Marg had crossed three countries to find the god who gave her the sky, and she still couldn't stop the sky from turning on people. Her palms itched. Clouds bunched over the little hut where she'd been practicing for a week. She had come to this quiet plain to learn control before she found him. So far, control did not come. Twice on the road her temper had spun up storms. Twice, only luck kept them from crushing a village. She stepped out of the hut and shook her hands, trying to loosen the pressure under her skin. Overhead, the clouds darkened. A cold wind pushed her braids across her face. "Not now," she said. "Not here." Her dragon lifted his head from the grass. He was black with gold along his wings, and he had followed her from the first day the powers woke. He watched the sky, then watched her, and made a low sound in his throat. A warning. Marg didn't listen. She reached for the storm and tried to pull it apart. Instead she fed it. Thunder cracked. A bolt of lightning split a rock near the hut, and the heat threw her back into the dirt. Rain came down hard and cold. She realized she couldn't hold this. She could barely feel where her power ended and the storm began. So she stopped fighting the sky. She turned to the old stone fire pit under the heartwood tree. If she couldn't reach the god through her hands, she would reach him another way. She dragged herself to the pit and threw in what she had carried for this: a river serpent's bone crown and a strange dark flower she'd cut days ago. The fire hissed and jumped. "Council of gods," she called over the wind. "I don't want this power loose. Tell me where the one who gave it is. Help me before it kills someone." Her dragon spread his wings above her, blocking the rain, steady as a roof. The offering burned green, then white. For a moment the storm above her hut went still. The wind died. The rain stopped in the air, hanging. Then the fire showed her something. Not a face. A direction. A pull, sharp and clear, tugging north like a hook behind her ribs. She knew, without doubt, which way the sky-god waited. The storm broke apart. The clouds thinned and drifted off, harmless, over empty grass. No one had been hurt. Marg knelt in the mud and breathed. But the offering had answered only half her plea. The pull told her where to go. It said nothing about her hands. She still couldn't control the power, and now she couldn't stay. The god was days north, and every mile between here and there was a mile she might spark another storm with no fire pit and no warning. She stood and looked at her dragon. "North," she said. "We can't wait to be ready."

Marg had flown north for two days when the ground below told her the truth. She circled low over a broken village. Roofs lay flat. A well had caved in. People moved through the wreckage, and when they saw her dragon, they pointed and shouted. She landed at the edge of a burned field. A second ruined village sat beyond it, just as flat. She had done this. Both storms had come from her hands. A crowd gathered fast. Men carried pitchforks and stones. A woman held a broken door like a shield. "That's her," someone yelled. "The witch who wrecked us." They pressed forward. Marg raised her hands to calm them, and that was the mistake. Her palms itched. The sky darkened. Wind rose and knocked a man off his feet. She felt the storm build and could not stop it. The crowd screamed and scattered. Marg dropped to her knees in the dirt. "Help me," she said, to no one and to the whole sky. "I can't hold it. Stop this before it kills them." The wind cut off. A man stepped out of the dust. He was broad, olive-skinned, and dark tattoos wrapped his arms. He wore battered armor and moved like the ground belonged to him. The villagers froze. The frightened woman dropped her door and backed away. "You beg the sky," the man said. "Wrong god." He was Ares, the god of war, and he studied Marg the way a soldier studies a raw recruit. "Your storms are not weather. They are a fight you keep losing." "I don't want to fight anyone," Marg said. "I want it to stop." "Then stop swinging." Ares crouched to her level. "You reach for the storm to crush it. It reaches back. Don't grip. Let it fall through your hands like water." The wind was climbing again. A cart tipped over behind them. Marg wanted to seize the storm and throw it down. Instead she remembered his words. She opened her hands flat. She stopped pulling. She let the power slide loose and pass through her. The clouds thinned. The wind slowed to a breeze. The rain never came. For the first time, Marg had steered a storm and set it down gentle. The villagers watched the sky clear and lowered their weapons, unsure. Marg turned to thank Ares, but he was already walking away. "The god you seek gave you a weapon and no training," he called back. "Ask him why when you find him." Then he was gone into the dust. Marg stood. Her hands were still. She looked north, then at the wrecked village around her. She could keep the storms leashed now, but only barely, and only when she stayed calm. The pull behind her ribs tugged north, sharp as ever. She whistled for her dragon. She had her answer about her hands. She still needed her answer from the god.

