THERE WAS SOMETHING UNEASY IN THE RESTLESS WINDS BLOWING ABOUT.

Restless, restless like an impatient lover, greedy and wanton in their needs. Restless, like a nightmare keeping you awake, tossing and turning for hours and hours and keeping the sleep at bay. There was something wicked around, something that very much wanted to keep that well earned sleep away.

I only hoped Hecate would manage it on her own. Perhaps I'd go check on her soon.

"Is Persephone around?" I found Rosamund somewhere near the bramble of rose bushes behind the gates, shears in one hand and basket in the other. She looked up fearfully, eyes wider than the sky, glassy even. Strange - had she been crying?

"She - she isn't here, my Lord," the girl stuttered out, her words broken and coming in bits and pieces.

"Hmm. Are you alright?"

Rosamund dropped the basket and took off, her robes flying behind her as she ran.

Cerberus looked at me questioningly, face wide with wonder. I shrugged at the beast, who pawed the basket, coming up to me with a bunch of tender roses in his jaw. I snorted, picking the basket up and gently pulling the flower stems from him. The bloodhound hissed, eyes darkening.

"Easy, boy. Give them back here."

He huffed, prancing a few steps away from me in annoyance as I tucked the roses back into the basket, the thorns on the stem pricking my finger. I watched a single drop of blood well up on the skin, a tiny pinprick against the ridges of my finger.

Cerberus began to howl.

"Okay, okay! Give me a minute to put these back, we'll go find her."

He walked around in circles, impatiently barking as I shot him a glance, ordering him to stay there. Cerberus angrily snorted, but stayed put there before he scared the other acolytes. I opened the gates, climbing up the steps to find myself in one of the open workspaces where Hecate often dried her herbs in the sun.

"Have you seen my wife around?" I asked one of the apprentices. She looked up from where she'd been lighting a candle near a statue of ivory marble.

"No, my Lord."

"Is she in the Sanctuary?"

"I believe she's sleeping. Her ladies were here a short while ago. The Queen wanted some lavender candles and a few books, I think."

Okay.

"Oh, alright. Thank you. Looks like Rosamund forgot these," I handed her the basket as it dangled from my arm. She grasped it, examining the scarlet flecked petals of the flowers inside, eternal and dying in their beauty at the same time.

"Thank you, my Lord. It isn't like her to be forgetful, I'll admit. She has been under the weather for a few days... I suppose the turning of the seasons affects some more than others."

"I'm sure it will pass with some rest."

"Of course," she flicked at a speck of dust on her robe. "Nothing a cup of tea can't fix. The goddess has just put some to boil, if you'd like to join us?"

I mulled over her words for a moment. Wasn't Hecate going to check up on the Gates of Tartarus? Or had she already looked and found nothing?

But it wasn't nothing, I knew. I could feel something. Something in the forest. Something out of place. Something that was not supposed to be here.

In any event, she wouldn't keep the dreaded key with her any longer than she needed to. I'd just go check the Gates myself then, if Perse was sleeping.

"Not today," I muttered apologetically. "I'm afraid I have something urgent to attend to. Tell Hecate to report to me when she's done with the task I gave her."

"Ay, sir. Good day," her voice trailed off behind me as I gave her a curt nod, walking up to the extremely annoyed Cerberus sitting at the foot of the steps with his ears drooped, giving me barely a glance before rolling his eyes. He got up to take the path back home, but I put a hand on him, the fur softer than velvet against my skin.

"Not yet, no. Let her sleep."

He growled like a child being refused a stick of candy. The bloodhound rarely left her side these days, curling up next to her belly when she was asleep, a diligent guardian protecting the tiny life growing in her. By day, the beast would sit at her feet in court, not moving even an inch while barking at any stranger who came one step closer than needed.

Well well, who knew that the tender goddess of the dead loved her huge, menacing bloodhound so much? The bastard even seemed to have forgotten me.

"Persephone's been spoiling you. You're getting fat."

Cerberus walked ahead of me with his nose in the air, tail high up as he ignored me.

"Sulk all you like, boy."

A light wave of fine mist lingered in the forest of the Furies, leaving a fine sheen of moisture on my skin. The cool breeze in the air settled into my pores like a warm blanket. I knew each and every inch of this forest - had spent countless hours under those trees and their heavy, intimidating silence.

The Tower was silent. No singing drifted down its weather worn walls to dance around my ears with their unnerving eeriness.

I breathed in deeply.

