Page 62 of Aïdes the Unseen
“Briefly. He left without damaging the node field, but—he’s noticed her.”
I turned away from the screen. Cold coiled in my gut, ancient and rising.
“He’s not supposed to know yet.”Noneof them were.
“You don’t control the pantheon,” Mara said evenly.
“No,” I said. “But I control this facility. You were supposed to shield her.”
“She’s blooming too fast. We can’t contain what we didn’t anticipate.”
I moved toward her, voice low. “Whatexactlydidn’t we anticipate, Mara?”
She didn’t flinch. “The dog. The wayRegrowthresponded. The anomalies in the substrata of the greenhouse soil—something’s stirring beneath her presence, and it’s older than anything I’ve tracked through Thanatek’s systems.”
A pause.
“And?” I pressed.
She met my eyes. “She’s not following the usual pattern.”
Of course she wasn’t.
She never did.
Yet, how was I supposed to counter any obstacles if she changed everything too swiftly?
Thessaloniki,1456
They called herLetothen.Black curls, hard green eyes, a laugh that could cut through the salt-thick air of the harbor. She was a candle-maker’s daughter, or so it seemed. I knew the truth the moment she passed me in the square. She didn’t look. Shedidn’t smile. But something in the air behind her shimmered like ash from the old world.
It was her.
I waited three days. Didn’t speak. Didn’t interfere.
On the fourth, I followed her to the hillside chapel, half-burnt from the most recent siege. She left wildflowers at the altar—red and gold and violet, the same colors she had always chosen.
She was seventeen.
Too young.
Too mortal.
Too bright for a god like me.
And yet I waited, even then.
But she died in childbirth the following spring. And still shedid not come to me.
No soul. No echo. No descent into shadow.
Nothing.
It was the third time that had happened.
Present
“I want a full scan of every soul-tether in a ten-mile radius,” I said. “I don’t care if it burns the node network. I wantevery anomaly tagged.”
