My heart squeezed at the thought.
“I’d like that. Can you make the bed just a little softer, though?”
Zotera nodded and hurried to my door.
The second she was inside, it changed. The ceiling stretched away from us, towering overhead with arched openings closed with modern glass. I could see the stars twinkling in them. She didn’t add the open-concept bathroom to the space, but everything else was the same, from the golden disc on the wall by the vanity to the bed hangings. Which were the same red as the room where Persephone had died.
“Can you change those to a soft blue like the sky today?” I asked.
The deep red bled away to a tranquil light blue.
“Like that?” she asked.
“Perfect,” I said.
“Go look in the bathroom.”
I went to the door and squealed a little. Zotera had combined modern and medieval, creating an open-concept wet room in the now all-marble space. The shower with its curtain was gone. In its place, a wide gold arm extended into the room. The tiny holes released a light rainfall of water onto the river rock floor. In place of the porcelain toilet, a marble one waited with a golden handle that matched the golden fixtures on the marble sink basin.
“This is absolutely beautiful,” I said, sticking my arm into the falling water before testing the knobs to verify it turned off. Everything worked, and I grinned.
“If this had been my room all along, I don’t think I would have hated it so much,” I said.
“Do you want to change the rest of the house?” she asked.
“I do, but I think I’ll need some ideas.”
I led her out to the living room and turned on the TV. The reruns of old human shows weren’t that inspiring, though, so I sent Megan a text.
Me: Any chance you could talk the council into allowing me access to live TV?
Megan: On it.
She sent another one a minute later.
Megan: Turn the TV off and on again. It should work.
I did and giddily settled in to channel surf.
“I know there should be home improvement channels where they remodel people’s houses. Eliana told me about them. Those will give us some ideas.”
Instead of finding that, I hit a news station.
I wasn’t sure if Eliana had intentionally downplayed the truth or if she hadn’t known the full extent. All over the world, buildings had collapsed. Due to the frequent earthquakes, most places already had an established evacuation protocol so people had known what to do when the buildings started to go. But not everyone had made it out. The global count was over one hundred thousand people.
In the background, while the news anchor spoke in the dust-clogged street, a child wandered, crying.
I felt my own eyes begin to water at my selfishness.
“Who cares if I’m not her,” I whispered. “If I’d stayed, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Zotera’s arms wrapped around me. “Please don’t cry. Father hates when you cry.”
I nodded and pushed down my guilt and sorrow. The past couldn’t be undone. I needed to focus on the present and ensure I didn’t give Hades any new reasons to lose his temper.
“Let’s watch something else.”
I eventually found a home improvement channel.