There were fresh shoots of primrose and clover emerging through the ground, their tiny heads reaching up to the cloaked sky to find any source of light. The rich humming of the ravens high up somewhere in the trees was as familiar to me as her touch.

And the Gates were locked.

There was only the blazing, the crackling of the eternal fires in the scones near the walls, merrily burning away.

Cerberus hissed beside me, the sound ripping through the shrouded silence like a bolt.

"Shh, boy. Easy."

The hound gritted his teeth, sniffing around once, twice. Then his head turned, as if recognizing a scent out of place, belonging to something that didn't belong here.

I held him back as he pawed restlessly at the mud. Holding a finger up to my lips, I motioned for him to be quiet.

There were footsteps somewhere far away. Light and quick, like a burst of sunlight.

A flick of my finger had Cerberus easing up at last, his quiet growls giving way to silence. As if he, too, had sensed that I knew something was wrong. Darkly, he led the way into a thatch of bramble and weeds somewhere along the far side of the forest, further away from the gates. I followed him, jaw taut.

There was an outsider in my home.

And I hated outsiders very, very much.

We finally stopped behind a thicket of young pomegranate trees, the fruits beginning to bloom into hues of crimson and magenta. Their tender leaves blew about in an unseen breeze - leaves fresh with honey dew.

I slowly pulled a branch out of the way, careful to make no sound.

Anger rose up in me, stirring like a sleeping monster.

That damned, damned bastard. I was going to fucking kill him.

Light glinted off Apollo's golden hair as he aimlessly wandered about in the clearing.

And in his hands... was the key to Tartarus.

My breath caught in my throat.

If he had the key - the key I had given to Hecate - if he had the key, he must have hurt her. Must have harmed her. Must have touched a member of my family.

Apollo still stumbled around in the forest, walking like a person without a care in the world. And if he opened the gates...

I am alright. Just give me the key, I'll go lock the gates up, Hecate had muttered. I'll go lock the gates. I think I saw her in the east orchard, I think. Maybe in the Sanctuary. She was looking for you.

She - she isn't here, my Lord.

I believe she's sleeping. Her ladies were here a short while ago. The Queen wanted some lavender candles and a few books, I think, they told me at the Temple. Nothing a cup of tea can't fix. The goddess has just put some to boil, if you'd like to join us?

Realization dawned on me.

The woman in my study had been far, far too eager to get the key. To feed me some very convincing lies. To draw me out away into the forest, far away from other people.

The woman in my study was not the real Hecate. The one who was in her Temple, brewing some evening tea for herself.

No, the woman in my study was an outsider. An enemy. Only someone, or something that looked like her.

And I had dropped the most dangerous key in the world right into their hands.

The dream was restless, dark and deeper than the ocean.

The girl's hair was golden, like liquid sun molten into honey. She ran ahead of me, always turning her face to the light of the rolling hills, the greenery shrouded in mist. I had to save her. I knew I had to. Wheat stalks curled in the locks of her lush hair, rose petals rolling from her steps as I called out after her.

"Wait!"

A peal of tinkling giggles slipped from her hidden face. Beneath her feet, tiny footprints left their imprints on the fresh mud. She turned her head slightly, the pink of her cheeks like a newborn tulip that had seen the light for the first time.

"Wait for me!"

As if knowing that I was trying to catch her, she went farther and farther away. The closer I got, the more the distance between us seemed to increase. I had to save her. I had to. I just knew it, somehow.

"Wait for me, please!"

She finally turned her face to me.

I stopped right in my tracks, blood running cold.

Violet eyes.

My mother's eyes.

The girl started to laugh again.

It was not a warm laugh this time, no. It was discordant, a harmony designed precisely to dance on my jagged nerves. The laugh was the screech of nails on rusted iron as she stepped closer and closer to me. I could feel my fists clenching, unclenching, then clenching again - willing to wake myself up.

I could not open my eyes.

My breath came in shorter and shorter gasps, every syllable of her astoundingly eerie laugh worming itself into the hidden spaces of my body and my heart. The sound itself had begun to choke me from the inside out even as the girl came closer and closer to me.

"Death," she whispered.

I screamed, breaking out of the dream in shuddered gasps bitten out from my lips. A hand flew straight to my stomach, even as a tragedy of horror unrolled right before my eyes.

My eyes.

I tried to open them, but those violet pupils were still staring right back at me, their imprint branded into my brain.

Except that this wasn't a dream. My eyes were already open.

This was real.

She stood above me with unleashed fury in her eyes.

The white face of my mother was real, and all that fear in the dream, that was real too.

The real nightmare had just begun.