Page 4 of Railed By the Easter Bunny

I haven’t requested an audience. And I have no idea what happens when you just show up to the door of the old gods’ domain.

I don’t even know if any of the other old gods remain.

I wait as the doors—I only just notice they and the walls around me are actually padded—remain shut, barring me from leaving, no matter what waits for me on the other side.

It feels like an eternity passes before a too-cheery ding echoes and the doors ease open to a dimly lit space.

I step out onto a stone path lined by what I first thought was carpet. But it’s grass… real trees form a canopy over my head, and as I walk further into Ester’s domain, a pale fog creeps at the edges of the undergrowth.

The lift dings behind me and when I turn back, the line of light from inside compresses until it disappears. There is nothing but dark forest where it would have once been.

Wherever I am now, it’s still night, and a cool breeze washes over me. But the path leads very definitely in the direction I started, and there’s no chance of going back now.

I walk further and further into this strange forest. Blossoms closed for the night shaped like heavy eggs hang from the trees in long strands. Butterflies and firebugs dance through the air, flirting close to me, but always skittering away when I look at them.

The forest opens up almost as suddenly as it appeared from behind those lift doors. And the meadow laid out before me is bathed in light from the wrong sort of moon.

But the woman I came to seek is here, she stands in a long robe. White and gauzy, it falls from her like a gown meant for a wedding night. The flowers she touches bloom under her fingers, and she smells them as though they are each a lover.

I’ve seen her once before, but at a distance.

Paintings do her no justice.

Skin the colour of midnight, her hair is a white halo around her head.

The path ends at that meadow, stones getting smaller and smaller until they are almost nothing at all. One more step, and I know my heels will sink into the soft grass.

My hesitation is momentary before I simply take my shoes off.

I’d dressed with the intention of going out to my favourite club—a different way of escaping Jamus. I hadn’t imagined I’d need an audience with the goddess of spring.

Still….

I put one foot in front of the other, walking down the gentle slope toward a throne made of pale pink roses, surrounded by a riot of daffodils and tulips.

And I am a dark smudge in the middle of it all.

“I expected you sooner, child.”

Her voice is like wind chimes. High, melodic, and seemingly gone before it’s there in the first place.

I have no answer to that, so I don’t speak at all.

Leaving her blooms to sleep once more, she turns to me and I have to look down. Her face is too blindingly beautiful.

“I know who you are, and what you run from…. But what do you want, Lily? What do you truly desire?” She drags a pale pink nail along the line of my jaw. “I don’t think it’s merely your freedom.”

“I want….” I’m not sure what answer she wants to hear, but if I can only have one thing… “I want to belong to myself, with no one else thinking they have a claim on me.”

She studies me. I can feel her gaze, even if I can’t meet it. “And you will never be able to do that while Jamus is alive.”

“I did not come here to ask you to kill your descendant.”

“No… but you wouldn’t be sad if I did.”

That makes me look up and I’m trapped by her eyes. An unearthly pale pink, they watch me, waiting.

“No. I wouldn’t.”

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