Though Gaia sleeps, Rhea at least expected to feel her mother's presence here, as the Phrygian plains had once been a sacred place. Their sacred place. Though Gaia had told her as much: Once a bird leaves the nest, mother has no reason to stay.

Truthfully, she cannot be sure what causes her to seek Gaia out. Especially after the betrayal she dealt her, a good daughter would have some sense of shame, would stay as far away from her mother's places of worship.

Maybe I am a child still, Rhea muses when she passes her old pond, now smaller than the one conserved in her memories or replicated in the sanctuary on Othrys, plagued by one drought or another. Time marches on, she realizes, leaving those who would seek to preserve it in the dust. Maybe I will always seek comfort returning to my mother's bosom.

The last time she had come, their abandoned home had been left in disarray – a last reminder of the struggle which took place here. Now nothing remains but cracked mud bricks barely visible through the long grass. Rhea shouldn't have expected anything else. It has been over a hundred years at least.

She sighs, taking a seat beside the ruins. Rhea lies back, her eyes on the sky and mind strangely silent. She doesn't move.

"Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?"

Rhea turns her head, the frown gracing her lips now a permanent feature. "How did you find me?" Truthfully, she expected to be found eventually, but this feels much too soon.

Theia being the one to come for her, however, most unexpected.

Her sister leans back, blonde hair glimmering gold in the sunlight. "The clearer your mind, the easier it is to see." She tucks a lock behind her ear. "Clear-sight is my specialty, sister."

Rhea only nods. Perhaps not so surprising after all. "Did he send you?"

"As if I would ever do his bidding," Theia snorts.

She rolls her eyes in response. "As if he would give you a choice if commanded."

A dark look passes over her face. "Yes, I am very much familiar with my little brother's commands."

"King," the queen corrects with a frown. "He is our king now."

Theia only nods.

Rhea closes her eyes as their conversation lulls into silence. She cannot be sure how long she has spent out here on the plains, but she does not mind returning to such a timeless state. A ruffling in the grass, accompanied by jeweled bangles jingling, suggests that Theia has lain down beside her. Perhaps they are both in need of peace.

Hours pass before Theia speaks again.

"I've always wanted to go east but mother forbade it." Rhea barely opens her eyes to look at her. "She said other, stranger gods resided beyond. That I would not be welcomed."

"I was told much the same," Rhea whispers. "Do not wander too far: north, east, west, south. Stay within your domain."

"And yet we wonder still," Theia murmurs, eyebrows furrowing.

"Can you see beyond our lands?"

"I tried once. I wouldn't dare try again."

Rhea sits up, her face hardening to stone. "I know you've bedded my husband at least once since I've been away." She hears Theia's short intake of breath. "Will you dare to try again?"

Her grimace deepens. "Who told you?"

"No one."

"Then how?"

She shrugs. It is only a vague intuition she cannot quite put into words. "It is as you said: the clearer your mind the easier it is to see."

Theia closes her eyes, trying to keep a sudden rush of tears at bay. "I'm sorry. I never meant to hurt you." "Nor would I wish to take what is yours by right. You are my queen and I have no intentions to usurp you, whatever you might think. It was so stupid of me—"

"Enough. I accept your apology," Rhea interjects, averting her gaze.

Her voice tightens. "So readily? How?"

"I know it is something I will never receive from him." He never apologized for Hades, for lying to her. How could she expect one for infidelity?

Her eyes open, still wet and full of guilt. "You're too good. For us, for this world." She wipes her face. "I wish Fate were kinder to you."

Rhea cradles her knees to her chest – a turtle tucking back inside its shell. "I would like to be alone, Theia. If it does not offend."

"Never, little sister." The Titaness stands, a lovely vision decked in white that leaves an ache in Rhea's heart. A shiny object that was fated to catch the attention of the Titan Lord. "He will find you eventually. Even if he does not guess that you have come here, in exchange for… never seeking me out again, I took his eye. I made him a better one – all-seeing. It's only a matter of time."

"As all things are with Kronos," Rhea sighs. "Thank you for the warning."

At Theia's insistence, Rhea knows she should flee. The border separating their lands from the other gods towards the east lies not too far from the plains. With a day at most, she could very well reach it and Kronos would never suspect.

The prospect of starting a new life dangles like forbidden fruit.

She remains, of course. Rhea is a creature of habit, too attached to the familiar. This same flaw leads her to construct a new hut of a home upon the foundations of her old one.

