Only… only that wasn’t true.
I wasn’t harmless. And it wasn’t because I had the protection of Selene behind me.
In the grove, at the academy, I had used my power to protect Mhairi and myself.
I used my power to cause harm.
For the first time in my life, my magic had hurt a person.
I felt nauseous at the realisation.
I wasn’t harmless. I wasn’t powerless. Not really.
It upset me.
Being of no particular harm to anyone was a kind of safety and easiness. Safety because others didn’t see me as a threat, and easy because it meant I had no real responsibility. No one could truly look to me for help in a fight. Sure, I could grow food and medicine, but I couldn’t throw a punch, couldn’t harm anyone.
But was physical strength really necessary to cause harm, when I could kill the ground you lived on?
Mother Demeter, what had I become?
It wasn’t right—my new ability. There was something wrong with it.
Selene took her name from the moon goddess, but my namesake spent half the year in the underworld, the reward for eating forbidden fruit.
Was my new ability a deathly reward for having succumbed to Selene—for accepting a mate so opposite to everything I once was?
My head ached, my heart beat painfully, and my hands gripped the armchair tightly—and it was only when wetness splashed against my thigh did I realise I was crying.
All I wanted was for Selene to accept our bond—for a love like those only found in stories, a happy ever after.
But what had I gotten?
A soul match that accepted the bond but refused to let it develop as it should. My story might contain love, but it was also death and violence and fear.
Happy ever after might have just been a lie—nothing more than a story.
Maybe all stories told were never quite so wonderful in reality. Like childbirth. I’d helped in three deliveries at home. The women screamed, and bled, and cried, and cursed their partners, but afterwards they forgot the pain. And even if they remembered—when they retold the stories, the pain they endured was nothing more than a minor note.
I curled up more in the armchair, despondent, unsure of myself or my future.
17. Going Missing
Persephone Flores
“Percy.” I awoke to a gentle jostle.
“What?” I asked, tiredly.
“She’s looking for you—on the warpath. Wake up,” Katrina said, shaking my shoulder.
I looked around. The room was dark. Moonlight from the windows behind me illuminated the library in an eerie sort of way. Katrina was like a ghost—a shadow.
“What?” I asked again, more alarmed and pulling myself away from her. She withdrew her hand.
“She’s looking for you. No one knew where you were, and I was the last one to see you. I retraced my steps and was able to smell you out,” she explained. “Now get up before she kills another person,” she hissed.
“Be quiet,” I replied angrily. I didn’t want to hear what she thought or have to defend Selene again. Every time I spoke with Katrina, I was left feeling horrible.
