Chapter 35
Nyssa
“The answers you seek are bound to different questions.”
“Well, that’s incredibly vague, Vel,” I answered, wondering where in Tartarus that bloody dragon was hiding. She’s as large as a barn, where could she possibly be? Come to think of it, where was I?
These streets were not familiar, nor were these buildings, almost lost against the inky backdrop. The air lay heavy on my skin, the skies darker than the Underworld — whatever this place was, it swirled around me.
I reached out to touch the face of a dwelling and my fingers slipped through the wall like I’d run them through its reflection on a still lake instead.
“Ask different questions,” she pressed again, more insistent this time.
I pivoted, half-expecting to see her massive head behind me. “Alright, here’s a question: where the fuck are you, you enormous beast?”
“Okay, firstly, that’s rude,” a distinctly not-Velira voice scolded. “Secondly, you’re making this poetic style of speech hard to maintain when you insult me like that. And lastly, for a queen, you can be awfully obtuse.”
“Now who’s being rude?” I frowned, searching the cracks between buildings for my verbal sparring partner.
“Perhaps we’re being as rude as each other,” she offered.
Something tapped my shoulder twice and I whirled, causing the edges of this place to bleed again.
Before me stood someone I was quite certain I’d never met before. She was roughly the same height as I was, with dark eyes that seemed to pierce right through me. Her robes of black and deep red covered her body entirely — only two pale hands peeked out, clasped together at her front.
But the woman’s most striking feature was her hair.
Long black waves hung to her waist — frizzless and shiny — interrupted only by a singular streak of white framing the left side of her face.
“Or perhaps you win that, after all. It’s impolite to stare, you know,” she jeered. Only the twitching corner of her red lips gave any indication that she might be joking. “And you’re still not asking the right questions.”
I blinked. “What questions am I supposed to be asking?”
She rolled her eyes. “If I have to spell that out for you, then this is going to be very boring for both of us.” Her gaze flitted around the buildings only to land back on me. “Let’s start with the obvious, shall we?”
Obvious. Right.
“Who are you?”
Her face brightened considerably. “There you go! Excellent question, your grace.” She waved her hands with a flourish, dipping sarcastically into a shallow bow. “I am Hekate, at your service.”
“Hekate,” I breathed, slowly dragging the puzzle pieces together.
“Yes, Hekate. The witch.”
“We’ve met before, haven’t we?”
Her eyes sparkled mischievously. “Now, you’re asking the right kinds of questions.”
Hekate straightened, then in the next heartbeat, evaporated.
Her form transmuted, and like the buildings, bled at the edges. It swirled in the air — reminding me of a cloud trapped in a whirlpool. A second later, she stood before me, a third of her original size, in a shape that, yes, was someone I had met from afar.
Hekate’s dark eyes blinked up at me from the face of a large, black dog with a white-tipped ear. Even in this form, a white patch of fur followed her.
Looking at her felt like squinting. Like trying to catch something in your periphery, but every time you moved your eyes, the thing moved too.
I blinked, and she turned into that swirling wisp once more — a heartbeat later, she was witch-sized and solid.
“You’re the one who led me to Orpheus.”
She grinned, nodding. “Yup. Did it help?”
“That remains to be seen,” I answered, my brow scrunching in consideration. “What’s with the hair?”
“Wrong question. Try again.”
I canted my head. “You’re helping us… You’re helping me?”
She nodded, gesturing for me to keep talking.
“Why?”
“Excellent question!” Hekate beamed, her teeth perfectly straight and white in the eerie darkness surrounding us. “Because Kronos is a dick.”
I snorted, finding myself amused by the witch’s antics.
“The Fates have allowed me to intervene and aid you, but only if you ask the right questions. So, ask!”
I pursed my lips, thinking. “Have you helped in other ways?”
Her smile slid into something resembling admiration. “Yes.”
How had a witch otherwise guided me?
Hekate… her name was vaguely familiar.
Hekate… the witch. The sorceress. The guide.
That’s it — the guide!
“You’ve been dreamwalking, haven’t you?” I asked her, smug at having figured it out.
Her grin changed again. “Not so obtuse, after all,” she purred. “Indeed, I have. And indeed, we are,” she said, raising her hands to encompass this entire, strange place.
“Why?”
“Because I have another warning for you.”
Wasting no time, I asked her: “What is it?”
Her grin dropped altogether. “Hellespont. Follow the prayers.”
And then the dream vanished — dissolved in the breeze — and I sat bolt upright, panting, with nought but a name on my lips and a fierce sense of urgency in my veins.