Sophia Alderwyne's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Sophia Alderwyne came to Olympus to dress its gods, and she could not thread a single needle. Her studio sat in a manor an ocean and a world away, in Alderwyne, full of silk and shears she could not touch. Here she had only a satchel of sketches and a promise from Hermes that the gods wanted her work. Wanting was not the same as building. She had walked the marble halls all morning, and no one had offered her so much as a table. Hermes found her outside a domed pavilion, watching a globe turn behind glass. He landed light, the small wings at his sandals still shivering. "You look like a woman doing math," he said. "Usually a bad sign for someone." "I need a room," Sophia said. "Walls. A floor that holds a loom. Ares won't wear a sketch. None of them will." She touched the gold owl at her throat, her family's crest. "I can design for every god here. I cannot do it from a bench." Hermes rubbed his neck. "So Olympus has a rule. Mortals don't live on the mountain. You're a demigod, which is the loophole, but a small one." He shrugged. "Nobody grants a workspace. You have to already have one before they think to say no." Sophia understood him. Ask, and they refuse. Arrive, and they adjust. Her brother Aether stood at the pavilion steps, arms crossed, a thin gold light moving under his skin. He commanded storms the gods still feared. He had come to earn a throne. He had never come to help her. "Conner," she said. "I need a room, and I need it standing before anyone asks who let me in." "You want me to build you a workshop," Aether said. Not a question. He looked at the empty pavilion behind the glass, then at her. "They'll say I overstepped." "They already whisper that you breathe wrong," Sophia said. "Give them a real reason." Something shifted in his face. He liked being the reason. He raised one gloved hand. The air went tight and cold. Wind pushed through the pavilion's open arches, and a low storm gathered under the dome, quiet, controlled. Shelves of cloud pressed the loose columns into place. The floor cleared. A corner became a room with three walls and a wide, level floor. Sophia stepped inside before the wind died. She set her satchel down. She unrolled her sketches on the new floor and knelt to smooth them flat. By dusk her loom stood in the corner, her name carved along its top beam, owls watching from the wood. She had a place on Olympus now. She threaded the first warp for Ares. But a satyr stopped in the arch, stared, and hurried off. Word would travel fast. She had not asked. She had taken. And the gods who ran this mountain would soon come to see who had claimed a room without their leave.