The Power

  the one you were entrusted to protect.” The nymph’s icy breath was as cold as his words. “You continue on this path, history will repeat itself, and there will be no salvation for you. There will only be an eternity of retribution and vengeance.”

  The nymph disappeared without sound or movement, leaving me standing there. Turning slowly, I looked around and there was no sign that the nymph had ever been there in the first place.

  “Hell,” I muttered, rubbing my hand along my jaw.

  I wasn’t sure what to think of the nymph, whether he was friend or foe, but in the end, what the nymph had said was mostly true. There was blood on my hands, and there was only retribution and vengeance in my future.

  Josie

  My face hurt.

  So did my head and eyes. Actually, every part of me ached. My head was stuffy and eyes swollen from crying enough tears to fill the stupid room, and my stomach was brutally empty. I’d gone way past the stage of being hungry. It felt like I wouldn’t eat again.

  At some point, I’d managed to pull myself off the floor and kick off my sneakers before face-planting my bed. That had turned out to be a major mistake, because the sheets, the pillows?—everything—smelled like Seth. Like the outdoors and the unique scent that reminded me of burning leaves. The tears had really started at that point, and it had been ugly. The big, fat sobs came from a deep place inside of me and they shook my entire body. I’d cried myself asleep, and when I woke up the tears started all over again. For a while, there seemed like there’d be no end in sight.

  That had been Friday morning. I’d barely moved from the bed in two days, and my eyes were as dry as the desert. My hair was limp and greasy. Showering seemed like it required way too much effort.

  I’d never been in love before.

  I’d never had my heart broken by a guy before.

  Yes, my heart had been wounded a time or two. There was this guy in high school who I had a pretty big crush on and he’d thought I was a freak. Then there’d been this dude in my history class my freshman year at Radford. I’d spent all semester crushing on him and working up the nerve to say more than a handful of sentences to him, only to find out that he was in a committed relationship, baby daughter included.

  But I’d never been in love, and oh God, I was so in love with Seth. I wasn’t even sure at what point it happened. The first time he’d shared a piece of himself with me? When he’d talked about his mom? Or was it when he decided to stay and train me? It could’ve been the first night he told me I could use him as a Pillow Pet. It could’ve been the night he told me I was his salvation.

  Or when he had finally kissed me.

  Now . . . I swallowed hard. Now he wanted nothing to do with me, and the confusion had nothing on the pain eating away at my chest.

  Saturday afternoon, Luke had stopped by again. Like the day before, I hadn’t answered the door. I wasn’t ready to face him. Not when I wanted my mother. I wanted my grandmother. I wanted Erin. None of them were here. None of them could be.

  I didn’t know if the alternating sharp pulse and echoing hollow feeling in my chest were normal, but I was soul sick. I felt shattered, split in two, and I had no idea how to even begin to piece myself back together.

  Rolling onto my back, I blinked open my eyes. It was Sunday evening. I was going to have to pull myself together by tomorrow morning. I couldn’t hide in my room for the rest of my life. I’d need cats or something if I was seriously going to attempt that. And I couldn’t do that even if the Covenant allowed animals onsite. I was important. A demigod.

  I needed to finish training, and I needed to be ready when my absentee father showed back up with another demigod. There was so much I had to do, and probably would epically fail at, but I couldn’t hide myself away. Because I was a mother-freaking demigod.

  A demigod with a broken heart.

  A demigod with a broken heart who couldn’t even become a crazy cat lady, because I didn’t have cats.

  “God.” I smacked my hands over my face. The burn was back, behind my eyes, and I wanted to punch myself in the lady parts.

  I had to pull myself together. The next breath I took got stuck. Okay, I at least had to pretend to have it together.

  A knock interrupted my crappy pep talk. I turned my head toward the living area, but didn’t move more than that. The knock came again and then a voice followed.

  “Josie, open the door.”

  Deacon.

  Curly-haired, silver-eyed, beautiful Deacon. I sighed. He didn’t have a broken heart. He had Luke, who was madly in love with him.

  “I have French fries,” he coaxed from the hallway.

  Fries? My stomach shifted, reminding me that it did, in fact, want some food. I lowered my hands.

  There was a pause. “They’re fresh and that perfect mix of crispiness and softness.”

  Oh my, that was the best.

  “And I have ranch dressing,” he added. Slowly, I sat up and pushed a few strands of gross hair out of my face. “If you don’t answer this door, I will do something drastic.”

  I frowned.

  “I can use the fire element, which means I can melt the insides of this lock,” he explained. “And I’m not that great at controlling fire. I’ll probably end up catching the door on fire.”

  “Whoa,” I muttered, swinging my legs off the bed.

  “And then the fire will spread to the walls and the next thing you know, the whole dorm is burning down. Roof on fire kind of shit and Marcus will get really pissed—”

  “Okay!” I shouted, standing. “I’m coming.”

  “Good.” Satisfaction practically bloated his voice.

