Destroyer of Light Read Free Page A

descends from Hyperborea. It’s not far; it has advanced even further from its icy den than when your father wore his crown.”
    “What has this to do with me?”
    “Everything.”
    “None of this is my—”
    “Everything,” Hecate repeated. “The world dies beneath the ice, and the mortals will die before then, and the gods themselves end if you don’t stop this, Demeter. The frozen maw that swallows mountains will not spare your worshippers. More ice rises from below the Heliades, a southern beast no less ravenous. And when they meet, it will end us all. But we will not see that day, for before it dawns, the chains of the new order that bind the Titans to Tartarus will be broken, and all we have made will be undone. Worse than undone. Every tree we grew from a seed will be uprooted, shattered, burned, the ashes scattered and the ground salted. What they will do to your daughter, the Queen—”
    “This is Hades’s fault!” she snapped. “If he hadn’t stolen Kore—”
    “You swore on the Styx, Demeter. Long ago. There was no theft, no violation, and they are husband and wife now. Children separate from their mothers. They find their mates. It is the way it has always been done. So will it always be.”
    “Oh yes, Hecate, her mate, surely,” Demeter scoffed. “Which is why he had to burst out of the earth and drag her screaming into the depths. I spoke to Helios! He saw it happen.”
    Hecate’s serene, placid gaze jarred for a moment, her lips set firmly. “You know better than I what inspired that haste. You know what bitter fruits his complacency would have borne.”
    Demeter paled, preparing to deny it, then realized it would be futile. “I… I could have never gone through with it. I would have found something temporary. Something—” Her eyes stung.
    “Something that would still allow you to break the sacred oath you swore on the Mother River?”
    She turned away from her former priestess, tears blurring her vision, freezing on her cheek in the wind. “It was different, then. I made that oath when I thought my daughter would grow up to at least be the queen of the earth or the seas, if not Queen of Heaven. I didn’t make it to condemn her to the grave!”
    “That was never for you to decide; the Fates wove that pattern. And now your whim is to heave us into peril once again.”
    “You told me to make a choice, and I made it.”
    “Careless planting delivers a poor harvest.”
    “What do you mean? We won the war. I did my duty. You didn’t approve of my choices and you abandoned me to utter powerlessness and ruin after that night.”
    “We took the field that day. But we lost the war. Our king who now sits Olympus follows his father’s crooked road more closely than most would admit, and he allows those same scales that tipped during the rule of the Tyrant to lean further askew. You remember my lessons: its imbalance will one day finish us all. Now little more than an aeon remains.”
    “The future is not fixed. You, Gaia, Nyx… none of you know that for certain.”
    “Look around you, Goddess of the Fruitful Earth. Look and see . Many more women than men make their new homes on Other Side. Though wars end many young men, more and yet more women die at their husband’s hands, and are met by infant girls left to the elements, while those still alive are kept in ignorance and slavery. Worse awaits those who choose otherwise. Half a century ago, an Athenian woman practiced my ways, as mortals may: she midwifed and used herbs. First came the ugly rumors, then they called her a witch, and then they stoned her. Then they stoned her friends, and they stoned her young sister. Then the mob turned on her sickly mother, and drove her into the wilderness.”
    “So what if a few of your worshippers died? You’re not alone in this. All mortals die.”
    “Is it to be that every woman who refuses to marry, or who wishes to learn, who has the sight, who has a free spirit and a free heart should be