by A. J. Rosen
She seemed to also be relishing our rare moment of tenderness.
For the first time in the seventeen years, eleven months, and twenty-three days of my life, my mom and I watched TV together without bickering. We even laughed at the same scenes in the romantic comedy she had put on. As we waited for the credits to be over and the next movie to start, she offered to make hot chocolates for us. My mom’s sudden displays of affection made me forget about what had happened that afternoon in Quickfood.
When it was time for bed, my mom followed me into my room and curled up beside me. At first, I thought that maybe she felt guilty for leaving me alone so much during the Gathering, but when I asked her why she wanted to sleep in my bedroom, she responded, “Because your father is working. His office called a few days ago. And I can’t sleep alone.”
She was being selfish after all. I should’ve known.
I found it awkward at first sleeping next to my detached mother, but I eventually managed to dive into dreamland. At least for thirty minutes, before her phone rang. I kept my eyelids glued shut as I heard her get out of bed and answer the phone.
“False alarm.” I heard my mom speaking in a hushed voice. “She’s with me. Yes, Hawke, she is here, I’m literally watching her with my own two eyes. No. She’s sleeping. Okay. Bye.”
With my back to my mom, I tried my best to breathe normally. Had she said Hawke?
My mom crawled back into bed and soon she was snoring beside me. I managed to fall asleep again after a few hours of replaying what she had said during that phone call. I still woke up early the next morning.
My mom had woken up even earlier and had left my room without a trace that she had been here. As I sat crossed-legged on my bed, my phone blipped, indicating that I had just received a new text message. It was Adrian.
Are you naked?
“Eww, what the fruit—”
Before I could complete my sentence, the door creaked opened. “I’ll take that as a no.” With both of his hands inside the back pockets of his jeans, he let a slow, dangerous smile curve his lips. “Montgomery, I think I know how to make the gods take the gift back.”
“What?”
“The photos of the book I took when I went back to the library the other day, I had Caitlin help me translate. She has nothing better to do while she’s stuck in the hospital, and she’s fluent in Greek. Anyway, it was about Hades kidnapping Persephone. You know the story, right?”
I nodded, indicating for him to continue.
“It’s linked with the Great Massacre. According to the page after the one you tore, Zeus and Demeter were angry at Hades. But because Hades is a god himself, it meant that they couldn’t punish him. The Hellenicus at the time felt they needed to pick sides. Siding with the king of the gods seemed to be the better option, so that’s exactly what they did. Some went to the extreme and decided if Hades could not be hurt, they would hurt his descendants instead. And the bloodbath began. First they killed the Stavroses, then they started killing anyone who had a click with a Stavros. To make sure no Stavros would ever be born again, they used Apollo’s silver arrow. Killing a Hellenicus with this special weapon destroyed their soul. Eventually, all of the Stavroses were killed in this manner, rendering the bloodline extinct.”
“Okay, our history books tell us all of this already, Adrian. How does this information help us?”
“I’m getting there.” Adrian tutted at me before continuing, “The Hellenicus who committed these terrible crimes were punished severely—being reincarnated as Regulars in the next life and whatnot. But the Hellenicus who led the bloodbath received an additional punishment . . . they were punished—”
“—by losing the gift.” I finished Adrian’s sentence and earned a nod of approval from him. “Wow.”
“Exactly! If we want the gods to take back this gift, we have to anger them.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, Montgomery. It has to be something major, though. Maybe steal the Golden Chalice or ruin a sacrificial ritual—I don’t know.”
What could possibly anger the gods enough that they would take back the gift? What would be worthy of a punishment that severe? As much as I wanted to be free of any clairaudient abilities, I wasn’t about to become a murderer! I paced as I reeled on what Adrian had just said. Suddenly, an idea popped into my head. “Adrian, you’re a genius!”
“Huh?”
“Ruining the sacrificial ritual!”
“But we don’t have any more sacrificial rituals, Montgomery. The last one was two nights ago.”
“Ah, but that’s not true. There will be one during the closing ceremony for the Panhellenic Festival,” I answered.
“You’re right! The closing ceremony always includes sacrificial animals. What are we going to do? Steal the offerings?”
“No. That’s not big enough.” I stood and walked to the window then looked down at the garden where a huge tree stood, minding its own business as it reached toward the heavens. “We’re going to burn down Zeus’s tree.”
“Damn. That’s badass, Montgomery. I’m game!”
I was about to say something when a noise from outside the bedroom door startled me. It sounded like something dropping on the floor. “What was that?”
“Don’t go getting paranoid already, Montgomery.” Adrian waved his hand in front of me as if to shoo the thought away. “This mission is too ballsy to start getting jitters now.”
He was right. I needed to keep it together if we were going to pull this off. But I swore I had heard something. Before I could dwell on it and waste any more time, Adrian pulled me out of my trance with his next question.
“Shall we get a plan together over breakfast?”
By now, he knew how much food motivated me. Besides, I wanted to get out of the suite in case my mom returned from wherever she had snuck off to. I wasn’t ready to face her about the mysterious phone call she had taken last night when she thought I was sleeping.