  Shuffling to the door, I threw the lock and opened it. True to his word, Deacon stood with a bag in one hand and a bottle of Coke in the other. Eyeing the red and black bottle, I could already feel the wonderful, acidic burn in my throat. The aroma was greasy heaven. As I stepped aside, my gaze flickered over his shoulder and landed on Seth’s door. An ache pierced my chest, stealing my breath.

  Deacon breezed on past me, placing the bag on the coffee table, along with the bottle of Coke. Closing the door, I exhaled softly and then turned—

  Suddenly, Deacon was right in front of me and his arms were around me. One second I was just standing there and the next, my face was plastered against his surprisingly hard chest, my nose buried in the loose, long-sleeve shirt. And he was hugging me, really hugging me. Not one of those lame, weak ones that made you feel like the other person was frail. No, this was a hearty one, and God . . . Gods, it almost broke me all over again.

  “I . . .” I didn’t know what to say. Tears clogged my throat again, cutting off my words and all I could whisper was, “I’m s-sorry.”

  “You don’t apologize,” he said, pressing a kiss to the top of my gross, greasy head, unlocking best friend status.

  I folded my arms around his slender waist and squeezed my eyes shut. “Seth. He . . . he said everything was a mistake. We—” My breath caught. “That we were a mistake.”

  His arms tightened around me.

  “I . . . I love him,” I said, shaking. “I love him, Deacon.”

  “I know,” Deacon said, and his hug became my everything. “I know.”

  Chapter 12

  “You’ve done very well today, Josie.” Laadan stood with her back to the sun, her long dark hair pulled up in a neat bun. The ballerina kind of bun, which was something I couldn’t pull off if my life depended on it. My hair currently looked like a bird was nesting in it. She smiled at what must’ve been my doubtful expression, and the smile was real. Kind. Warm. “It’s not second nature to you. It’s going to take some work.”

  Laadan always looked elegant, though. I’d seen her around the Covenant often, typically with the Sentinel who didn’t speak—Alex’s father. She had a timeless kind of beauty, she was a pure-blood, and she had come here after the Covenant in New York was attacked during Ares’s rampage. She was good people—kind and patient.

&nbs
p; Squinting, I shrugged as I walked over the pebble-filled dirt. A dull ache throbbed behind my eyes. “It should be second nature. I’m a demigod. I should be wielding the elements like Airbender.”

  Her brow wrinkled. “I’m not sure what this Airbender is, but even pure-bloods struggle when they’re children.”

  Children. When they were children. Exactly.

  “She’s right,” Solos offered from where he was perched on the low wall surrounding the cemetery. “My half-sister is a full pure-blood. She controls air, and when she was little, she used to throw everything in the house around when she was in a mood.”

  “When she was a kid,” I pointed out, knocking dust off my leg. “Not sure if you’ve realized it or not¸ I’m not a kid.”

  “Oh, I’ve realized that,” Solos replied slyly.

  Laadan shot him a look, but I rolled my eyes. Since I began training with him and Luke in the mornings, I quickly learned he was a careless flirt. He’d pretty much charm the pants off anything that wore them.

  “You’re getting the hang of it,” Laadan advised, clasping her hands together, drawing my stare. She had the best nails. Neat. Trimmed into perfect ovals. Mine looked like a rat had been nibbling on them while I slept. “We’ve only been working together for four days and I’ve already seen vast improvement.”

  Four days? Felt like Monday was an eternity ago.

  “Yeah, you haven’t set her hair on fire recently.” Solos smiled when Laadan and I turned to him. “What? It’s the truth.”

  “Don’t you have anything better to do?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  Laadan arched a delicate brow. “He should be about ready to head to the Council meeting, isn’t that so?”

  “Maybe.”

  Her smile didn’t waver as she met his gaze. “I think ‘yes’ is the correct response.”

  “Fine.” He hopped down from the wall with agile grace. As he strolled past me, he patted my shoulder. “See you in the morning.”

  “Yay,” I murmured, not really able to work up the energy for a more enthusiastic response. Enthusiasm was something I was seriously lacking these days, and it had nothing to do with the headache I’d been dealing with since I woke up this morning.

  Once Solos was gone, Laadan approached me and the softness in her gaze reminded me so much of my mother, of my grandmother, that for a moment, I thought the waterworks were going to get started all over again. I swallowed the tears down, pushed all the raw emotion down and closed it off.

  “You really are doing well, Josie. Don’t be too hard on yourself, okay?” She placed her hand on my shoulder and squeezed gently. “You’ve been through a lot and you’ve had to cope with a lot. No one is expecting you to do anything other than what you are doing right now.”

  Part of me wondered if Seth had expected more and that was why he . . . was no longer around.

  Laadan paused, her gaze roaming over my face. “Have you been sleeping well?”

