warmth and laughter of Olympus is lacking in the cold castle that I reside in now. I do wonder if it is always like this or if Hades has removed all witnesses for my stay here.
Or at least it was vacant the first few days but now as I set out to wonder, I’m aware there is more company than before.
The more I walk on the path, the clearer the realms alongside it become, and the same is true for the halls near Hades’s rooms. I could see the hallway outside the open door, but I did not know how many souls dwelled nearby. It is also possible that they had been told to stay away, and now they’ve been given other instructions.
And when they do…
They bow their heads.
There are more women like Silvie who tilt their heads when we pass each other as I am on my way in or out.
Silvie, I think one day, shortly after I have arrived back from a walk along the path. A few moments later, there are footsteps in the hall, and Silvie enters Hades’s rooms.
“Yes, my queen?” she asks. Is there a new light in her eyes? I cannot tell for certain but she seems to wear a semblance of peace I had not noticed before.
“I would like you to talk to me about magic,” I tell her, as calmly as I can manage. If I have this level of freedom, then I will be able to learn from her. If I don’t, and it’s only an illusion, then it won’t matter either way.
“What would you like for me to tell you?” she asks. Her fingers crest on a gold chain that wraps around her waist and over her shoulders, forming an “x” over her chest. It’s beautiful against the cream pressed silk with lace edges. It’s a dress my mother would love I think.
I answer without much thought at all, wanting to stop where my mind was headed. “Anything you know.”
Her brow raises in surprise and her lips upturn into a smile. “Anything?”
There is something about her words during our first conversation that makes me certain I should start from the beginning. The drain on my powers made it impossible to think of anything but the near future, when I would not be a Goddess at all. I should let my knowledge grow in me the way I let her words about freedom flourish.
I vaguely wonder if Hades told her about my magic. I wonder what she knows.
“Whatever you like about magic,” I tell her and take a seat on the end of the bed getting comfortable. “Tell me that.”
Silvie tells me the earliest stories she can remember about magic, and continues to do so whenever I wish for her to come to me. I cannot tell if this is making a change in me, but I listen anyway.
It might not be the stories themselves that matter as much as the feeling they give me when I listen. In many ways, I feel more secure than I ever have. In other ways, I feel like a child again, my eyes open to all the possibilities of magic instead of the few laid out before me.