Page 58 of Prometheus' Priestess

“What are you doinghere?”

Amara snorted. “Don’t be facetious. You know exactly what is going on or you wouldn’t be here.”

When Prometheus had been taken away, he hadn’t even been given the chance to kiss her goodbye. Instead he’d uttered a forlorn two words, “I’m sorry,” and departed.

He hadn’t even lookedback.

She knew he’d done it to protect her from those that watched. That hadn’t made it hurt any less. The next day, she’d leftEdinburgh.

She had contemplated staying. Athena had told her why they wanted her placed in Scotland before she’d been placed in this human body, which is why she had felt the tug. But Amara, on learning the goddesses had had a lot less information than they let on when they set her on this path, now felt like it was her right to determine where she went from here. And no matter that her priestess memories had returned, the human ones still existed. Being herehurt.Being here withouthimhurt.

Saying goodbye at the café had hurt too, though it was more a bittersweet kind of pain. Alice had given her a massive bear hug that had squeezed the breath out of Amara’s lungs. Graham, too, had hugged her ... but more with the embrace of a loving father letting his little girl go. The gentleness of which had caused painful tears to spring up in her eyes. Shaking it off, she had made the most of her last day in Edinburgh, making sure each customer received five minutes of her time.

The regulars told her of how they would miss her. Even one of the morning mums had bought her a coffee and a slice of cake to have on her lunch break as a goodbye gift. And then there was Rhonda andBessie.

“You go after him,” Rhonda told her, immediately assuming the reason for Amara’s departure before she could say anything else. “You don’t let one like that get away.” She patted Amara’s arm knowingly.

Bessie, meanwhile, handed her a knitted scarf that had been around her ownneck.

“To remind you of home here,” she had said. And Amara had pretended to be absorbed in the quality of the knitwork to hide the tears that had sprung into her eyes at the kind gesture. Finally, she had found a place that felt like home and now it had been tainted, by those who didn’t care.

And while she had understood the goddesses’ logic, to birth light in the place that held none any longer, they had been mistaken. The birth of anything was not about the geographical location, it was aboutwho was present for it.Namely, family. The emphasis had always been on family. It was why the gods were built of Zeus’ lineage, not to obey him − most of them didn’t if they could avoid getting caught − but because of the familial blood tie. There was ancient magic in the blood tie, something that had transcended to the humans. Amara could feel it humming in her bones. It was why, in her human form, she had been obsessed with her lineage. The secret to her alchemy had not been to force it but to surround her with the people who would unlock it. And the only person who had helped with that had been sentaway.

Which was why, as Hermes found her, she was wearing that knitted purple and white scarf of Bessie’s, even though it wasn’tthatcold, as she was on her way back to Father Michel and the Parisian parish in which she’d grown up. Where she’d ran amongst the pews, pretending to hide from the ‘demons’.

That young girl had had no idea, she thought, of what the real demons were like. The ones that whispered in your head late at night when no one else was awake to banish them. The ones that were trapped in bottles of liquor that, once escaped, couldn’t be coaxed back in. The ones that flogged at her back and made her work like a horse just to believe everything was good enough. The demons she had so desperately tried to keep at bay had appeared to be her friends, her crutches when true evil had entered her life, the fear the goddesses had spoken of.

Except now she had been a human, she could see how easy it was to do. What good had she done with the fear? Nothing. She’d tried to bury it, deep within her. Paper over it, like papier-mâché that at the first sign of water had crumbled. It had taken the white fire of knowledge to begin to burn it away.

She could have chosen to follow Prometheus back to Olympus but that, she acknowledged, would have undone all the sacrifice he had made. She knew how she could spread the message now and knew how to complete her task in a way that would honour his sacrifice. Besides, she didn’t want to go back and face those who had used her ... the goddesses. She couldn’t do it. The pride she had once felt in serving them had been stripped away with the harsh chemicals of human reality ... and biology.

Now that the white fire had stripped back the barriers to her soul’s memories, it was as if everything outside of her was exposed too. Humanity had been stripped of its outer shell and Amara could see all the subconscious thoughts swirling around them within. The conflict they held.The wounds they so desperately clungonto in the hopes no one would hurt them anymore. The projections they put upon each other. The life of the humans was far more brutal than any god in Olympus realised. Only Prometheus had warned her. If only she’dlistened.

Amara realised Hermes hadn’t spoken and was still followingher.

“I’m still a human. I have every right to be here. Hera can’t summon me back to berate me when I am the very thing I’m interfering with.”

It had taken Amara a solid twelve hours after Prometheus had left to figure outthatloophole.

“It’s not Hera that summons you. It’sZeus.”

Amara stopped in her tracks at that. A commuter keeping pace behind her stopped short, bumped into her and muttered disgruntled curses as he tried to weave his way back into the pedestrian traffic around Amara andHermes.

“My point is still valid,” she said, though with such a faint tone even she didn’t believeherself.

“Except for the fact youarestill a member of Olympus. It’s not an either/or situation, priestess. It’s a both/and.”

He had her there.

Amara cleared her throat and tried again.

“I was sent here with a task todo.”

“You aren’t abandoning your duties by following Zeus’ summons,” Hermes quipped back. “In fact, from where I’m standing, the only one you are abandoning right now isyourself.”

“Excuse me?!” Amara rounded on him.

Hermes rocked back on his heels, his hands in his pockets and shrugged nonchalantly. She continued glaring at him, willing him to explain himself, until he supposedly softened.

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