by Nicole Thorn
I ended up at a staircase, having ripped open a door at the end of the hall. My heavy steps pounded on each stair as I practically crawled my way upward, needing to get away. No one followed me.
The farther away I got, the easier it became to breathe. My head still swam in a fog of leftover emotions. None of it belonged to me. I didn’t even belong to me. Nothing inside of me, belonged to me.
I got to our rooms, wondering if we would ever see the hallway at home again. We all shared one there, but it didn’t feel like things could ever be the same when we got home. Verin and Jasmine couldn’t share a space, Juniper might never be forgiven for this trial she didn’t want, and me… I wouldn’t be welcomed in that house. Couldn’t be welcomed. My mistake had cost me my family.
As I pushed my door open, I tried to make plans. Kizzy couldn’t leave her husband, and I wouldn’t have for a moment wanted her to. Just because I wouldn’t be living there anymore didn’t mean I wanted her to miss out on her family. She would feel guilty and I didn’t know what to do about that, but she would find a way to get through. I wouldn’t.
I sat on the bed, understanding that what I did wouldn’t be forgiven. The rest of my family didn’t hate me for it, but Jasmine had to. I had aimed a rabid hot head at her father because I wanted him dead. I knew what to say to get Verin to kill him, and I said it. It didn’t matter that he knew what I was doing because my intentions had been clear. He’d said he didn’t regret it, and I didn’t regret it either. Even with Jasmine’s heartbreak, the man needed to die. I didn’t know what that made me.
Someone knocked on my door, but I didn’t feel the hot pulse of a particular emotion. It wasn’t my family. The aura felt cold to me, and it wouldn’t have it had been someone I knew well. I still rose to answer it, wondering if it would be a god that I would want to kill.
Instead, it was a god I didn’t care about one way or another.
Heracles walked past me when I opened the door, not waiting for an invite. I closed the door, following him into the room until he stopped by the fake window.
“I saw the show,” he said.
“Great. You saw my family fall apart.”
He turned from the curtains, eyebrows lifted. “There are more painful ways for a family to end, Zander. And I don’t think yours did.”
It certainly didn’t feel that way. “If you saw what happened, then you wouldn’t be saying that. I lied to my girlfriend, and I made my brother murder a man.”
“You didn’t make him. Verin does what Verin wants. He lets his anger rule him. That was the whole point of his trial, to learn to control it. Clearly, he didn’t, going by how he went off on Jasmine.”
I should have been the one to hit him, not Jasmine. Verin had been out of line, but he would realize that eventually. Probably when his broken nose healed and he had a few minutes to think about it. He knew how hard Juniper worked to get through her problems, and he understood Jasmine had to do the same. He understood that on a normal day.
“Well, it is what it is,” I said. “Jasmine isn’t going to forgive me for getting her father killed. It doesn’t matter that he was an evil bastard because look what I’ve done.”
Heracles leaned against the wall, his arms crossed. “For the record, I don’t think you were out of line.”
“Today?”
“No. Then. When you talked to Verin, knowing what he would do. If I found out someone had done what that man had done, then I would have—well, I would have killed him myself, but I get why you didn’t do it. It would have crossed a whole different line.”
What did that even matter now? I might as well have been the one to kill the man because I’d gotten him killed. Verin made his heart stop beating, but it didn’t have to be me to give him the information I did.
“It felt like the right thing to do at the time,” I said. “I didn’t want that man alive anymore.”
“I wouldn’t have either. I don’t like it when people harm their children. You can imagine why.”
I felt cold all of a sudden, getting waves of ancient guilt and sorrow from the man before me. The sorrow ran so deep that it was like an ocean rose up to crush me. I would have let it.
“It cost me my family,” I said. “How can it have been the right thing to do if it made me lose everything?”
“Not everything has to be lost. Your family is still alive, so that means you can make this right again. All you have to do is work at fixing it.”
“Meaning? What the hell could I possibly do?”
Heracles said, “You can do what you’re best at. Keeping them safe. Making sure nothing happens to the people around you. When you see danger you can keep them from, then do it. You have a war coming, after all.”
I shrugged. “I’m not good at keeping anyone safe.”
“You’re better at it than you think. With this war coming, you’re going to have the very best chance possible to prove to yourself that you can keep your family safe. It’s all about picking the right side and fighting with all your heart.”
I thought I did that already. Now I wasn’t sure, so I added it to the ever-growing pile of things I wasn’t sure about. I kept waiting for all this uncertainty to kill me.
“The last thing I should be doing is fighting,” I said. “My dumbass choices are what got me into this mess. Violence isn’t going to get me out of it.”
Smiling, Heracles said, “That just means you aren’t fighting the right thing.”
“And what might that right thing be?”
He pushed off the wall, his hands falling to his sides. “You’ll figure it out. When you know, you’ll know.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “What do I do until then? Where do I go if I have no direction? Nothing is pointing me anymore.”
Getting closer to the door, the man turned to me. “Are you looking for a leader, Zander?”
I swallowed. “Maybe, if it gets me my family.”
