Goddess of the Rose (Goddess Summoning #4)(42)

"Especially by the young," Mikki agreed.

The two smiled at one another, and for a moment, they were not goddess and mortal. They were just two women in perfect agreement.

After a short, compatible silence, the goddess said, "I imagine this" - she gestured with one hand to take in the gardens and the palace - "all seems quite unusual to you."

Encouraged by the goddess's approachability, Mikki smiled crookedly. "It is strange and unusual, as well as more than a little overwhelming, but I do feel drawn to everything here." She hurried on, not wanting Hecate to know included in that "everything" was her cloven-hoofed late-night visitor. "When I cast the circle and performed the initiation ritual I felt more beautiful and powerful and right than I've ever felt in my life."

Hecate nodded. "The Empousa blood runs thick in your veins, Mikado. You could not have felt true belonging in the mundane world. Part of you longed to take your proper place in my realm. I suspect even your mother and her mothers before her knew the unease of not quite fitting in."

Mikki thought about her mother, remembering how she had always seemed to prefer to be alone - or to spend time working in her garden with her roses - than to socialize. How she hadn't ever seemed to miss her father's presence and when Mikki asked about him she only said that he had been an indulgence of her youth, but that she would always be grateful to him for giving her the most important gift in her life - her daughter.

Her grandmother, too, had not been a woman who had many friends outside her daughter and her granddaughter. She rarely spoke of the man who was her grandfather, except to smile surreptitiously and say that they had had two different viewpoints on marriage - he had enjoyed it; she hadn't. Men had not been important in either her mother's or her grandmother's life. Not that either of them hadn't been wonderful, loving women. They had been, and Mikki missed them both desperately. Her grandmother had died of an unexpected heart attack five years ago, and breast cancer had stolen her mother four years after that. Mikki thought of both women as beautiful and ageless, like they'd stepped out of one of the fairy tales her mother used to read to Mikki when she was a young girl. They had been otherworldly . . .

"They are at peace now, Mikado. Even from the mundane world across the far edges of my crossroads, their souls were able to find the paradise of the Elysian Fields, and, finally, true belonging. You need not weep for them."

Mikki reached up, surprised to feel the tears wetting her cheeks. She looked at Hecate. "They belong here, too. That's why they didn't really fit in back there."

"Part of them belonged here, but the magick in their blood was not as strong as the magick within you. If it had been, they would have awakened the Guardian and returned."

Mikki wiped her cheeks dry. "The Guardian . . . I met him last night."

The goddess cocked her head, studying her priestess. "And what was your reaction to him?"

"He scared me," she said quickly. And then more slowly she added, "And he made me sad."

"Sad?" Hecate's brows lifted into her dark hair.

Mikki moved her shoulders restlessly. "I don't know . . . there's something about him that feels so alone."

"There is no other creature like him in existence, so by his very nature he is alone. Ages ago, when I took dominion over this realm, I knew I needed a guardian to stand watch over it. This is the realm from whence all the dreams and magick originate; it must be protected. So I called upon the great beasts of olde - the immortal offspring of the Titans. Though I am Goddess of the Beasts, I do not hold dominion over them. Even I could not force one of their kind into my service. The creature you met last night bound himself willingly to me. He took up this eternal burden when it was not his own. I have gifted him with some powers that are unique to this realm, but the Guardian has an ancient magick of his own - he ties the threads of reality to that of this realm."

"Has he always been as he is now?"

Hecate's sharp gaze seemed to look within her. "The Guardian has never been a man, nor will he ever be. Do not ever make the mistake of believing otherwise."

With effort, Mikki didn't flinch at the goddess's anger, but she quickly changed the direction of her questioning.

"He's called the Guardian, and you said he is needed to protect the realm. From what does it need protection?"

"Dream Stealers and those who desire to possess the fashioning of magick for themselves. Dreams and magick belong to all of mankind, even those who live in the mundane world. No one has the right to steal such things for himself."

Mikki didn't really understand what the goddess was talking about, but she was damn tired of sounding like a blundering idiot. As she had implied to Hecate, she was old enough to figure things out for herself. So she'd keep her eyes open and learn. And she wouldn't ask too many personal questions about the Guardian - clearly that made the goddess angry, and a pissed-off goddess couldn't possibly be a good thing.

But there was one question she needed to ask, whether it made her look moronic or not.

"Where do the roses fit in to all this?"

Hecate smiled as she gazed out at the expanse of dream-colored flowers.

"Roses are beauty, and beauty is at the heart of all dreams and magick; it is its foundation, its support. Without beauty, the mind cannot reach beyond the corporeal to grasp the ethereal."