It was still early enough that most people were still in bed. It was peaceful with the morning light streaming in through the tall windows as we made our way past the lobby and out into the cold. Not wanting to disturb the peace, Adrian and I stayed quiet, though, in my mind, I was feeling the pressure of time running out for me to break my soul-mate bond before my eighteenth birthday. I was so deep in my thoughts that I didn’t even realize that we had cut through a narrow alley. Walking toward us from the other end was Officer Brad Warwick.
The last thing I wanted was trouble—not on an empty stomach. I was ready to fake some pleasantries, but then I saw that he wasn’t alone. To my shock, he was with the bald guy with the tattoo—the man who had been on the phone call meant for my father! And they were both striding right toward us. The sparks in my brain desperately tried to connect the dots. I grabbed Adrian’s arm. I wanted to run as fast as I could, but my legs turned to jelly and I was rooted in place. I could hear Adrian asking me what was wrong, but I could not utter an audible word. When the men were within reach, the bald guy stretched his arm out and grabbed my upper arm.
“Hey! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” Adrian tried to brush off Warwick’s hold, but the young Court Guard grabbed both of Adrian’s arms from behind and pinned him in place. Struggling, Adrian tried his best to escape but failed miserably.
I was overwhelmed with fear. The bald guard looked at me with recognition and gave me an unnerving smile. “Avery Montgomery. We finally meet.”
The guards separated us. The bald one took me into a building that looked like an out-of-business restaurant and sat me down in a chair in a windowless room. There was only one way out—the door behind him. He didn’t tie me up or anything, but he made it damn clear—by resting his hand on his Court-issued weapon—that I would be foolish to try to get past him. He’d taken my phone. I had nothing on me, no tricks up my sleeve to get out of here.
A few minutes later Officer Warwick came back alone.
“Where is Adrian?” I yelled at him, trying to hide the slight note of desperation in my voice. Maybe I was too prideful, but I refused to be intimidated.
There was no reply. Neither guard would meet my gaze. The two exchanged a look and then a nod. Something was about to happen. I could feel my heart beating.
“Let’s begin.” The bald guard dragged a chair over in front of me and sat down. “My name is Commander Drake.”
“How nice for you,” I said. “Where is Adrian?! You better not hurt him—he’s a Pure Royal and you’ll have your asses handed to you by the queen, let alone what I’ll do to you.”
I got nothing but perfect calmness in response, which only made me angrier. “We’re not here to hold you hostage or harm you or your friend.” Leaning forward, Drake placed his elbows on top of his knees and added, “I am here because there’s something I want to discuss with you. Something important.”
“Hate to break it to you, buddy, but keeping someone against their will is kidnapping. If this is official Court business, take me to headquarters!”
Drake continued as if I hadn’t said a word. “You’ve spent your entire life being a Regular.”
“Thanks, Sherlock. Tell me something I don’t already know.”
“But you aren’t. You are not a Regular.”
Hope sparked inside of me; perhaps I was not a Hellenicus. Maybe this was all just a mistake and I didn’t have a soul-mate bond to break after all! Maybe I was already free. “Are you saying I’m a Nescient?”
“No.” My new hope was immediately crushed and the confusion returned. Officer Warwick passed Commander Drake a file, which immediately piqued my curiosity. But before he opened it, Drake dropped a bomb: “You’re not a Nescient, and you’re not a Regular. You are a Pure Royal.”
“No, Drake, I’m most certainly not a Pure Royal. I can’t be. You clearly haven’t met my parents—they’re as Regular as the sunrise.”
“Avery, you are not a Montgomery,” Drake said.
My face showed the complete and utter befuddlement I felt. I had seen my birth certificate; I knew who I was, but I decided to play along with his strange, elaborate prank. “Then who am I?”
“You are Camila Stavros.”
I broke into a fit of giggles. Drake looked at me as if I had just lost my sanity, while I thought he was the insane one. “Impossible,” I said. “The Stavroses are extinct.”
Drake shook his head slowly as if he was trying to explain to a five-year-old that humans could not fly. “As you know, most of the Stavroses were killed during the Great Massacre, and the rest were slowing picked off in the generations afterward. But you are the last of the surviving Stavroses. The only one to survive the Faction.” He opened the file and handed it to me. “This is your real birth certificate.”
Camila Reanna Stavros was on the first paper of the file. There were more details about this Camila—all the usual data on a birth certificate. “Just because you show me a piece of paper and tell me that I’m this person, you think I’m going to believe you?” I said.
“I am telling the truth. It is up to you whether you choose to believe it or not.”
“Well, I don’t,” I said. “Holy Poseidon, if my dad ever heard this, he’d have an absolute heart attack.”
“Remember when you felt nauseated after you drank from the Golden Chalice?”
“What about it?”
“That’s proof that you are a Pure Royal.” Drake gave me a pointed look. When it finally dawned on me what he was referring to, a small smile crept on to his rough features.
As if in a trance, I whispered just slightly below hearing level, “Regulars can’t drink the Royals’ nectar or vice versa without getting sick.”
“As for your dad, you don’t have to worry about Jared Montgomery,” Drake said.