Unlike most of her sisters raised on Othrys, Rhea's youth was no stranger to hard labor. In the growing season, she tilled countless fields with her mother. But when the landscape grew dry and arid, it was Rhea's job to mend their home and keep it standing.

Memories long past, but at least she has gleaned a lesson or two from them once set upon her task. Her skin browns again in laboring under Hyperion's blistering sun, first crafting mud bricks to erect new walls and then weaving thatch for a new roof.

Her hands constantly at work, body never resting, the days fly by without end. She has no thoughts throughout it all – the bliss of setting one's self to such menial tasks – except for one, drifting in along with dozens of sunsets.

Is he watching me?

Rhea isn't sure why she is surprised when that day finally comes.

With the new walls fully raised, the roof nearly constructed in its entirety, Rhea sits upon the grass to contemplate her work. Picking apart the crooked bricks in which her hands slipped, yes, but also admiring other perfections, such as the care in which she wove the thatch to create a waterproof seal for what little rain might come.

Pride swells in her lungs. Perhaps she is not so helpless after all.

A thought quickly banished once she hears a boom from the sky above and a load impacting the ground at dangerous speeds. The wind ruffles the grass like a tidal wave.

Her nostrils flare – the lioness catching onto a most unpleasant scent. It is with dismay that Rhea realizes all she can do now is wait for him to arrive. To contemplate what punishment he may have in store.

She glares when the grass parts before Kronos, a prayer that her fury will pierce him as sharp as any sword. When it does not, Rhea slowly rises to her feet.

"I should have known you would come here." Her husband does not take another step forward and for that she is grateful. "But I did not think to look."

Of course not, Rhea snorts. Another sign that this marriage was doomed from the start. "I should have never left. But I never had a choice, did I?"

He sighs, aging almost a thousand years in the blink of an eye. "Rhea—"

Her entire body roils with pent-up frustration. "Leave me alone."

His stubborn jaw clenches but Rhea pays no mind. She simply turns away from him, marching back into her home. She does not bother to check if he follows her or has vanished altogether.

Rhea collapses onto a bed of dead flowers. Her first order of business now that Kronos has arrived? To lie there and weep, for her children and the girl she once was.

When Rhea realizes he intends to stay – reminiscent of his courting of her all those years ago – she builds the door next. At least she can slam it in his face and pretend he is back on Othrys.

At least Kronos does not impose. He does not step foot into her home, only creates a campfire just outside for himself when the night descends upon the land. Though his presence still serves as a constant reminder that her time is limited.

No more gentle pacing.

Rhea works from sunrise to sunset. In a matter of days, she patches up any lingering holes in the roof and plucks dead weeds from the floor that have died from lack of light. Going outside no longer remains an option without stumbling into the last person she wants to see, so she wills spare materials into existence: namely, wood and leather to make a bed, wool to spin and dress it.

More work to keep her emotional state at bay. Until… there is no more work left to do.

She glances around, knowing that she has not recreated everything in its entirety. The flowering vines she grew along the walls are missing, as are the colony of birds that once nested in the roof. Details easily remedied, but something else too.

The touches of her mother, her metallic scent. Smudge marks all over the door frame from when Rhea was only knee-high, always covered in dirt. A thousand other remnants lingering in her memories.

Not that it matters. Rhea does not mean to live here, of course. None of this means anything if she has no one to share this home with.

She sits on her bed, the guilt consuming her once more. She hangs her head in her hands and digs her nails into her cheeks. Rhea wants to tear her flesh open, to feel anything but the aches in her heart consuming every thought she has ever had.

For once in the plains of Phrygia, an immortal wishes for the sweet release of death. However futile those prayers.

He has spent many nights alone.

After Hestia, such has been the way of things. His heart protests, of course, but he meant the words he said when he and Rhea were intertwined, unable to fully comprehend the gravity of his father's curse.

I don't deserve to be happy.

A part of him had peered into the future then without realizing. Only misery will ever be his constant companion. It was Fated.

And so, Kronos assumes he will spend this night alone as well, holding onto the futile attempt that he can muster up the strength to bring his wife home. Chaos forbid what his brothers will say if he returns empty-handed. Though many years a king, he still feels more powerless than ever before.

Midnight falls when her door creaks open. A stone lodges in his throat and Kronos wills himself not to turn at the sound, certain that he will scare her off if he does. But his soul is not made of bronze as he would like to think.

