-Alexia-
The house is exactly as I left it.
The porch creaks beneath my boots. The herbs hanging from the rafters are brittle and brown, untouched for months. My key still fits. I step inside.
It smells like dried lavender and dust.
I make tea from muscle memory, though I don't drink it. I light the fireplace, curl up in the old rocking chair with my knees to my chest, and let the quiet wrap around me.
I don't cry. I don't sleep. I just… sit.
Outside, a storm begins to roll in.
I woke up to thunder.
Except I didn't remember falling asleep.
Lightning flashes through the windows, and the room smells like ozone and wet earth. The door swings open without wind, and something ancient steps through.
She is tall and strange and wild. Her skin is the green of sun-dappled moss, her hair a fall of windblown leaves and tangled vines. Her eyes—one glowing gold, the other a swirl of violet and storm—see through me.
She says nothing. She doesn't have to. I know who she is.
"Virelya," I whisper.
The Goddess of Wild Things and Sacred Storms. The balance of growth and destruction. Nature and chaos. The goddess who walks when the forest breathes.
She tilts her head. Her voice is wind and roots and thunder.
"You fear yourself."
I nod, trembling. "I don't know how to hold it all. The magic. The bonds. The chaos inside me."
"You are the seed and the wildfire. You were never meant to be one thing."
The floor around her cracks with growing vines. Flowers bloom and decay in the same breath.
"Nature is not peaceful. Chaos is not evil. Both are necessary. Both are power."
I press my hand to my chest. "Then why did they bind me? Why did they take Zeus?"
"Because they fear what they do not understand."
Her eyes glow brighter. "But you are ready. And I will give you back what was stolen."
She steps forward and places a hand over my heart. Heat floods my body—gold and violet, earth and flame, roots and lightning. I scream, but the sound is wind.
The spell shatters.
My breath catches—and he's there.
Zeus appears at the threshold, his eyes glowing, tail wagging, shadows rippling around his fur. He bounds into my lap, whining and pressing close, solid and real.
I sob into his fur.
Virelya watches, expression unreadable. "The world will still fear you. But now, you will not fear yourself."
She turns, stepping back into the storm, disappearing as if she had never been.
And I am left in the silence, glowing faintly, Zeus at my feet, power humming in my veins for the first time.
I am not just the daughter of chaos.
I am the girl who lived.
I am the girl who came back.
And I will never be caged again.