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Branches whipped and snapped at my face, opening cuts on my cheek as if under orders from the bitch goddess herself.
Tears mingled with the poisoned water. Why me? Of all the unlucky, cursed-by-fate demigods in this wasteland, why did the goddess have to choose me?
I tossed my head, roaring as visions of that night assaulted my mind. Before she found me, I foolishly thought my life couldn’t get any worse. If all those legends and stories my mother told me were true, I suddenly understood the humans I never met better than any being in Olympia. They forced the gods out of their lives with sheer force of will. An aggressive disbelief in them that almost brought about the end of everything—but would’ve been worth it.
The gods were monsters.
They cursed, tortured, and ruined people to reflect the soulless emptiness they carried inside. An eternal life gets boring. Tormenting one lonely little girl barely on the cusp of her eighteenth year had to bring some entertainment.
A low, hissing chuckle sounded all around me. Seemed I was closer to the truth than I thought.
For hours I ran. My lungs burned. My bare foot collected bruises and cuts from unseen rocks and broken branches buried beneath the mud. I needed a break miles back, but still, I ran.
You’re so close. Don’t give up, Aella. Olympia has done me no favors, but I won’t subject it to the fate she has in store. Get out. Get across!
The words spurred me on—keeping me going when strength, energy, and endurance failed.
I’d be no use to her in the human territory. Once you left Olympia, there was no going back. The ancient spells created by the daughters of Hecate—the fearsome enchantress—ensured that any pathways closed themselves behind you. It was another deterrent to stop us from leaving.
Go, and leave behind everything you know and everyone you love for a world that knows nothing of gods or power, nor are they interested in finding out. A deterrent that worked on most demigods, but for me, it was the best thing that would happen to me since I was ten and a monster tore into my home and destroyed my life.
Barred from entering Olympia, I’d be no use to the goddess and her horrifying plans. I would hurt no one, and the demigods wouldn’t have reason to do to me what I knew they must.
I burst through the trees, and there it was.
Slowing to a stop, I gasped and immediately sucked in rain. Hurriedly I spat it out before it got comfortable on my tongue. It wouldn’t do to die... when I finally reached the border.
I gazed out at the wide, barren expanse. The whispers I heard throughout the villages described the other side of the border as a gorge. That was too small a word for the sharp drop-off and red rock basin bed stretching farther than my sight could follow.
I approached the edge, looking for—what?
A bridge? A ladder? A pegasus to drop out of the sky and fly me away?
If that’s what I was looking for, none of those things appeared.
“Okay, okay,” I breathed. “Crossing the border without permission from the council is forbidden. They were never going to make this easy, but there is a way to do it. The question is how?”
I peered over the one-hundred-foot drop.Get inside the mind of twelve stuffy, imperious, saggy-jowled men and women who were losing too many soldiers to desertion. They couldn’t bring down the border without the spell to put it back up, and daughters of Hecate were known for taking their spells to the grave. So what could the old council do to encourage anyone who got this far to turn around?
“Make me believe trying to cross meant my death.”
No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I lifted my foot and stepped off the edge.
Falling. Spinning. Screaming through the stomach lodged in my throat.
I accepted my foolish mistake as the ground rose to meet me, then I accepted my end. If I couldn’t leave Olympia, then I had to die. This was always my only way—
The red rock basin winked out. Darkness flooded in around me, cradling me as my descent slowed to a near stop.
I floated through an expanse of nothingness—darkness above, below, and all around me. Was this supposed to happen, or did I end up in the bottomless void where all the deserters go?
Blinking, a pinprick of light pierced the gloom. I had half a thought to go toward it, and suddenly I was.
The light grew, revealing that it wasn’t just a light. It was the sun. My sun. Whole, round, ever-burning, and casting its warmth on a home that wasn’t mine.
I knew instantly that the scene I was looking upon wasn’t a place in Olympia. The people looked the same with their arms, legs, and frontways eyes, but their identical bodies were covered in strange clothing. Some type of blue fabric where their pants would be, and overcoats that hung open instead of shielding them from the cold as overcoats were supposed to do.
Human after human strolled a forest that would’ve mirrored Calliope’s if not for black rivers cutting hideous paths through the green. Trash littered among the tree roots where nymph flower homes should be, and they walked past the garbage like they couldn’t see it. The closer I floated, the stranger the scene became. Everywhere I looked, people held rectangular objects to their faces while they talked to themselves.