Kronos turns his head slightly, catching her figure in his peripheral vision. The shape of her nearly ceases his breathing altogether. Though the glare she gives him is still just as menacing as before.

Yet she walks to his campsite, arms raised to feel the heat of his fire. Kronos cannot take his eyes off her. Though her gaze does not meet his, instead flickering to the wineskin tucked away at his feet. With no words passing between them, he tosses it to her.

Kronos watches as she drinks long and deep. Some men do not allow their wives to partake in the fermented nectar but he is not so cruel as she would like to believe. He cannot think to pass through this life without it nor torture her so by withholding the same release.

Rhea sighs when she decided she has had enough, though does not pass it back to him. He has no doubt she will finish it by the time this night is over.

"You must come home," Kronos says finally. "It does no good to wallow here."

"Is that a command from my king?" she coughs in response from the strength of his drink, a sardonic smirk pulling at the corner of her. "Or the clucking of a mother hen?"

"Rhea."

She only rolls her eyes and takes another swig. Once again, the stone in his throat silences him, both the Fates and his wife testing his resolve.

"That day I left with you," Rhea retorts this time in no effort to hide her loathing, "it was the worst mistake of my life."

The eviscerating words form another scar he will have to wear for eternity. His ego has long grown used to these attacks. "It's a choice too late to take back."

"A choice you forced me to make."

"I did not," he denies, naturally, arrogant being that he is.

"Yes, you did." Her nails dig into the wineskin and for a moment Kronos think Rhea will pierce it in her anger (which she will no doubt blame him for). "The day you brokered your deal with Gaia, they day you killed Ouranos, you proclaimed my Fate sealed. You never gave me any other choice."

"Your Fate was sealed the moment Ouranos's seed rooted itself within Gaia to create you." His voice cools to a frightening degree. "Our Fate was sealed from the very first breaths we took. Only a fool would think otherwise."

"A fool?" Rhea lets out a grating chuckle. "The bigger fool is one who only picks and chooses which part of a prophecy to follow. Did you think you were immune to Ouranos's curse? We have not slept in decades. Our father was many things but not a liar."

Something ravenous within him awakens at the mention of his father, as it always does. "If you think I would have let his words come between us then you are sorely mistaken, Rhea."

Perhaps she sees the hungry look in his eyes, so eager for self-preservation, that she withdraws. "You're the most selfish immortal to have ever graced my presence."

Rhea crosses her arms over her chest, as if guarding her already bruised heart. "Sometimes I think if I had just let you ravage me that day after you killed him – even covered in his godsforsaken ichor – then that would have been enough to quench your thirst. Instead, I traded temporary pain for a lifetime of it."

"You would've wanted that?" His lips curls back into a sneer. "For me to have fucked you and then left you, is that it? Then only to return as my seed bore fruit?"

"I don't see why not," Rhea bites back. "The end result would be the same: a childless Titaness alone in the wilds with her grief."

"No," Kronos dismisses, "because you are returning home with me tonight."

"Over my rotting corpse." Another drink passes past her lips. "You would do best to fool another girl in my place."

"What is done, is done." Truly, he hadn't wanted it to go this way, but Rhea leaves him with no other choice. She has chosen force it seems. "You are my wife, a queen, and you belong on Othrys now. Not here in this backwater."

"Backwater," she scoffs. Her eyes burn like flames from the Underworld. "Is that what entranced you to me? You saw the one Titaness they had failed to groom into proper lady – a wild beast. And you thought you could tame her, no?"

"Rhea."

"Don't," she sneers, having grown tired of that way he says her name with such exasperation, like a thing to be coddled and reared. Though a mood she soon forgets when she feels his hand pressing firmly against her wrist.

Rhea finds her voice again, but it is remarkably soft this time. "Don't," she repeats

"You will come home with me," Kronos affirms and, though he still remains seated, she feels trapped all the same. And for good reason.

He doesn't give her the chance to deny him again, pulling her further into his embrace, his lips pressed against hers. He encircles her waist with his free hand and Rhea doesn't draw away like she knows she should.

She pours all her anger into the searing kiss. Every scream, every tear, she has ever had to endure for his sake. Why can't he see? And if he sees, how can he just let it be?

Rhea only pulls away when his nails grind into her ass. Her hand cracks against his face and, by all the gods both old and new, it feels better than sex, better than whatever inferno is brewing between them. She wants to hit him again – to feel powerful just this once – but he seizes her wrist once more.

