Antheia Botanis's Arc

Chapter 4 of 15

Antheia and Roswell rode the blue monarch back to her small camp on the ridge above the pines. She set the cutting in a shallow bowl of damp moss and let his roots hold it steady. The green tip was still green. She wanted a full day of quiet to watch it. She did not get an hour. A shape dropped from the clouds and landed hard between the tents. Small moth-sized wings buzzed at his back, one edge black and curled. He wore a gold crown and carried a scorched staff. Antheia knew the face from every temple painting north of the sea. Zeus straightened his robe and pretended the wings were not there. "I hear you took a husband yesterday," he said. "Word travels. I came to see the bride." He looked at Roswell, then at the cutting, then at her crown with its missing petals. "A plant goddess. A root prince. Interesting week." Antheia stepped between him and the bowl. The cutting sat exposed on the moss, no cloth over it, no shield. One careless spark from the singed staff and a year of work would be ash. "You didn't come for a wedding gift," she said. "You came because you want something. Say it and go. I have work." Zeus's mouth twisted. He glanced at the sky, then at her, and lowered his voice. "Hermes put these on me while I slept. I need them off before the others notice. You grow living things. Cut them off. Clean." He turned his shoulder to show her. The singed wing shed a fleck of ash onto the moss beside the cutting. Roswell's roots pulled the cutting back an inch on their own. She thought fast. He would not leave until he had a trade. She could not send the king of the gods away empty and keep her cutting safe from the next spark. "I can't cut them," she said. "They're grown into you now. But I can hide them. A glamour of leaves over your shoulders until they fall on their own. No one sees wings. You walk out looking like yourself." She held out her hand. "In return, you leave now, and you owe me one favor for the garden when I call." Zeus considered. He did not like debt. He liked exposure less. "Done," he said. She laid her palm on his back, and small ivy leaves spread across the wings and pinned them flat under green. He rolled his shoulders, nodded once, and rose into the clouds without another word. Antheia knelt by the bowl. The cutting was still green. The ash fleck sat on the moss beside it, a finger's width from the root. She brushed it off and covered the bowl with a cloth. Then she wrote the favor down in her book, because a god's promise fades faster than ink.