Gemini

Chapter 27* The Darkest Daughter

Recap:

“Get your poop together, Kayla. I’m real.”

“But you’re with Zoey. And you’re too good of a guy to ever cheat on her like that.”

“I’m going to tell her,” he said with conviction. “It’s the right thing to do.”

She was quiet. And then- “Thank you for coming down to save me. I suppose Gemini helped?”

“Of course. He helped a lot.”

She struggled to a sitting position. The white shift was falling around her legs, thin enough to be translucent so he could see the slender shape of them. Swallowing, Sam fixed his gaze on her eyes, which were staring at him intently.

“Take my hand,” he said softly. A moment later, she did.

And they dissolved into light, which shot upwards towards the sky if there was one, and exited the Void hand in hand. 

Chapter 27* The Darkest Daughter

Three months later

“There is no such thing as jellybean juice,” Jeremy insists to Farah the old crone I met on my very first day here, in the Resistance. Farah’s eyes, crow’s feet at the sides, crinkle up into half-moons as she laughs. Her wizened hand clutches her new walking stick, a simple dark object made of gnarled root. She refuses to take anything more, although many of us easily have the skill to make a sturdier one for her. Her fork scrapes her plate as she cleans off lunch.

“You need to get ready for the war,” she says through a mouthful. I swear, it is all she says these days. You need to get ready for the war. Every time I hear it, I am filled with a great dread and an even greater anticipation. I cannot wait to the feel the golden ichor of the Gods flow down my hands in rivulets, fleck my face. I cannot wait to exact revenge on them as we tear their precious Olympus to the ground. Then there is that very real possibility that I may lose my life in the process. I mentioned it to Sam one day.

“If we don’t die,” he’d said, gently, “then I expect we’d be facing a much worse fate.”

“True,” I replied thoughtfully, “though I don’t expect peace after death. The Hades thing and all.”

“We just can’t win,” he said with a sigh. “Might as well die trying.” And I’d nodded and turned away, because what he had said made sense.

I spend a lot of time with him these days. Because now, we’re together, after the messy break-up bits. It amazed me to see how we humans were acting- a war going on, more of our kind dying every day, and we still had time to fall in love. Yet, without Sam, I would have cracked and gone insane long ago.

“Kayla?” Jeremy’s voice interrupts my thoughts. “Do you think there’s jellybean juice?”

I look up, jerked from my reverie. “Uh.”

“Uh!” Farah repeats, laughing at my obvious and embarrassing incompetence- though not in a mean way. “Our greatest warrior and she says “uh”.”

“I’m not your greatest warrior,” I say, blushing furiously. “I’m just, well, me.”

“The one who journeyed all the way to Gemini’s lair,” she says drily. “Who fought her way through legions of monsters, who battled the gods themselves-”

“Stop it,” I say, scowling. “I’m not as great as you make me out to be. I’m just me. And I don’t care about jellybean juice.” At that, I snatch up my bag and stalk out of the dining room, allowing the chatter to fade and the coolness of the caves to breeze over my damp skin. I know I might have hurt Farah’s feelings (though she was a tough old nut, and on second thoughts, probably not) but I couldn’t find it in myself to feel guilty. Because it was true, and I was tired of looking like a hero, tired of high expectations from everyone. I just wanted to train as best as I could.