And kisses her hand.

No.

Rhea lunges at him. Kronos falls back into the dirt, his wife on top of him with a growl evil enough to give Chaos pause.

"I don't love you," she spits. "I never have."

"Alright," he says simply, his clothed erection twitching on the inside of her thigh. Her hand whips him across the face again but Kronos only smirks in response. "I deserve that."

"This is what you want, isn't it?" she hisses, incredulous but also still so full of rage, so full of lust. Rhea hates him, she does, but she has no idea why it makes her lift his tunic and straddle him harder.

"Rhea," he groans as she tortures him. Rhea can't make him beg for his life but she thinks this is close enough – begging for her, so warm, so wet beneath her shift.

But he loves it and all she can think is that it's not fair. Rhea hikes up her skirt and wastes no time impaling herself. Be what may, she cannot help but admit that she enjoys the feel of him straining inside of her. She forces herself to smother those resulting moans with all her might.

They fix each other with dark gazes.

A growl from Kronos and he seizes her thighs in his hands. Slapping flesh echoes across the grasslands as he takes her – and she takes him – brutally, without mercy. A new experience for them, but one long expected. The era of gentle caresses has long passed.

Rhea can no longer keep silent. She cries out, realizing she has not done so for quite some time now.

Her hand wraps around his throat to steady herself, but also to dig her nails into his flesh. Though it is her mistake to assume this to be a punishment. Kronos enjoys such a thing far too much and it sends him into climax.

She gasps – not from pleasure, but from shock. Rhea rips herself away at last but knows it is too late. His seed drips down the inside of her thighs. With dismay, she thinks, Consider my fate sealed once again.

For a moment she stares into those gilded eyes – shame mixed with typical male arrogance. Her pulse quickens and the rage seeps into her bones once more. Rhea spins around and charges into the swaying grass.

"Where are you going?" he calls after her.

She refuses to look back on him. "To rid myself of your stench in the pond!"

Rhea shoves the stalks aside. To her relief, she hears no footsteps behind her signaling he intends to follow. At least sex has proven to reduce him into a simple-minded oaf.

Glancing over her shoulder, seeing no sign of him, she rushes off into the grasslands. The longer her headstart before Kronos notices, the better.

When Rhea finds them, they are not as she expected.

They bleed red.

It is on her hands when she gifts the sobbing mother her wailing newborn. But she does not sob as Rhea has sobbed; this is joy, not fear.

And the Titaness cannot bear to stare at them for longer than a moment. Silently, she stands. She leaves the mudbrick hut, a little nod at the father pacing outside.

"Thank you," he blurts out in his crude language before rushing to see his wife and child.

Rhea makes the blood from her hands disappear. And Rhea, too, disappears.

The cycle continues over and over again, one home to the next, one human village to the next. It keeps her mind busy even as her own belly swells, stricken with child once more.

Sometimes, depending on their hospitality, she will bless the families with a good harvest to sustain their new children. Sometimes she'll have the wildflowers bloom at the edge of their tiny hobbles, draw in the tamest wolves to protect their homes, lift a fever or two when given the chance.

Earth Mother, they call her. She does not have the strength to tell them that the goddess they are really looking for – Gaia – has long been put to rest. All the same, they thank her, still in the crude language of theirs, looking to her with such reverence she almost isn't sure what to do with it. To Rhea, it is a feeling like no other.

For once, she is content, though knows it is not meant to last. Soon, her belly grows too heavy for her to bear.

Rhea finds herself walking their northernmost territory, half a mind to pass the invisible line separating their lands from the others to see what sort of god comes to strike her down. Though she cannot so much as a tiptoe the border before her entire body goes rigid and screams at how wrong this foreign dirt feels beneath her feet.

And so, she turns away, setting her sight upon the great northern fortress seated at the slopes of Mount Rhodopon.

She is half-frozen by the time she reaches Koios's fortress with a belly close to bursting. To no one's surprise, Rhea passes through unchallenged. The ice giants guarding the entrance scramble to bow to her without so much as a word uttered.

Phoebe is whom she finds seated upon her husband's throne of ice, a cape of white fur hanging off her neck and smothering a blue shift beneath.

"My lady," Rhea mocks with a bow of her own.

"My queen. I have been expecting you," Phoebe greets with no such derision. "You have traveled far, though it is with great apology that my husband is not here to welcome you."

