by Holly Hook
I blinked as we made contact and light exploded behind my eyes. Where Ronin was electricity and Wendy was dread, this guy was warm and full of light. "Giselle," I said.
"Ronin and I have been buds forever," he said.
"If 'forever' means a year," Ronin said.
"Been having problems with the Lower Order?" Cal asked. "My shining light deflects them without any issues."
"I can see why you're friends," I said.
Ronin just grinned.
Cal got into the hunting shack and Ronin backed off. "We need to keep this girl out of the Lower Order and out of the spotlight," Ronin said.
"Is it safe out here?" I asked.
"Yes. Zeus's magic extends a couple of miles around both campuses," Ronin explained. "We're close to the edge, and if any Lower Order people try to get to us, they're going to have a bad day." Ronin pointed to the edge of the field. "But we're also far away enough from campus so we can have some privacy."
Cal emerged from the shack with a bunch of metal disks that might have once been used to train warriors back in ancient Greece. They looked super heavy and like something I'd never be able to lift. Strength wasn't my suit—that was Maria's.
"Your weapon," Ronin reminded me.
I got out the dagger, which thrummed in my grasp. The cold feeling set in. "You're not going to chuck those at me, are you?" I asked.
Cal responded by doing just that. The first disk whirled through the air, closing distance, and I leapt out of the way just before it sailed past my location. I stumbled over an old pile of lumber and went down, getting a face full of tall grass.
"Crap!" I shouted.
And Ronin stood above me.
"Be ready for anything. If that cult comes back, they're not going easy on you. Up. And don't stumble again." He extended his hand.
"I know that." But I took it.
Ronin's grip sucked the breath right out of me. He grinned, but there was no malice in it this time. He was having fun.
"Now, again," he said. "Cal's going to throw another disc at you and...watch out!"
Ronin released me as something whistled. The air shifted.
Instinct kicked in. I whirled, lifting the dagger at what looked like a UFO trying to take my head off. Cal laughed, but his cocky tone just brought that icy electricity up in me. It filled my limbs, making them crackle with a dark life, and a bolt of purplish black shot from my weapon. It struck the disc as I screamed.
The disc lurched and froze inches from my face, caught in the grasp of another purplish black lasso. Strength filled my arm.
Ronin snapped his fingers. "Now throw it back at Cal."
"No way, man!" Cal shouted.
I flicked the dagger.
The lasso released, and the disc sailed back at Ronin's friend.
"No!" He ducked just as the hunk of metal banged into the shed. A loud bang followed. The tiny glass window shattered. Boards buckled inward and cracked. The disc fell to the ground.
And I gasped as the powerful feeling died. "I can do that?"
"Well, you just did. Surprisingly," Ronin added.
Cal called Ronin some names, but Ronin just folded his arms and let a smug smile creep onto his face.
"We're making progress," Ronin said.
Cal picked up another metal disc. It brightened at his touch. There were several sitting against the shed now. "Have fun with this!"
He threw the disc. It reflected light into my face from nowhere, distracting me. I squinted.
My arm shook as I raised the dagger again. The void itself seemed to spread through my whole body, darkening the world and filling my ears with a strange sucking sound. Instinct took over again. I moved the dagger in a circle and watched as a small Chaos hole opened in front of this second disc.
It stopped. Shattered. And then caved in on itself as the void fed. I struggled to suck in a breath. The disc was gone. Completely gone. I staggered back as the hole closed. I was darkness.
Cal threw another disc.
I did the same, destroying the bright metal projectile with the wave of my dagger.
He threw yet another, face red with irritation.
I swung the dagger up and down, ears ringing, forming another lasso. I didn't know how I was doing it. I just did. Catching the next disc, I tossed it to the side to land in the trees. A low groan took up everything. The ground got soft. Ronin staggered beside me.
"Giselle!" Ronin shouted. "Stop!"
He snapped me out of my state and I dropped my weapon, returning to regular Giselle again. I swayed. I was going to go down in front of him and Cal and they'd never let me hear the end of it.
But instead of letting me fall, Ronin caught me from behind and pulled me to his chest.
"Cal, stop. She's using too much energy," Ronin said. "The ground almost opened up. Didn't you see it? We have to get her back."