At the mention of my father, I started having my earlier doubts again. Just because I had suddenly felt sick after drinking from the chalice didn’t mean that I was a Pure Royal. Perhaps I had eaten something bad beforehand that could have caused a similar reaction. “What’s the point of all this? Why are you two grown men, not to mention Court Guards, trying to prank me?”
“This is not a prank, and Jared Montgomery is not your father, Avery.”
Sure, I looked nothing like my parents, and we had never gotten along, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t their child. There were many kids in the world who had no physical resemblance whatsoever to their parents.
He was silent for a moment then sighed irritably before turning to Officer Warwick. “Tell them to come in.”
I had not believed a word he’d said until the moment I saw my parents walking in.
“Morning, Avery.” My mom greeted me with a smile that I had never seen in my entire life. Then, as if she remembered something, she cringed a little and clarified, “I mean Camila.”
My dad, always the more practical one, only gave me a formal nod. “Lady Stavros. My apologies for not calling you by your title before now.”
Completely speechless, I turned to face Drake, beginning to wonder if I was the insane one after all.
“They are Special Court Guards, part of the Myrmidons, assigned to raise and protect you.” Drake pulled a document from my file. There were my parents’ faces and information. But their names were different: Nathan Hawke and Sera Lincoln.
Hawke and Lincoln! The names from the phone call. “I was right! You were the voice on the phone.”
Drake’s reply was a short bob of his head. The two people I had thought were my parents were not; it was shocking and unbelievable. I asked, “Why them?”
“They’re the best teachers you can get.”
“Teachers? You’re kidding, right? They’ve basically abandoned me my whole life.” Again, I avoided making eye contact with the two people I had spent my entire life believing to be my family.
“They taught you many lessons without you knowing it.” Drake took a moment, as if thinking carefully about what he was going to say next. “And they’ve been monitoring you, even when you thought they weren’t. They’ve been reporting back to the rest of the Myrmidons all these years. They’ve dedicated their lives to protecting you.”
Anger rose up inside of me. This guy clearly had no idea what he was talking about. “I can assure you, Drake, they didn’t teach me anything.”
“Remember that time when you forgot to lock the door?” asked Hawke, his expression holding no emotion. “Well, you had actually locked the door.”
Sweet roasted corn! I freaking knew it!
“I went to your school and yelled at you in front of your classmates to teach you humiliation.”
“And why the fuck would I need to learn that lesson?” I spat the words at the face that I had spent nearly eighteen years searching for any resemblance. Jared Montgomery or Nathan whatever his name was.
He didn’t flinch. In fact, he stared at me with a serious expression. “You’re a Stavros. You need to handle being humiliated. Your bloodline is the most hated and feared.”
“Do you know how many hours I cried in the bathroom because of what you did?” I marched up to him and shook him by the shoulders.
He took both of my hands from his shoulders and dropped them. “But you didn’t show any hint of tears when you faced your friends. You held your head high. You handled it well, you learned the lesson.”
“I have a question.” I turned to Drake, who motioned for me to continue. “If you knew I was being targeted and these two”—I pointed at Hawke and Lincoln—“are working for you, then why have they been like ghosts? Since I’ve been at Court I’ve barely seen them.” I just couldn’t understand how they could have been monitoring me my whole life and still knew so little about me? They didn’t even know that Bryan had lived in my bedroom for days. How could
they have been protecting me when they didn’t know anything about what was going on in my life?
“They were in fact still protecting you, but they were also investigating the Faction.”
“That’s another thing! What is the Faction? And who are my real parents if these two are fakes?” I was struggling to keep up with everything.
Drake shook his head. “I can’t answer either of those questions until I get approval from the queen. The only reason we are having this conversation in the first place is because you drew attention to yourself when you questioned those Myrmidons in Quickfood. A Faction member must have overheard you; they know for sure you are their target. You might as well have just painted a bull’s-eye on your forehead.”
“But there was no one else in Quickfood to hear me.” As I said this, I tried to picture the restaurant again. I was certain the group of Myrmidons were the only ones there. Had I been so distracted by the sight of my mom in a Guard’s uniform that I had failed to notice someone else? “Are you sure one of the Myrmidons didn’t let it slip to the Faction?”
“The Myrmidons are the queen’s most trusted guards. Their job has always been to protect the Stavroses. To protect you.”
The guards with the weird tattoos weren’t part of the Faction after all, but they did work for the queen. My mind couldn’t untangle it all.
“That woman in the jail cell, she wasn’t some random criminal, Lady Stavros. She was sent by the Faction to kill you. Now that they have confirmation that you are the one they’ve been looking for, who knows what they will do next. You have to be more careful from now on.”
“That woman said someone was going to kill her.” I barely found my voice with all the revelations swirling in my mind. “Who?” Who on earth wanted me gone? As if my existence mattered to anyone but my closest friends.
Drake dropped his gaze to the floor and remained silent.
“What are you not telling me?” I asked again.
“It’s none of your concern for the time being.”
“Are you kidding me? That woman was trying to kill me. Someone sent her to kill me. And this was before they knew for sure that I was their target! At the very least I deserve to know who sent her.”