Page 34 of Styx

them blinking and study

their glimmer and glow?’

My mother brushed

my dark curls away

from my face to look

into my violet eyes.

‘Please, Asteria.

We are visitors in this palace,

and I would like you to spend

more time with your uncles

and aunts and cousins

while we are here.’

I would have pleaded more,

but I could see my younger sister,

Leto, watching me carefully.

Disobedience was not

a lesson I wanted to teach her.

So instead, I swallowed

my displeasure and nodded

at my mother. Before she could

ask more of me, I turned

and left our shared chambers

inside Oceanus’s grand palace.

As I walked those gilded halls,

my nymph cousins called to me,

their riverbanks rich with flowers

as they sat laughing and sharing secrets.

But I simply waved to them

and kept going, quickening

my pace. Ever since we had arrived