“DO YOU KNOW WHERE SHE IS?” I FLUNG MYSELF INTO THE IVORY TILED ROOM, LIVID WITH SUCH SEETHING ANGER THAT IT SEEPED OUT OF MY WORDS, DRIPPING WITH HATRED LIKE VENOM FROM HORNED SERPENTS.

Zeus merely looked up from where he lounged about on tasseled cushions atop his golden throne, a naked nymph splayed over his thighs as his fingers drummed on her bare, freckled back. His blue gaze only crackled with a tinge of annoyance, making electricity glimmer in it - as if I were only a mild inconvenience meant to be dealt with and cast off.

“Where is who, dear sister?” his voice was a mighty baritone that tumbled into my brain like waves lapping at the ocean rocks.

“Your daughter. Persephone.”

He stopped in his actions, returning to assume the form of a statue carved in ice as he looked down at me, his lips still pressed to the nymph’s slender throat which he had been kissing so arduously. She looked at me with annoyance fuelled by the hazy feeling of passion, her body draped over his lap and rocking to and fro gently over his knee.

“As it happens, I do know where she is, sister,” Zeus coolly replied. “With Hades.”

“You knew where she was? You knew and you didn't think you could have told me?” I screeched at him, every word at a pitch higher than the one before.

“As a matter of fact, I sent her there myself, Demeter.”

And this time, furious tendrils of warm, gold light exploded out of my fingers, accompanied by a tight shivering that wracked the dust of my bones to the very core.

“YOU SENT HER THERE?”

“Demeter, she-”

“You sent her to that - monster - that devil-”

“It was necessary-”

“- you sent her to that vile, scheming beast!”

“Enough!” Zeus boomed at me, furiously looking down at me, waving away the barely covered young woman at my figure with the full might of his gaze, anger rippling in them. The woman in his lap squirmed on his knee, grinding herself against him in an attempt to distract.

The action only made the fire boiling in my blood reach a limit, kissing the very zenith of the peak.

“Go,” he said quietly to her, his face as impassive as weathered stone. She looked at him with curiosity, sensing the short temper seizing him as he flexed his arms, stretching to rest a lazy arm on the armrest of his gilded throne.

The nymph pattered away, her footsteps vanishing in the silence.

“I sent her to him,” Zeus cleared his throat, looking at me mildly. His thin lips tugged up at a corner, barely hiding an annoyed smirk. Annoyance shone in every wrinkle of his golden brow as he regarded me coolly, reclining on his cushions.

“Why?” I spat out the word like venom, barely teetering on the edge as I struggled to hold back my anger.

“So that she could grow into a woman, dear sister,” his voice was calm, his eyes more calculating than a snake as they watched me.

“Grow into a - grow into a woman-” my voice teetered off the edge of insanity, the anger erupting in the form of golden veins crackling under my skin - “into a woman - don’t fucking tell me you sent her there so that her womb could swell with his seed while he enslaved her to his will!”

My outburst elicited no reaction from him. Not a single damned reaction.

“Zeus!” I screamed, this time making spidery cracks appear in the marble ceiling with the rising pitch of my voice. “Tell me you didn’t wed her to that monster!”

Those white fingers merely drummed on the cushioned armrest, playing a devilish melody that tugged and threatened the madness out of my brain.

“ZEUS! GET MY DAUGHTER OUT OF THERE - RIGHT NOW! WHAT THE HELL - WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE-”

My voice was cut short like a knife snipping a thread, suddenly draining away into silence, like a bubble drowned fathoms deep into sea and silenced forever. I opened my lips to speak.

Not a sound came out.

Zeus only lounged back on his throne, a smirk on his proud lips, his eyebrow raised in amusement at the ease with which he silenced me.

“Are you quite done, sister?”

Fire flickered in my eyes, fury rising in me like a hungry flame that wanted to destroy everything.

“I sent her there for her own good, Demeter. A fat lot of good you did keeping her locked in a cave. What kind of woman does that to a child? Yes, I sent her away from you so that she could grow. Into a woman, a goddess, a devil - anything. You keep her stuck, frozen, like a rose locked in a cage. Hades is fair. A just man. More than what I could say for you, wife.”

His eyes hardened, shining like gemstones in the night.

“You shame me, Demeter. You shame me by being my sister. You shame me by calling yourself her mother. You were never a mother to her - never. She needs something to do in life, not just be in your shadow, goddess. Your love stifles her. And you might happen to know what happen to a rose if you give it too much water.”

My fists curled, my lips still straining to speak against his damned spell. Cursed be this king!

“Hades will not rape her. I know my brother to be better than that. He will make our daughter his Queen, Demeter. He will give her everything, from the riches at his feet to the crown on his head. What more could a mother ask for?”

I glared at him in a way that could have pierced frozen glass.

“Oh, right,” a corner of his mouth turned up in a half smile. He curled his finger, pulling away the blanket of silence sealing my lips. “You may speak.”

Anger flowed through me, blinding hot, stifling, white, pure in its fury - like a steaming, boiling hot bath to rinse away my sins. There were no words for this. For what he had done. To me. To my daughter. Him and that devil, that Hades - they were going to pay for this. They were going to pay for this so, so dearly.

I turned on my heel, and left the cursed room.

Men were so stupid. So insanely sick, so idiotic, so perverted. Like children trying to play a game only adults knew how to.

The world could have been so much better with us women ruling it.

Skin of steel and bronze bumped into me, flaming hot and smooth to touch.

“In a hurry, Demeter?”

Apollo pushed sun kissed hair out of his clear eyes as he stared at me, giving me a hard, long look. A dagger of burnished gold hung at his side, the sunlight glinting off it in gleams of sparkling glitter.

“I am, as a matter of fact. If you’ll excuse me, Apollo,” my tone was sharper than a polished sword ready to decorate the body of its enemy.

“Looking for Persephone, are you, goddess?”

His wings were snow white, his eyes a muted grey as Hermes looked at me, askance.

“What do you know about what I’m looking for? It’s none of your business.”

“As a matter of fact, Lady of Harvest -” Apollo’s hand curled around my wrist as he led me an alcove in a corner of the blooming gardens - “I do believe we might know… something.”

“Tell me what you mean,” I barked. “And tell it straight.”

“We saw her. With him. Hades.”

Bitterness reared its head like a snake, rising to the roof of my mouth as power streamed out through my fingers, swimming in the rose scented air.

“What?”

“He deflowered her. Right here. In this garden,” Hermes muttered quietly, his voice heavy with resignation. “We were coming to get you, as it happens.”

“He what?” I screeched.

“Heavens, Demeter! Keep your voice down!” Apollo let out a low hiss.

“Zeus told me he wouldn’t let that happen to her!”

“Zeus is a liar. You think he cares? You really think he would care? Demeter, if you want things to be right - you have to do it yourself! Go your own way! Take matters into your hands!”

He was right.

I would withstand this injustice no longer. No longer, no, I wouldn’t.

A snap of my fingers sent echoes rolling into the air as every single plant in the garden withered and died.

The lilac silk of my robes changed to deathly, heavy plum velvet. The locks of burnished gold changed to hues of midnight black and silver. The crown of roses atop my head burned and burned and burned, leaving behind only nettles and thorns sharp enough to prick skin and make gods bleed. The blood was for me to drink, and me alone.

I was no longer Demeter, Lady of Harvest, mother of the Earth and deity of prosperity.

I was death.

I was destruction.

I was immortal.

I was going to burn every inch of his kingdom down.

I was Doso - and I was going to get my daughter back, come hell or high water.