It made no difference, truly, whom she would find seated upon this throne. All her subjects are forced to welcome her should they incur Kronos's wrath, runaway wife or otherwise.

Rhea's careful eyes trace the outline of a knife hidden beneath her sister's shift. "I have not come here in search of your husband, Phoebe."

"As I feared," she sighs. "I would never turn you away, Rhea. But if—" her eyes linger upon Rhea's swollen belly "—when your husband comes for you, I will not be able to stop him. I cannot give you the refuge you desire. Certainly not the one you deserve."

It comes as no surprise then, that every Titan must know of her curse by now. "I understand well enough." She holds out her arm. "Come, my journey has been a long one and taxing for sure. Rest would do me nicely and I would enjoy your company."

"I have a proposition," Rhea tells her sister when her water has broken and Phoebe has sent raven-haired Asteria fleeing from the room in search of midwives.

The Titaness turns from the windows showcasing the newly snowed landscape. Though they both know that not even a hundred snowstorms will keep out their husbands for long. "I cannot, Rhea."

Her eyebrows furrow. "You don't even know what I'm going to say—"

"I do," Phoebe interjects, eyes clouded with a sadness Rhea cannot place. "You have missed much since your return to Phrygia."

Rhea pauses, almost unsure of how to proceed until another contraction spurns her to action again. She grits her teeth. "If this is about Theia's affair with Kronos, I already know. I don't care."

"No. That's not—" Phoebe rubs a finger over the worry lines on her forehead. "I cannot disobey my husband. Not after what Gaia did."

Her mind whirls, enough to distract from her sparse contractions. "Gaia is asleep, I saw with my own eyes. She is harmless—"

"The oracle," Phoebe interjects.

Ah, a variable that has slipped Rhea's thoughts until now. The vengeful remnant of Chaos with a mind of its own, it seems.

Her sister crosses the room, taking the seat at her bedside. "Kronos needed it transferred so she was taken to Delphi in her state with Hypnos in toe," Phoebe continues with lips pursed. "Everyone wanted it to pass onto Koios. Themis performed the ceremony to ensure this…" her voice trails off.

"But something went wrong?" Rhea prompts.

Her eyes shut for the briefest of moments. "Gaia awoke."

Ice water rushes through her veins. "Is she still—"

"No. They were able to quell her again." To that, Rhea cannot tell if she is disappointed or relieved. In this state, she is not ready to face Gaia just yet. "But the spirit of the oracle was transferred. Into me."

Rhea has no need to ask why. Koios, as one of Kronos's most loyal brothers, had concocted the scheme to put Gaia to sleep after denying her the justice of freeing her other children. If anyone knows how to plot revenge in a split moment of clarity, it is her.

"Did he hurt you?" Rhea asks, rubbing smooth circles onto her belly.

"No," Phoebe dismisses too quickly for Rhea's liking. "Nothing like that."

She quiets again, contemplating. "If you possess the oracle then it means you are more powerful than them both." Her tone nearly sounds envious. Of course, Rhea wonders what might have happened had she been present at Delphi. Had the spirit of the oracle passed to her instead. "It doesn't seem like much of a dilemma."

Phoebe almost laughs. "Even if that were true, you can't escape him, sister." Her gaze drifts to Rhea's belly once more and the babe soon to arrive. Sure enough to slow her down. "Not while our brothers rule these lands."

"Then I'll go to another," she retorts.

Phoebe stiffens. "The barrier is too far."

"I can make it. But we have to act quickly once she comes." She endures another contraction. "It won't be long until he senses her power."

"Rhea—"

"I'm only asking you to try," Rhea interjects, knowing she should persist no longer. Knowing that if she widens her eyes just enough, assumes an even more pitiful appearance, her sister will eat out of the palm of her hand. A good sister would never do such a thing. But there is too much at stake. "For me?"

As predicted, Phoebe relents. "I'll see what preparations I can make."

For several hours, her sister disappears. Rhea's mind has no time to think of all the ways in which Phoebe has betrayed her – not while her child forces its way from between her thighs. She grips onto Asteria for support, thankful, at least, that someone is here for company.

The moment Asteria presents Rhea with her new babe, the doors part.

Phoebe arrives alone, skittering like a nervous horse. "Rhea—"

"Is it done?" she murmurs, looking down at the crying daughter that shares her eyes. Gaia's eyes. Perhaps she is with me still. "Mother loves you little one." Demeter, my girl.

