Restored (A Caleo Selection)

18 ~ A Firestorm So Terrifying

I fell to my knees, my hands over my ears, as screams sounded and gunshots echoed through the hall. I bent down, shaking, too pressed in by the crowds to do anything else.

Intrusive thoughts overtook my head, triggered by the panic and loud noise, caused by a lifetime of living in fear. You're not going to make it out of this. You could be crushed or shot or trampled. A stray bullet could hit at any time and go straight through your back. Or maybe one of them will see who you are and do it intentionally.

I dug my fingernails into my arm, trying to make it stop. You're going to die. You're going to die!

After a while -- ten minutes? Twenty? -- the sounds of shooting and the screams faded, leaving hundreds of terrified voices in their wake. A light flickered on again, and someone began shouting instructions for how the guests should leave. People slowly filed out, still panicked.

I stayed hunched on the floor, fighting my anxiety. Then I thought, Leo! and at last my limbs loosened and I was able to rise. I looked around at the room once so beautiful, now trashed by stampeding people and bullet holes in the walls. I wondered why around a dozen or so people still lay on the floor, my brain fuzzy. Then I realized they were the victims of the wild bullets.

"Calypso!" Leo ran to me from across the room, sliding his arms behind my back and pulling me close. Without thinking I threw my arms around him and hugged him back, forgetting my fear for a moment.

Leo pulled back. "I -- I thought I saw...I saw you still on the floor and I thought you were...."

"It's okay. I'm okay. I was -- it's nothing." I ducked my head, cursing myself for losing my senses.

"Your Highness!" A guard dashed up and laid a hand on Leo's shoulder. "They need you, your father needs you."

I glanced around the room, watching paramedics flood in, loading the wounded on cots and carrying them away. Leo tended beside me. "What -- who is it?"

I didn't understand what he meant until the guard cleared his throat and looked away sadly, then back at Leo. "It's the queen. She's been shot."

. . .

Piper, Hazel, Annabeth, Reyna, and I were huddled together in Piper's room a few hours later when we heard the wailing. Hazel gasped at the sounds of misery and pressed into Reyna, who put an arm around the younger girl. Annabeth covered her face with her hands.

A wide-eyed maid came to tell us what we already knew: Queen Esperanza Valdez was dead.

Piper wept. I held her close and gripped her hand tightly while Annabeth leaned into her other side. Annabeth had tears streaked across her face, even though she did her best to hide it.

Hazel scooted up to Annabeth's free side, and Reyna linked her arm across Hazel's shoulder. We sat there in silence, letting Piper and Annabeth mourn their aunt and queen, and there was a beauty in how five girls so different could unite over a common cause: making it through a difficulty.

I had never spoke with Leo's mother, and still I acutely sensed her loss in these girls who had become my dear friends. The whole palace was quiet for once, all acknowledging the loss of the lady who had been so good to the commoners of Illéa, who had worked her whole life to make things better for them. I had heard the stories of how she calmed her husband's vengeful hand and pleaded mercy in any case, no matter how great or trivial. She has embedded in Leo things that made him who he was, and now I would never get to know her.