The Daughter of Zeus novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Grove of the Hind

The Grove was the only place on Olympus where it snowed.

A high stone wall ringed it, older than the city, with a single iron gate.

Alekos held the gate open for me and didn't go through.

"I haven't been in since you took her skin," he said.

"They closed it."

"Who did?"

"The queen."

"Then why do you have a key?"

"I don't," he said.

"I've never needed one."

The gate swung inward at his touch.

I went in alone, with the antler in my fist.

It pulled me forward.

The snow squeaked under my boots.

The trees were bare and silver, and the sky above them was the pale pink of the hour before dawn.

There was a hollow in the snow near the wall, a bed worn smooth by something that had slept there a long time.

Beside it stood a wooden trough, full of oats.

The oats were dry and a little stale.

Somebody had filled that trough every day, right up until the day I came.

I stood looking at that trough until my vision swam.

At the center of the Grove stood a leafless tree, and from the lowest branch hung a pelt.

It was white, and gold at the edges, and I knew it as well as I knew my own hands.

I had scraped the fat from the inside with a knife at the edge of a mountain meadow.

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