Antheia Botanis's Arc

Chapter 5 of 15

Antheia watched the cutting through the night. The root held. The green tip stayed green. At dawn, thunder rolled without clouds, and Zeus dropped into the camp again. The ivy still covered his shoulders. He looked calmer, and that worried her more than the ash had. "I owe you a favor," he said. "I'm paying it now, on my terms. Walk with me." He tapped the scorched staff on the ground. The air folded. Antheia stepped through with the covered bowl in her arms and came out on a stone terrace high above cloud. Layered gardens climbed toward a shrine at the peak. Fountains ran between pruned trees. No one else stood on the steps. "This mountaintop was mine once," Zeus said. "The last flower goddess left it three hundred years ago. No one filled the seat. The groves are dying because no one holds the office." He turned to face her. "I name you flower goddess. The title, the ground, the duty. Plant your first grove here. The blight will slow where you root." Antheia set the bowl on the stone. Her crown, which had shed three petals near the black groves, pushed out a new bud along the rim. She felt the office settle into her shoulders like weight added to a pack. "I accept," she said. "On the record. Witnessed by your staff." Zeus struck the stone once. The terrace hummed. A swarm of gold bees with peacock markings poured out of a hive she had not seen and circled her head. "Yours," he said. "They carry pollen between any two gardens in the world. Use them." He left the way he came. Antheia knelt and pressed Roswell's cutting into a crack in the terrace stone. Root took soil in a breath. A second shoot came up beside it, then a third. She had a place now. She had a name that gods had to honor. She reached for her book to write the grant down. A figure stood on the top step of the shrine. Small, green-skinned, leaves in the hair, eyes flat. Antheia had not heard the steps. Verdis Thornheart came down two stairs and stopped. "Zeus gave you my seat," they said. "He did not ask me." A vine crept out from under their heel and reached toward the new shoot. It moved by inches, patient. "I've been the flower goddess for three hundred years. Quietly. He forgot." Antheia's crown wilted a full ring of petals at once. Brown, curled, and dropped on the stone between them. The bees went still in the air. The new shoot leaned away from the crawling vine on its own. Antheia understood then where the blight came from, and who she had just been set against. She closed the book without writing.