  I nodded, even though that was a complete lie. At night, all alone, all I could think about was my mom, my grandparents, and Erin. Then, when my brain was bored with that, it moved on to Seth, and I spent hours trying to figure out what had gone wrong.

  Last night I’d dreamt of Hyperion, and before, I’d always been able to fall back to sleep, because . . . because Seth had been there. I could let go of the horror those nightmares always brought. But last night I hadn’t been able to, which was probably why my head wasn’t feeling too great.

  I cleared my throat. “We’re done for the day?”

  “We are.”

  We were quiet as we walked back toward the main part of campus, and as we neared the outer walkway, I noticed a lone figure dressed in all black. A Sentinel.

  Alexander.

  Every day for the last four days, Alexander had waited for Laadan to be finished with me. I peeked over at her. And every day, since training with her began, the minute she saw the silent Sentinel, everything she felt for this man shone on her face.

  I didn’t ask about her and Alexander, but that was love. There was no mistaking it.

  Laadan’s smile was broader. “See you tomorrow, Josie.”

  Smiling tiredly, I waved at her as we parted ways at the sidewalk, her hurrying to meet Alexander, and me shuffling off in the other direction.

  Not hungry, and unwilling to go sit in my room and stare at the wall, I cut across the quad, heading for the gardens. I’d been spending a lot of time in there. It was pretty, and usually quiet . . . and oddly warmer than the rest of the campus.

  Shoving my hands into the pocket of my hoodie, I hunkered down as the wind whipped through the campus. Only in the afternoon did it feel like the middle of May to me.

  I neared the area where the half-blood had been hanged and there was a sit-in of about two dozen halfs. No one spoke, and as I lingered in the back for a couple of moments, more and more Guards appeared, keeping a watchful eye.

  As far as I knew, no suspects had been found, and the half-blood’s murder went unpunished. I didn’t know if they’d ever find out who did it. I started to sit down, but the girl next to me stiffened and then rose. She walked to the other side and then sat down.

  What the . . . ?

  I froze, caught between standing and sitting. Several halfs in the back of the group were checking me out. My gaze flickered over the group, and I had the distinct feeling that I wasn’t welcome. I could’ve been overreacting, but I straightened and started walking again. Word of what I was had definitely traveled to every nook and cranny. I’d kind of thought, stupidly so, that being a demigod would make me cool. Like, everyone would want to get to know me, because I would want to get to know a demigod.

  Nope.

  No one approached me.

  Reaching the wrought-iron fence of the garden, I unhooked the gate and stepped inside, closing it behind me. Immediately, the humidity smacked into me. I unzipped my hoodie and shrugged it off, draping it over my arm as I walked deeper in the garden.

  The place was stunning and downright magical.

  Purple wolfsbane was vibrant and plenty, climbing the inside walls. Leafy vines wrapped themselves around smaller statues of the gods. I still had a hard time figuring out who was who. Unless it was Artemis. I knew who she was, because of the bow gripped in her stone hand.

  Bright orange poppies were everywhere, crowding the engraved walkways, and so many flowers I’d never seen before, in every color the human eye could decipher. There were trees, small almond ones and larger breeds, giving the interior privacy and creating its own little world inside the iron fence.

  I passed a caretaker who was grooming multi-colored roses, the kind I’d never seen outside of this garden. Some were red and yellow. Other petals were ombré, red fading into pink. Crazy. I wanted to pluck several of the blossoms and take them back to the room, but the ancient-looking caretaker looked like she’d cut me if that happened.

  Finding the bench near the back, I plopped down and stretched out my legs, placing the hoodie in my lap and just . . . just sat there. Not the most exciting of all things. I didn’t have to come to the garden. I could’ve met up with Deacon and Luke, but ever since everything had gone down, I’d been their shadow. While I knew they didn’t mind, I also knew I didn’t need to be their third wheel every single evening.

  Deacon had been a godsend though.

  If it weren’t for him, I’d probably still be curled in a fetal position on my bed, smelling like week-old butt. God, he’d been amazing. He’d let me sit there and shove ranch-drenched fries in my face, then listened when I told him what had happened. Deacon commiserated with me and then he got angry with me, for me.

  He’d offered to sneak into Seth’s room at night and shave off his eyebrows, and while there was a part of me that would’ve loved that, I advised him against that idea.

  But Deacon didn’t have any answers nor did he understand Seth’s sudden one-eighty, but in a way, he hadn’t seemed all that surprised.

  “You
’re going to have to fight for that guy,” he’d said.

  I’d shaken my head, taken aback by the idea and thoroughly confused. “I don’t think there’s anything to fight for.”

  And how could there be? It had been so easy for Seth just to cut off everything with me, without so much as a reason or warning. How could you really care about someone when you could walk away from them that easily?

  I’d asked Deacon that, and again, he really didn’t have an answer.

  Neither did I.

  I loved Seth. I was in love with him. And I hurt so bad that every night, my pillow turned into a tissue, but I wasn’t going to