HERA TOOK ME TO A LONELY HILL SLEEPING IN THE BACK OF OLYMPUS.

Sitting on the steps with nothing but Hades' last gift to me in hand, I looked at the sunlight dappling over the morning peaks with painted gold.

Such radiance. Such brilliance. And all of it lost on me.

The first time she'd led me to this wide, open mansion, Hera had flung the doors open, her eyes sparkling with joy like an unrequited lover. Cheeks pink as a winter apple, she turned to me, grinning.

"No one knows this place exists. I come here whenever Zeus pisses me off. Which is often, by the way."

The floors were a deep green granite, the shimmering veins of silver shooting through the tiles like a cracking star. The first time my foot touched them, I shuddered. So cold. The floor was so cold.

She'd gone on opening the windows, drawing back the curtains - leading me in like an excited girl in a candy shop. It was two stories high, her retreat - embellished with quiet, gurgling fountains scented with fresh pine, vanilla white candles glowing in the corners. In the center of the hall, a deep pool of water shimmered darkly, steam wafting from it. There were all but five attendants, Hera's nymphs - who lived in the smaller, servants quarters. They didn't talk, not unless you spoke to them first.

Which was, frankly, a relief.

"The place is glamoured. No one can find it. And even if they manage to come close, the mansion tricks them into thinking they forgot their way, so they'll go right back where they came from. It's been more than a hundred centuries, and my husband hasn't discovered it yet," my aunt said quietly, stroking my arm. Her touch - the gentleness of it - made me want to tear my hair out and weep. "Demeter will not find you here," she lowered her voice.

And then I felt my body lowering itself into that deep, deep pool - wishing it would just end that excess of misery that yawned like a deep pit inside me. Wishing it would just go away for once.

And then I lay there in those waters for the rest of the day, fully clothed, my eyes closed.

Atleast - atleast they kept the windows open. All time, all days. Something about the feeling of seeing that place locked up - locking every lock - shutting me in... something about that made me want to throw up, to hurt, to break things that locked me in. It had happened once when I lay down in my chamber, uneasy sleep haunted with my mother's eyes washing over me - before waking up screaming, that thudding, reeling feeling locking me like a grip when I saw that closed door, those shut windows -

Feeling that oppression was a poison, and the only antidote was... nothing. Staring at the floors, doing nothing.

"You may go wherever you wish," Hera explained softly to me that night. "But not without Artemis and Athena," she nodded to my old friends, who nodded back. "And whenever you come back, this mansion will always be there to serve you."

She'd check on me every two days, coming back to ask if I needed everything, listening with an ear pressed to my belly, getting me sweets and pickles. I would turn them away - those cravings, those needs I had, they mattered no more. There were worse things in life to worry about. There was a time when she stayed with me for an entire week after some quarrel with Zeus, steam pouring out of her ears - and only when he was cracking the skies open with lightning and booming her name across the hills, did she go back.

Hera was nice. Hera was quiet, and did not ask too many questions. Hera was wholly content lounging on her chaise and fanning herself, venting about her frustrations, and I was wholly content sitting on a tiny pouffe, listening to her calm, oddly soothing voice with the occasional nod.

Artemis, though - Artemis barely stopped chatting. She'd ask me all sorts of things, like we were kids at a game. "Did you both sleep together in the same bed? Is it true he has a crown of bones? Was Hecate really not as mean as she looks?" I would give her some answers, but my voice was a dead thing, until Athena dragged her off to go run some errand.

There was a tiny garden in the back. There were orchids in that garden. Violet ones. Violet like those flowers he put in your hair, that tiny voice in my mind whispered. Two white peacocks as well. One of them had a crooked feather in his tail. And he always looked suspiciously at me, as if blaming me for making it crooked. He loved to sit with his head in Hera's lap as she crooned over him, giving me the glare of death.

Well, I suppose he was right. I was to blame. For everything.

I mostly just sat in that garden. Or on the steps, watching the sun go down, the moon rise. And sleep did not come back to me. There were nights when I stared listlessly at the stars, broken out of it only by Athena's voice as she sought my help with some book. Or Artemis, who just had a huge heap of arrows to sharpen as she stuffed her face with food.

And... him? I wasn't able to even think about him without that ice cold, jabbing pain coming back to punch me in the gut.

Hecate would come see me once a month when she'd be out to fetch some rare herbs.

She'd always try to keep a straight face, fussing about to get me to sit down and pulling out heaps of candles and dried fern from her bag. She'd tell me all about her day, all the people she'd yelled at in the last hour, how Charon had been whacking Cerberus with a stick since the hound stole his food. Every word pouring from her lips was like a knife twisting inside of me. My family.

I missed my family.

I was tempted - tempted so badly to ask her. Ask her about him.

Because thinking about him was a pain sharper than a rotting tooth. Sharper than a half healed, broken bone. There was this great, great chasm of nothing but inky misery inside of me, and it sent shockwaves down my spine every time I dared say his name out loud. Speaking it was like telling someone a dark, forbidden secret - something my heart wanted more deeply than the ocean. Something I could never have.

And so, I'd wait for Hecate to show up with her candles and black cat which liked to curl at my feet. The grief in her voice was so cleverly disguised, but I could hear it whenever she spoke. As if tightly reigning back her wishes to take me back home.

The next three months were nothing but pure torture.

As time passed, that greedy, swindling pain in my chest grew more and more desperate.

I was wasting away in a chamber on the edge of the world. I was watching that ghastly, unrecognizable reflection of myself in that dark pool, looking paler than death. Even though the rest of my body's curves filled in the right places - my face was a hollow shadow, gaunt as ice. I could barely see the woman who had pledged her body and soul to the king of darkness, who had skipped along in his garden of monsters clad in nothing but wisps of chiffon.

I was a ghost, and my body was the coffin being haunted by it.

The baby inside me was the only thing keeping me from slitting my wrists and drowning myself in those waters.

Atleast - atleast I could see him again. See him in that other life then. And that miserable, miserable pain in me could finally end.

The next day, I found myself wandering the lonely, desolate gardens of Olympus with Athena by my side. The grounds that had been my home forever. The cave where I had lived was now nothing but a shell, a bare reminder of my former life from ages long ago. It seemed like another lifetime, another me. The girl who got lost in the cemeteries and sobbed over dead lilies.

It was spring, and yet there was not a single flower in sight.

"Demeter fled," my cousin muttered under her breath, lounging on a carpet of moss with her nose buried in a thick tome. "She's only around during harvest season, and then she goes away. Yes," she peered at the dead bushes, the dry leaves in the orchards, "very cheerful spring, indeed."

The garden was a graveyard. And every other orchard, meadow, every bit of greenery around the world - that was a graveyard too.

My fingers quietly brushed over a dead, wrinkled rose, its beauty lost to eternal silence, petals crinkled up like paper. Seeing all that creation, that brilliance gone to waste, it broke my heart. My power sat somewhere in the depths of my body, a sleeping, snoring thing - dry, as if worn from not using since long. I dragged it up to the surface, inch by unforgiving inch.

I hated it - hated that part of me that bloomed flowers in the palm of my hand. Hated the fact that it was a stark reminder of the past. Hated the fact that it was a gift from my mother, that such a vengeful person could possess such virtue. I hated making those dead roses bloom, and yet I did it again, and again, and again.

Because spring was dead. And I could bring it back to life again.

It took a very long time.

Part of what I was doing mortified me. Part of it made me want to weep with joy, for all those mortals who saw their fields come alive again with flowers and fruit. To see a thing of beauty after ages of death and destruction. I wanted to stop - so badly. But I could not.

And so I covered Olympus with a blanket of spring.