That smile didn’t fade. “Hang in there, kid. You do what you need to do, and everything is going to come together for you.”
He walked out, leaving me in a room that had never felt emptier to me.
I had to focus on my breathing again, getting myself under control. I didn’t do well with the cryptic messages or prophecies. I would have preferred it if people spoke more plainly. If I ever got to that age, I wondered if I would go insane in the same ways as the gods did. I wondered if I would hurt my family for fun or for entertainment. Maybe that wasn’t much worse than what I did already
My heart finally started to beat normally again. It would come back. It was like the monster under my bed. When the sun rose, he stayed hidden. The moment the moon showed herself as bright as could be, then he would come again. His teeth would glint in that moonlight, threatening to end me. If only they would.
The doorknob turned, and everything slowed down as it pushed open. I hadn’t been expecting to see Jasmine walking through, but it made me want to dive out of the fake window and end myself.
I sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for her to do… something. She watched the floor as she came closer to me, her emotions crackling in my chest. They were like fireworks of every color. They changed so fast and burned so bright that I couldn’t keep up with them.
“We need to talk,” she said.
She would tell me that after we finished the trials, she didn’t want me in her bed anymore. In her home. In her life. I couldn’t say I didn’t deserve it, but I could say that my life would end there. I’d shuffle away from Jasmine, and I wouldn’t know what to be without her. I wouldn’t know what I wanted to be.
I stared up at her, bleary-eyed. “What do you want to say?”
She crossed her arms, looking at me. “I swear to the gods, Zander, if you ever lie to me again, I will never forgive you. Do you understand me? Tell me that you get that.”
My eyes widened, my breath short. “What?”
“Don’t lie,” she growled through her teeth. “What the hell have lies ever
done for anyone? You should know better than anyone that it doesn’t fucking help. It didn’t help me here, it didn’t help your sister when you were kids, it didn’t help when the gods kept to themselves why I lost my visions. I’m finished with lying. From now on, everything is laid out on the table. You tell me facts, and you tell me how you’re feeling when I need to know. Do you understand?”
I wanted to swim up into this wave of emotion that had me trapped and latch onto the life preserver Jasmine had just tossed me from her boat. But was it a trick? I couldn’t let myself hold onto something that would only break down in my hands.
“I…” I started. “What was I supposed to do?”
“Not lie!” she snapped. “Not get into bed with me that night and go to sleep like you didn’t call a hit out on my father. Because that’s what you did. You made the choice to get my father killed, and you knew how I would feel about it. That’s why you lied. That’s why you made someone else do it. I fuck up a lot, Zander, but this is entirely on your shoulders.”
An arrow shot me in the heart. “I know that. I know that everything comes back to me.”
“Not everything!” she yelled, startling me. “That’s not what I’m saying. Can’t you for once hear the words and just take them for exactly what they are! I’m not trying to get you to read between lines. I don’t mean something else. I mean that this, this is something wrong that you did. The other million things you blame yourself for, I don’t blame you for. Not Kizzy, not us dying, not my drinking and losing the trial. The fact that you didn’t tell me what you did, that is the thing I blame you for.”
More arrows. “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice wavering. “That man hurt you, and I wanted him dead. I wanted it so badly, and from the second I found out what he was. He hit you, and nothing else mattered. Only making sure he stopped breathing. I didn’t let myself get distracted with how you would feel about losing your father.”
“I don’t care about losing him!” she yelled again. This time, it looked like she’d startled herself. Jasmine paused, taking a breath. “You lied to me. My whole family lied to me. Not one of you thought I deserved to know the truth, and you all made that choice for me. The fragile one. Do you have any idea how embarrassing that is? How embarrassing all this is? I feel disgusting, weak, broken, unwanted. Pathetic.”
I did that to her, and I couldn’t do anything to make up for it. No soothing this wound away. The sting would always be there, something Jasmine wouldn’t forget. More damage, and this time, I’d been the one to let the arrow loose.
“Never again,” I swore, making myself stand up. I didn’t dare get closer to Jasmine. “No more lies. No more choices without you. If you can stand to look at me, then I promise you that it’s over.”
“I really want to believe you,” she said. “Please don’t make me regret it.”
The door opened again, this time for Jasper, his eyes focused on his sister and her alone. Kizzy was right behind him, but she hesitated as he barreled through.
“Why are you here?” Jasmine asked her brother. “I told you I needed to go.”
“I didn’t want you to head off alone,” Jasper answered.
“I’m not, and I think you knew exactly where I was going.”
“I wasn’t sure.”
Her hands balled into fists at her sides. “I want you out of this room, Jasper. You too, Kizzy. I can’t deal with you right now.”
Jasper answered, “I can’t leave you.”
“Get out!” his sister yelled. “Can you quit the babysitting for ten damn minutes while I try and salvage what’s left of my relationship? Or is that another choice that you think you need to make for your drunken sister? What, am I too damaged to even talk now?”
