44. ZARA #2
I didn’t need asking twice before rushing over to Seth’s bed and sinking down onto it.
A barrage of memory echoes flooded into me at the contact.
Seth sneaking out in the middle of the night with Jed to get up to who knows what mischief.
Excitement about an upcoming tournament where they’d be competing in front of Zeus.
Late night conversations about what awaited them in the mortal realm and whether they were worthy of the destiny laid out for them.
It was hard to imagine Seth ever having doubts about that, but it only served to make me love him even more, if that was possible.
“There’s one other guardian you’re familiar with.
Want to have a go at divining which of the last two rooms was his?
” Zeus’s voice dragged me back to the present and I forced myself to shut myself off from the memories.
I swiped away a few stray tears as I reluctantly let him lead me from the room.
For just a moment it had almost felt like Seth was here, and now it hurt even more that he was gone.
“You can come back here any time you want to, Zara, if it helps you feel closer to him,” he said gently as he guided me towards the next door.
“I don’t recognise anything here,” I said as I stood in the threshold to the next room.
I assumed I was searching for hints of Olly but there was nothing.
I closed the door and moved on to the last room, and there he was.
His gentle energy permeated the room, making me smile.
It had taken me a long time to get my head around ‘Uncle Sol’ being a guardian, and for a while I hadn’t quite been able to forgive him, even when I knew there wasn’t anything to forgive.
But Olly was so good natured and self-effacing it was impossible not to like him, even if he did have a steely side when it came to his role as a guardian.
A side he hadn’t hesitated to show me when I’d had to tell him Ciaran had been compromised by Aleric.
“This one is Olly’s,” I said, forcing my mind back to the present and closing myself off from the energies in the room. “Can I really come back here whenever I want?”
“Of course you can. Let me show you a couple more things before we go, then you can explore them at your leisure next time you come.”
Leading the way outside, he followed a path that led to a smaller, separate building behind the main one.
“This is the bath house. We’d never had any use for plumbing before the guardians came along, but being half-mortal they had bodily functions we weren’t particularly au fait with at the time. Athena was never a fan of changing nappies,” he added in a confiding tone that had me giggling.
“Didn’t she just…” I wiggled my fingers and he laughed.
“She did, but she said she couldn’t magic the stench away so easily.
The kitchen is over there.” He guided me towards another, smaller building and I peeked inside, impressed at the range of huge copper pans lined up on one of the surfaces.
“We had a couple of nymphs and an ogre who used to come in and do the cooking for them. It was a full time job keeping that lot’s bellies full. ”
We strolled back round to the front of the main building, and he pointed out one last structure standing a little way from the training yard. “And that’s the armoury. We put all the weapons in storage once they’d left, so there’s nothing worth seeing there. But you’re welcome to look if you want.”
“No, I think I’ve seen everything I want to for now.” I could always look later when I was by myself, then I could take my time seeing what other echoes I could feel. “Thank you for bringing me here. It really has made me feel a bit better.”
“I’m glad. Here,” he snapped his fingers and held out a little purple stone suspended on a silver chain, “this is a two way portal stone. It will transport you here, and home again, any time you want. It’s invisible to anyone but you so let’s just keep it between the two of us.
No one else ever comes here, so you’re not likely to run into anyone.
May I?” I let him slip the chain over my head with a word of thanks.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t grant your request, Zara. But I have faith that Seth will find his way back to you eventually. And maybe spending time in a place where a part of his essence remains will help to keep the bond between you strong while you’re waiting for him.”
I tried not to think about how long that might be.
“You know, there’s someone else who would welcome a visit from you while you’re here,” he added tentatively. “I know she upset you last time you saw her, but it wasn’t intentional. She’s struggling with this too.”
He was talking about Thea. She’d taken to popping in occasionally to check up on me after Seth had left, but the first time she visited after he didn’t come back, she’d tried to comfort me by telling me she was sure he was fine and I should try not to worry.
I hadn’t been in the right frame of mind to hear it, and I’d told her to go back to Olympus and leave me alone.
Well, I might have said fuck off back to your own realm and leave me the fuck alone, and I wasn’t proud of myself for that, but I hadn’t seen her since to apologise.
“Would you like me to take you to her?”
“Are you sure she won’t mind me just turning up unannounced? I wasn’t very polite to her last time she visited me.”
“On the contrary, I think she’d be very upset if she found out you were here and didn’t visit her. Shall we?”
He held out his hand, and I slipped mine into it so he could transport us, hoping he was right and I wasn’t going to get a telling off from an offended goddess.