Marg flew north for three more days. Each night the air grew colder. Ares had taught her to release her storms, and it had worked for two villages. But these northern winds were different. They came thin and gray, and they did not fall through her hands. They clung. On the fourth day, one snagged in her chest like a hook and would not let go. Her dragon dipped hard. The wind spun them sideways. Marg opened her palms flat, the way Ares showed her. She let go. Nothing happened. The strange wind only tightened. Ice formed on her lashes. Her fingers went numb around the reins. "Release," she told herself. "Just release." But there was nothing to release. The wind was not hers. It belonged to something older, something waiting. The dragon fell. Marg screamed and gripped the storm on instinct, the exact mistake Ares had warned against. The sky turned black. Lightning cracked below them, not above. They were going to hit the ground. Then the cold broke. Warm air rushed up and caught the dragon like a hand. Marg felt the wind soften and steady. Below, a woman stood on the frozen rock. She was small, wrapped in pink and gold, with dark hair and a red pomegranate held loose in one palm. Flowers bloomed around her feet in the ice. The dragon landed gentle at her side. "You reach the wrong way," the woman said. Her voice was calm, almost fond. "You cannot release what is not yours to hold." Marg slid off her dragon, shaking. "Who are you?" "Persephone." The woman touched Marg's cheek. Her hand was warm as spring. "I have watched you a long time, child. Longer than you know." Her eyes searched Marg's face like she was reading an old letter. "These winds are not weather. They are the breath of the underworld, leaking up through the north. They answer to death, not to the sky." Marg pulled back. "Then I've been flying the wrong way. The god I want is north." "The one who gave you storms, yes." Persephone's smile faded. "But the north hides another gate. And the truth of you sits behind it, not in the sky." She pressed the pomegranate into Marg's cold hands. "Eat when you are ready. It will keep the death-winds from taking you. My gift. From your mother." The word landed hard. "My mother?" Persephone was already stepping back. Frost climbed over the flowers she had made. "Ask the sky-god your question. But when he answers, you will have a second question. And that one leads down, not north." She faded into the warm air, and the cold rushed back in. Marg stood alone on the ice, the fruit warm in her frozen hands. She could survive the northern winds now. But the ground had changed under her. She was not only chasing a gift anymore. She was chasing where she came from.

Marg flew north again the next morning. The pomegranate sat warm in her belt pouch, and the death-winds no longer clung to her chest. But warmth was not a map. Somewhere in this gray waste hid a gate to the underworld, and she could not see even a mile ahead. She and her dragon circled a plain of black rock. Every ridge looked the same. "Where is it?" she asked. The wind gave no answer. She landed and dug the fire pit into the rock with her twin daggers. She had done this before, and it had shown her the sky-god. Maybe it would show her the gate. She stacked what dry moss she could find and struck a spark. The flame caught small and blue. Marg knelt over it. "Show me the door," she prayed. "Show me the way down." The flame did not build a vision. It bent sideways, then flattened toward the north, as if something pulled it. Marg followed its point with her eyes. Twenty steps off, the black rock split open in a seam she had flown over a dozen times. She had not seen it. Now the fire pointed straight at it. She walked to the seam. Cold breath rose from the crack. She pushed her fingers in and pulled. The rock ground back, and a stone frame lifted out of the ground. Two curved horns crowned it. Chains crossed its face. Runes she could not read glowed along the pillars, and behind them a low orange fire churned like a living thing. She had found it. The hidden gate stood open in front of her. A man stepped out of the fire. He wore dark robes stitched with silver. His hair was black, streaked with gray, and his eyes were flat and old. He looked at Marg the way a person looks at someone they already know. "You lit a fire at my door," he said. His voice was quiet and did not need to be loud. "Few do that and stay standing." Marg's hand went to her dagger. "Who are you?" "Hades." He studied her face, the same way Persephone had. "She sent you the fruit. Of course she did." His jaw tightened. "You have her chin. And my temper, I think." Marg's breath caught. "She said she was my mother." "Then she told you half." He looked past her, north, toward the sky-god she had crossed three countries to reach. "The one you chase up there gave you storms. He did not give you life." His eyes returned to her. "I did." The fire behind him pulled at her like a tide. Marg understood now why she could not release the death-winds. They were not a stranger's. They were her father's, and part of her own blood. The gate stood open. Her question about the sky-god had not changed. But a heavier one now waited below, and the way to it was in front of her.