Phoebe peers down at her, stroking a finger along the babe's arm. "I sent the servants away. No rumors will spread for the moment."

She only nods, momentarily silenced by the serenity of this moment. It is easy to pretend that there is no vengeful husband hovering over her, that her daughter's birth is a sign that happiness can return to her life once again.

"He will come soon regardless," her sister prompts once again and the illusion shatters "But there is a back gate…"

Rhea struggles off her bed, Phoebe's arm to steady her. "We must go now."

"Are you sure about this?"

"I have no choice."

Escaping the maze of snowfields seems much more difficult than entering it in the first place, as Rhea walks the same stretches of forest near their northern border. Even with one of her sister's borrowed parkas around her shoulders now, a frigid Rhea feels just as ill-prepared.

They pick their way through tangles of frozen thicket, the added pressure of keeping Demeter from jostling too much in her arms slowing her down even more.

For the hundredth time, Phoebe only watches with a thinly veiled measure of hopelessness, holding out her hand to Rhea. "I could hold her for you," she says after a time.

"No," the queen says too readily. "It's fine, I…"

"I understand."

How could you? You see your children every day, have never had to wonder at what moment your husband will come to take them away. She clutches her daughter tighter.

A blue comet flashes across the sky, stopping Phoebe dead in her tracks. Rhea only senses a slight ruffle on the wind, a minor detail usually beneath her notice.

"Koios," her sister whispers. "We won't get far."

Rhea grips her sister by the arm, jostling her. "I just need you to get me to the border, Phoebe. Please."

She opens her mouth to speak, but a howl rips through the still air, harsher than any blizzard to grace these lands. "PHOEBE!"

Their blood runs as cold as the snow beneath their feet.

"I cannot disobey my husband and my king, Rhea." Phoebe rips her arm away. "I put my own children in danger to help you. This must be as far as I go."

She bares her teeth. "Then you are no sister of mine," Rhea says, charging off into the forest.

"Rhea, please!"

With no one to help her now, she stumbles. Her dress and the flesh on her legs catch on thorns. Drops of ichor spill in her wake, a sure give away to her pursuers. Such chase is not audible. She hears no thunderous pursuit behind her, but Rhea knows this is not Koios's way. He reminds her of a fox, silent in its deception.

The tingle of the barrier calls to her. Where there had once been apprehension, she now senses salvation. If Rhea can slip through the break in the trees just before her muster up the courage she didn't have before—

The snow beneath her turns to ice and she stumbles with only enough balance to shove Demeter into her chest.

"That's enough, sister," says Koios just behind her. "It's over."

She glances over her shoulder, nearly crying when she sees Phoebe's neck clutched in his grasp, frost biting at her pale skin and climbing higher.

Kronos stands beside them. Rhea can say nothing to him, only hold shield her screaming daughter from his scrutiny. "Take her back where it's warm," he orders.

Koios releases Phoebe and she steals a shuddering breath. Her only consolation, if Rhea can even be afforded one at all, is that at least Demeter will never be subjected to the whims of men.

Even so, when her callous brother approaches, she can't help but scream, "Don't touch her!" Not that Koios pays any mind to her demands, snatching up the babe regardless.

Demeter passes into her husband's arms and her heart seizes in her chest. "Kronos, please. Please. She's only a girl – a stupid little girl." A lie, of course. Especially if she shares more with Rhea then just her eyes.

Her pleas fall on deaf ears. Nor does he look at Rhea; he only has eyes for his child. "I want my wife in Othrys by the end of the day."

"Of course, my lord." Koios nods, as Rhea struggles against him. He throws her into Phoebe's waiting arms and gestures at them to leave.

"That's enough, Rhea," Phoebe croons, throwing a mantle around her sister's shoulders. "Please, walk with me. Please."

"I can't, I can't." Her strength vanishes, resting solely with Demeter now. Her knees seem on the verge of collapse. "My girl. My little girl."

In that moment she understands why mothers often wish for a daughter of their own: a chance of redemption, to raise her right. But Rhea has once again been deprived of the chance, forever stuck with her mistakes and at no chance to undo them.

The abyss beckons again and Rhea knows she must decide here and now before night falls: wallow in pity once more or put herself to work. The choice is simple.

At twilight, guards enter her rooms to begin the escort back to Mount Othrys. All they find is the stone-faced Phoebe sitting at the edge of the bed, her gaze towards the open window. Rhea is nowhere to be found, once again gone with the wind.