The flame was wrong. Hestia knelt at the edge of the gold cauldron and watched the fire breathe like a sick animal. It should have stood three times her height. Tonight it crouched, blue at the root, hungry. She had sealed the crack in the stone vessel behind her pavilion with oil two nights ago. The oil would hold one more day. Maybe less. If the flame died, every hearth in the mortal world would go cold, and every god on the mountain with them. She had not slept since she found the wound. She could not stay and hunt at the same time. That was the trap. Whoever cracked the vessel knew her rule: she did not leave the fire. So they would wait for her to leave, or they would wait for her to stay and starve watching. Either way, the next strike finished it. Hestia pulled her gold veil tight over her red hair and made the choice she had sworn never to make. She called the pig. He came up the marble steps between the white columns, trotters clicking, fire curling along his back, the gold ring in his nose catching the cauldron light. He was the only living thing she trusted with the flame because he was made of it. She knelt and pressed her forehead to his hot snout. "Hold it steady," she said. "Eat anything that comes near it that isn't me." He grunted and lay down at the base of the cauldron, a small furnace beside a dying one. Then she set her bronze kettle on the lip of the basin, lid off, so any ember that spat loose would fall inside and not onto the marble. The pavilion would keep watch with him. Round roof, horses carved in the frieze above the columns, the great cauldron crowning it all. A sentinel of gold and stone. She had built it for exactly this hour and hoped never to use it for this. She found Zeus in the council chamber, alone, turning a sealed tablet in his hands. He looked up before she spoke. "Your fire is failing," he said. "I felt it in the floor." She told him she was leaving the hearth. She told him who was watching it. She asked him to send no one near the pavilion, god or servant, until she returned. "I am king of the gods," he said. "I keep the order of this mountain. The hearth will stand while you hunt. Go." He did not ask what she would do when she found the one who cut the vessel. She did not tell him. Hestia walked out under the columns and did not look back at the pig or the low blue flame. She had one day to find the hand that cracked the stone. Behind her, the ember pig lifted his head and watched the dark beyond the steps.