"Powers?" I practically squealed. "What powers? I don't have any powers."
"Oh no?" he mocked. "You don't have any powers?"
"No."
"Then how do you explain the rain and the thunder that rolled in the moment you got upset?"
"It was supposed to rain," I said weakly.
"Was the sun supposed to start shining suddenly as well once you became happier? Once your emotions became more controlled?" he blasted, the vein at his forehead popping. "Honestly, I have no idea how you managed to live this long without hurting anyone."
"Hey!" my aunt exclaimed, but I was furious.
Furious at him, but more than that—I was furious at myself for craving the attention of an asshole whose only objective was obviously talking to me like I was a child.
"What the fuck is your problem?" I bit out, trying to control the fury rising in my veins.
"My problem." He stood up, looking at me as if I was lesser. As if I was fucking stupid. "Is that you have no idea what you're capable of, yet you keep running around, ignoring all the signs, behaving like an actual child instead of a twenty-nine-year-old woman capable of handling her emotions. You're behaving like a pathetic teenager, unable to accept the truth."
My vision darkened, and the tingling at the tips of my fingers increased, spreading over my arms. "You don't know me," I hissed, getting up from my seat. "You don't know anything about me."
"Really?" He laughed. "Your actions told me everything I need to know. You ran from your aunt and Medusa the moment you heard something that didn't fit your little plan, and now you're denying what all of us here know."
"Which is?"
"That you're a killer!" he thundered, his eyes turning wild. "You were born to be a killer, Kaira. You were born to end us all, to end the world as it is, and we keep dancing around the topic as if you're not just one sneeze away from bringing the end ofthe world to all of us. I never should have helped your mother escape." His words were knives, cutting deeper than the pain of losing everything I loved in my life. They destroyed the veil I had used to cover the old wounds from reopening, but it was futile. "Hell, I should have killed you myself while you were still in her stomach. Then we wouldn't have been here, tiptoeing around the fact that my brothers and all their minions are going to be after you."
His eyes flashed with sorrow the moment he spoke, and as his chest rose and fell I could feel the tendrils of pain wrapping around the center of my being. Pain that didn't belong to me. Pain that rotted the air around us, dragging over the surface of the table in front of me.
But the regrets I carried were stronger than any rational thought right now. The destruction his words left behind made me feel bare. Stripped of everything I used to be, bleeding in front of these three people who were almost strangers to me.
My palms slammed against the table in front of me as his lips parted, ready for the next assault.
"You blindly came to the one place where they could catch you." His words held a weight I wasn't strong enough to carry. Not now. Especially not now. "The one place where they could own you, and you and your little emotions are not welcome here. Not right now. Not when so many things are at stake!"
I had no idea what happened. I had no idea why it happened, but one moment I was standing on the side of the table, and the other, everything turned dark. My vision, the room around us, everything disappeared except for the pair of emerald green eyes and the mocking smile on his face.
The stench of decaying flowers spilled throughout the room, etching itself into the depths of my mind. "Come on, Kaira," he taunted, laughing at me. "Show me. Show us all what you are."
The roar erupted from my lungs as the ground underneath started shaking, and I flew after him. My mind blanked out, my hands wrapped around his neck, and I pushed him against the wall. His back hit it with a thud, his laughter never stopping, urging me to do more. My fingers tightened against the soft skin, against the pulse point on his neck and the tattoo I kept looking at.
"There she is," he purred, pushing my hair away from my face. "There's my little Goddess." His hand wrapped around my wrist, pushing my hand harder against him. "But is that all you got?"
My eyes narrowed, the fury he unraveled begging to show him what we could do, what lived inside my veins, but just as those thoughts passed through my mind, the ink on his neck lit up like fireworks on New Year's Eve, almost blinding me. His eyes got lost to me, as did the room we were in.
And suddenly, I was no longer at Elandra's place. I was no longer in this moment of time, but I knew the meadow in front of me. I saw it once before, this morning, as a matter of fact, when I just came to the island.
Unlike before, the fear wasn't what gripped my heart in its claws. It was the anticipation. The need. The yearning I couldn't yet understand.
Because I knew who waited there.
Because I knew I would see him.
"Who are you?"I asked, looking at the stranger in front of me as my heart thundered in my chest, wishing to go to him, to be near this creature. I never saw him before, but I could feel his energy like my own. I already knew he was one of the Ancientseven before he spoke, but the closer he came the harder it was becoming to breathe.
His emerald green eyes ran over my red dress, toward my face, and then over my hair.
Mother rarely allowed me to go and visit Olympus, afraid they would try to corrupt me as she so often said, but now I hated her just a little bit for separating me from the man in front of me. Had I had a chance to visit before, maybe I would have met him.
