The shadows of the evening played with the fading light coming through the window on my right, telling me I was sleeping far longer than I wanted to.
I pulled myself upright, letting the blanket fall to my hips. I grinded my teeth as the sharp pain sliced through the back of my head, reminding me of the headache from last night.
My eyes connected with Elandra's, slowly dragging over the shadows etched into her skin, each telling its own story. I wished I could close my eyes and wake up in a different place, but after yesterday, after everything that had been said, I understood that this wasn't something I could run from, no matter how much I wanted to.
Hades's words repeated over and over again, hitting too fucking close to my heart. Yet I remembered the sorrow on his face with every word he said. I remembered the way he held me, the way he cradled me in his arms after I had collapsed.
And that memory. That dream. I couldn't remember anything but the emerald green eyes looking at me, and yet Iknew it was something important. Something I truly needed to remember. But the more I tried, the more the veil in my mind expanded, increasing the pain slicing through my skull, and I stopped.
I stopped trying to make sense of the man who seemed to hate me yet also care for me, and focused on the things I could control.
The danger was real. The monsters were real too, and it would seem that I was one of them. But it was too late to wish I had never found those journals, or I had never gotten on that ferry. It was too late wanting to run, and instead of avoiding Elandra and the rest of them, pretending I could find solace in my dreams, I figured I needed to know the truth.
The real fucking truth. Not all these partial stories.
"How long have you been standing there?" I asked, looking at the woman who suffered more than I ever did in my life, yet she still wasn't trying to run away. She'd been at the door when I woke up, but something told me she'd been watching me far longer than that.
Elandra shrugged, taking a step inside the room. "A while." As I suspected. "Are you feeling better?"
Was I? "I'm not even sure what happened," I whispered. "One moment I was angry, furious actually, and the next…" I stammered. I didn't even know where I went next. As soon as I came back, I forgot every single thing. Every single detail, but I knew without a doubt it was another vision. "I don't know where I went, Elandra. I don't know what's happening to me. I don't?—"
"Your powers are awakening," she said, so matter-of-factly as if she were offering me breakfast. "Look." She crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed I was occupying. "Your aunt wouldn't want me to throw everything at you at once, but we don't have time to sugarcoat things. We don't have time for you to fall apart or ease you into the entire history."
I gulped, sensing the seriousness of the situation for the first time.
"We're at war, Kaira." There it was. "An eternal war that's been going on for several millennia." Her eyes flickered toward the window. "It is a bloody war. A wicked war, Kaira. And," she looked back at me, "your destiny isn't something I would wish even on my worst enemy, but you can't run away from it. You can't hide from what you are—from who you are. You can't bury your head in the sand and ignore the rest of the world."
"I know."
"And it's good that you do, but I need you to start behaving in a certain way. I need you to stop running and start listening."
"I would if you actually told me what I needed to hear."
"Kaira." She smirked. "We told you what you needed to hear, but because it wasn't what you wanted to hear, you fled. You ran away like a petulant child unable to handle her emotions."
"I didn't?—"
"Yes, you did," she interrupted. "And while I can understand all of this is more than overwhelming, I need you to understand what's at stake." She placed her hand on top of my foot over the blanket and lowered her voice. "I need you to understand we're not playing some silly game here, darling. We. Are. At. War," she bit out. "And you might be the only person, the only thing, standing between us and the apocalypse."
Talk about putting pressure on me.
"You don't believe me," she said, more like a statement than a question, and yeah—I guess a part of me still didn't believe her.
Ever since the accident last year, I had a hard time going back to who I was. I had a hard time wanting to be alive, so it wasn't surprising that I didn't really want to make any decisions, choosing to live in the bubble of grief, allowing it to swallow me whole. But being here, seeing the concern on Elandra's face and going through the facts they gave me so far, something insideof me snapped. Something that lay dormant for almost a year, stirred, awakening slowly deep inside me.
"A part of me believes you," I said, looking down at my fingers. "But there's also a part of me that's having a hard time believing that everything I was ever told about Greek Gods is actually the truth. Even you," I looked at her. "We all heard your story, thinking you were a cautionary tale for women around the world. Yet you're here. Sitting in front of me. Talking to me, and I don't know what to think." Her eyes narrowed, filling with an emotion she no doubt didn't want me to see. "I should have said this earlier, but, well, shit happened." I took her hand in mine, seeing the swirls of darkness on her pale skin, and then looked her in the eye.
The snakes moved around her head, each of them staring at me just like she did, but there was no hissing. No danger, just curiosity.
"I am sorry for what happened to you." Elandra inhaled quickly, her lips parting. "I really am sorry. I know it might be silly to apologize for something that happened long before my time, but I still am sorry."
Elandra's eyes fell to our hands while her snakes still looked at me with more curiosity than before. For a moment I thought I had overstepped. For a moment I thought I had no idea what I was talking about. My fingers twitched over her hand, and I started pulling back when she grabbed my hand, stopping my actions.
"No one has ever apologized to me," she whispered, still keeping her eyes downcast. "No one ever said they were sorry or that they were wrong for what happened or how they behaved." Elandra looked at me, her eyes showing the emotions threatening to burst out. The emotions she wasn't allowed to feel.
The emotions that were hidden for many, many years, while she suffered at the hands of the Gods.
"They punished me for what he did," she bit out, her lower lip trembling. "Athena herself, the Goddess I worshipped, the Goddess I loved, punished me because they would never punish one of the Ancients. One of the originals." The snakes hissed the more she talked, and I realized in that moment they were attuned to her emotions. To her inner voice. "But they failed to understand that I wasn't weak. That I wouldn't bow and accept my destiny without saying a single word. We," she squeezed my hand, "we are not weak, Kaira. Just because you don't understand things right now and just because you're scared?—"