"Huh?" I managed as electricity raced up and down my back. Why wasn't he making fun of me? "Too much energy?" I asked.
"Like what I did. We're mortals, so you have to learn when to stop. When the feeling starts taking you over like this, that's when. They don't teach you guys this in Cursed. You're not awesome enough."
I blinked, returning to normal. My terrifying weapon lay in the tall grass. And Ronin was putting on his jerk face again. Somehow, it was comforting. Like one thing was stable in my life. "I almost opened the ground?"
"Didn't you feel it?"
My heart raced for more than one reason. "I think so."
Ronin moved his hands to the backs of my shoulders. My skin there jolted to life, even though he was just touching me through my uniform. "Yep. Just not cool enough." I detected a smile. Then he patted me on the head.
"Hey!"
"Dude, now's not the time to flirt," Cal said, shaking his head. "Yeah. We should be done for tonight. I'll lay off next time."
"I'm not flirting," Ronin said. "I'm being insulting. There's a big difference. It's no wonder you haven't gotten a date yet."
"Sheesh," Cal said.
"Ronin, can we die if we overdo it with our powers?" I asked, whirling on him. His touch lingered. "We both know I'd be the one to screw it up and kill myself. Not that I want to do that."
Ronin gulped.
Uh, oh.
"Yes. Maybe two or three percent of the students at Olympian die from overexertion. People show off there. But deaths bring students back to reality. For a while, at least."
"You showed off." I peeled away from him and whirled.
"I had to. Somebody had to show the Lower Order who was boss." Ronin flexed his biceps. And they were nice biceps, too.
Was I enjoying training with him?
And did I not want these evenings to end?
"Okay," Cal said. "Let's call it a night, you two."
Chapter Thirteen
Yeah, I actually liked training with Ronin and Cal every night.
A few weeks went by like this. October bled into November. Classes continued and Carmen gave me updates on the car situation. Still a no-go. I tried to text Grandma to see how she was doing, but got silence in return. Carmen assured me that she was alive and working in Gramp's Convenience Store every day. The silent treatment hurt, but Maria and Mikey were awesome distractions.
Maria and Mikey continued to provide nightly distractions to the guards—different ones each time—around Cursed Academy every evening. Since there was a guard at each door, it was easy for my friends to rotate victims and keep suspicion down. One night, Mikey clogged a toilet with paper towels and made it overflow, summoning a guard that Ronin and I got past. We had a good laugh about that one. And another time, Maria managed to break a washing machine downstairs, making a perfect screech that summoned another guard.
But in return for their help, I had to tell them all about training the next morning at breakfast. Fair enough. While watching out for Wendy, of course, who continued to glare at us from down the first years' table. I didn't dare talk too loud.
"Yeah, I've got
use of the dagger down. Ronin stopped letting me carry it around during the day since he's worried I'll overexert myself. Fair enough. There are different moves. Circles open the void, and lines make energy lassos. I tried a zigzag pattern, but I'm not sure if that does anything. They're keeping the sessions short."
"Why can't we train with Ronin?" Maria asked. "All I can do is swing a club."
"Because if more people go off every night, someone will notice," I said, eyeing the perimeter of the dining hall. Prometheus was once again pacing around the dining hall, checking to make sure no one killed each other. I didn't miss the way he checked to make sure I was sitting in my spot. "Wow, it sucks having two immortals watching me all the time."
"Well, we haven't seen the Z man," Mikey said.
"I'm shocked," I said. Why couldn't Zeus find a way to get me into Olympian? He was the most powerful god. Yeah, he'd taken the Division Oath with the others, but he was still the most powerful god.
Right away, I felt bad for having the thoughts. Maria and Mikey were good friends, the kind you didn't find very often. They'd been putting themselves on the line for me since I came here.
So I kept those thoughts to myself.
That night, Cal threw more discs at me, and the more I practiced with the Chaos Dagger, the better I got at deflecting them. Since we were running out and had just four left, so I did my best not to destroy them. Just holding the weapon filled me with that icy darkness, and I quickly learned my limits. No more than a couple shining discs at a time, or the feeling would go out of control and I'd find myself falling into Ronin's grasp again. (Not, of course, that it was a bad thing.) And I also found out I could deflect discs by opening holes just to the side of them. One almost went right into Ronin.