Softly, Jasper said, “Of course not. But I—”
“Why the hell can’t you just listen to me? Why does everyone have to dismiss me like I’m some child? Other people are allowed to mess up and still make some decisions. Does talking to my boyfriend alone have to be one you don’t let me make?”
Juniper and Verin came in right behind Kizzy, entering the room. My chest tightened again, the too small room filled with all the emotions in the world. I wanted them gone as much as Jasmine did, and I might have taken her hand and dragged her out if I didn’t think she would view that as another choice being made for her.
“Everyone needs to get out,” Jasmine ordered.
“We aren’t leaving you alone,” Verin said. “You’re clearly off your rocker. Do we let you wander off and fuck up another trial?”
“Shut your mouth,” I snarled at him. I didn’t care about the dried blood on his face, or however valid a couple of his points had been. I wanted him to stay quiet.
“It’s no use,” Jasmine decided. “Everything is going to keep falling apart. My brother doesn’t know how to stop meddling where he isn’t needed, Kizzy goes along with everything he does, Verin thinks he knows better, Juniper is… Juniper, and then you, Zander. You.”
“What about me?” I had to ask. The question hurt coming out because I knew that no matter what Jasmine said, I would hate the answer. Nothing was safe today. Maybe nothing would ever be safe for me and Jasmine again.
She looked at me for a long moment, every second pulled out and stretched in front of me like she’d peeled the veins from my body. She could pluck them, and the noise of it wouldn’t be as gruesome as the screams of all the emotions trying to drag me back under water.
“I really don’t know,” she said in a breath before turning around. She pushed her way past our family, leaving the room without me.
Jasmine
I couldn’t look at any of them. Or maybe I just didn’t want to look at anyone, myself included. It had been such a miserable twenty-four hours and I couldn’t see it getting better any time soon. Not with how shitty I felt right then, or how hard it was just to breathe.
Verin killed Dad. The words circled my head, but not for the reasons they should have. I should have been horrified that Verin would murder my father, that anyone I knew would do something like that. And there was a tiny part of me that felt horrified, but only a tiny part. The rest of me felt… left out. Like my family hadn’t trusted that I’d understand why someone would kill my father.
I did understand. Dad had done so many horrible things to us as kids, but we had gotten out. Did that count for something? Anything? Had the fact that we managed to get away from the terrible man earn him the right to live? I didn’t know. I felt pretty certain that all of these questions didn’t have a right or wrong answer, just opinions. If I asked someone who had never been abused or mistreated by someone that was supposed to love them, they would probably think we were all ungrateful monsters. If I asked someone that had been beaten down their entire life, well, I didn’t know what they would say.
My legs felt weak before I got far from the room. I ended up sitting down in the stairwell, feeling lost. I had intended to go sleep in the green room or see if I could find Callie. I didn’t think she’d mind if I slept on her floor. I lost the energy to do that rather quickly. I knew that I should go back to my room so that we didn’t get in even more trouble because of me, but…
Gods, I felt tired.
The door behind me opened, startling me into almost getting up. I thought that I’d see Jasper, trying to keep me from falling further apart. Or maybe Zander, chasing me down. I didn’t really want to see either of them. Jasper had always done so much to keep me from making an ass out of myself. I wanted to cut him loose so that he didn’t have to do that anymore. He didn’t have to protect me and Juniper for his entire life.
I didn’t see either of them.
Heracles closed the door behind him and bounded down the steps, toward me. I actually felt relieved to see him. He had been the only person that made me feel sane in the last few days.
The big guy slumped to the stair below mine. He still towered over me and I had to scooch over a little to make room for him. Once he settled in, Heracles turned to look a
t me. “How ya doing?” he asked.
“Not great,” I said, still staring down at my feet. “I feel like my entire world is going to break apart. Or maybe like it already has.”
He grunted. “That was… something, what happened earlier.”
“You caught the entire show?” I asked.
Heracles nodded. “From beginning to end.”
I sighed. “So, I have to live with the whole of Olympus thinking that I deserve to get thrown into a pit with hellhounds. I can’t even say that they’re wrong.”
“They would be wrong,” Heracles said. “People like a bad guy and they don’t seem to be thinking of what you’re going through right now. What any of you are going through. They just see what’s put in front of them and the cockiest person in the room is the one that everyone is going to hate.”
“I think Verin is the cockiest,” I said.
“Now he is.”
I winced. “I suppose that’s true. Gods, I wish that I could go back in time and tell myself to shut up. But that’s Jasper’s specialty.” I said, wrinkling my nose. “And Juniper can teleport. I can’t do anything cool like that.”
“You wanna know why?”
“Do you know?” I asked, surprised.
Heracles shrugged. “The Olympians don’t usually notice when one of the lesser guards is around. I hear things sometimes. So, you wanna know?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Because there is someone out there that doesn’t want you to,” Heracles said, simply.
“So, I became a goddess and the only things that I got were control over my visions and slightly different visions?”
He smiled at me like he thought I was cute. I should have been more offended by this. Heracles bumped his shoulder with mine. “There are a lot of things that you and your siblings haven’t figured out yet,” he said. “You will.”