“What do you actually want?” the woman demanded to know.
“I need an assistant to run errands for me. I can have a very hectic schedule managing things like my properties, among many other things,” I said, smiling at her.
“You don’t know me, nor do you know what I can and can’t do,” the woman said.
Hestia was sitting up, and Adrestia was wrapping something around her shoulder. They were arguing about how long it was taking. Hestia did not seem to have much patience with being a patient.
I closed my eyes and crossed my legs, resting my wrists on my knees. Slowly, I let out a breath before inhaling through the nose. I focused inward, finding that ball of power within my core. I looked it over, searching for blocks or leeches. My brow furrowed when I didn’t find any. He had to be doing something to cause this. I found one of the threads that connected me to a strong hearth and pulled.
“Oh, honey, we’re the new and improved harpies. We’re faster, smarter, and stronger,” the second harpy hissed into my ear after we hit the ground.
I gave a wicked grin. “Bring it on, ladies. I shall not refuse your offering if you want to throw down against actual goddesses. Perhaps I’ll mount your heads on my mantel.”
When I said my hearth, I meant it was the first hearth. It was from the first offering I ever received. They were blessed with as many children as they wanted. I watched her become a great-grandmother, so rare back in those days. Many barely saw their children leave their homes. She was later deified by her great-grandchildren, but alas, Despina never reached true goddess status.
“You’re going to be fine, Kia. You’re as strong as she is and just as powerful, even if you don’t believe it. Together, you’re going to find Skiron and set everything back to normal. Hopefully, he can fix these crazy weather patterns across the globe.”
I let out a long breath as I remembered the politics of family. Why could we never just get to the point? As I pushed all the air out of my lungs, I looked at her face for the first time and saw Hestia. Her sweet face was full of hope and love. Memories of playing in her kitchen flooded my mind. That soft voice yelling at us to stop getting underfoot as she cooked was never angry. This was the one person in the family that always made me feel loved and wanted.
The cooking fire pit burst into flames and my hair followed suit. Someone stole from me! What was worse, I had no idea that it had happened. They managed to steal from my sanctum. My trophy room. My safe room. I was going to need help.
“What?” Shawn snorted. “You’re saying that you’re the oldest human alive, and you’re over five thousand years old, right? Someone’s watched too much Highlander.”
I might have been known as the peaceful goddess, but I tended to internalize my rage until it got to the point of explosions and not the fun kind. Cities would burn, like the Chicago fire of eighteen seventy-one or the great fire of London in the sixteen hundreds.
I was cleaning trash from the street as I waited for Jenna to come out. “Ew, is this a dead raccoon?” I whined as the smell hit me. Yep, that was a rotting carcass. I flicked a finger at the dead body, sending it across the street and into a trash can before I went back to sweeping the trash from the gutter into a dustpan.
After being away from my mind for about sixteen hours, the Revolt House was slogging its way back into my thoughts. It was nice to forget about it for a night and just enjoy the return of my mother and Hestia, making new friends, and reconnecting with old ones. But forgetting problems did not lead to solutions, and the problems would persist until a solution was forced upon us or found.
No, I was not alone anymore. “No, I am not alone,” I repeated out loud as I forced my eyes open. I started to count backward from ten, trying to settle my mind. Flashes of my life started appearing, even though I didn’t want to see them.
I was the heart. She was the butterfly. We’d fought once, long ago, when I was still considered a war goddess. She was forever a warrior, but it’d been a long time since she questioned my skills in battle. Our malicious and derisive names for one another became loving endearments by the time our swords were sheathed and we lost ourselves in friendly drinks.