"Great!" Cal said, clapping and stepping away from the shed. "You're doing stuff I couldn't imagine. You're literally opening black holes. I wish I had that power, because not even light can escape those."
"They're not really black holes," I say. "They lead somewhere. Aren't black holes like, a bunch of star stuff all compressed into an impossible dot?" I faced Ronin, hoping for an answer.
He nodded. "I'm not supposed to have brains, remember? You're opening portals to another realm."
"I'm not sure I like it." I loosened my grip on the dagger. Immediately the icy feeling faded, but it didn't go away this time as it had during the other trainings. The feeling stuck, like I was going to stay full of darkness for the rest of my life.
"I don't like mine, either, so I just pretend I do."
"You're admitting an insecurity?" I asked. This was new.
"Baby, I have no insecurities," he said as if saving face.
I sighed and turned away. "Ronin, you're impossible."
"Technically, so are you," he told me. Ronin looked to Cal. "I think Giselle's mastered the art of deflecting projectiles. I know, it's something I never thought she'd do."
"Shut up!" I slapped Ronin on the arm.
He grinned at me.
"I could ask someone to make more golems. At least she won't kill anybody by training against them," Cal said.
"Yeah. We don't want that," Ronin said.
They were talking about me like I was still a disaster. Well, I was, just like my life, right? Terror made my heart race. Though I was done training, the groan still filled my head. I was on the edge. What was happening to me? I wasn't cut out to be some powerful being, least of all one with such destructive powers. Discs were one thing. People were another. If the Lower Order showed up again, what would I do to them?
I handed the Chaos Dagger to Ronin. He took it, narrowing his eyes at me.
"You okay?"
He was asking if I was okay.
"Yeah," I lied. "I still feel, well, weird. Like I can't turn my magic off this time."
Ronin bit his lip. It was cute, but it failed to fill me with warmth. "You didn't do that much this time. Maybe your powers are growing. It's normal for that to happen."
"But I'm cold." My breath spiraled in front of my face but this was a different kind of cold, one filled with dread.
"What? You want me to wrap you in my arms?" Ronin grinned, but tension lived there. Yeah. He was worried, and that did not make me feel better.
Despite the darkness inside, tingles broke out over my body.
Yes.
"Dude, get a room," Cal said. "We should head back. It's getting dark. I don't want to be out in the woods when there are werewolves running around the area. One of them shifts, and we're in for a fight."
Ronin glared at him. "They've been hanging around Cursed, chasing rabbits. Prometheus only hired them because he doesn't have the cash to hire the Olympian Guard."
I thought of my secure room. Prometheus must have made sacrifices for that. Shivering, I looked to Ronin.
Then he took off his leather jacket, which he'd thrown over his toga uniform, and put it over my shoulders. Some of the cold vanished and I took a breath. Even his jacket carried that electric sensation, like everything he touched absorbed his power.
"Thanks," I said, suddenly unable to breathe.
"Let me walk back with you. So you don't trip," Ronin said. "Try not to worry. We don't even know quite what you are yet."
"No kidding." That was a reason to worry. I was getting a handle on using the Chaos Dagger, yeah, but the rest terrified me. Darkness was the unknown. I wasn't a god descendant and I wasn't a monster. Ronin could hide his worry all he wanted, but the lie wasn't lost on me.
We left the field, ditching Cal, and Ronin turned on a flashlight to illuminate the way. In the distance, something crashed through underbrush. One of the guards chasing a deer, probably. Werewolves couldn't control themselves well when it came to animals. They could barely avoid attacking humans.
"What do you think I am?"
Ronin responded right away as we walked beside one another. "I don't know."
"What does your father think I am? Prometheus? There's a reason he gave me that secured dorm."
"Zeus and I don't talk much," Ronin said. "I was raised by my mother." He left it there. "She was a model and not even a god descendant. I guess my parents met at a fashion show New York. They had a night together, which wasn't tense at all because Zeus is, you know, married to Hera. Then I came along." Ronin pumped his bicep again.
He's telling me his life story.
Big step.
And better yet, the darkness inside me was fading as I took my attention off it.
"Zeus cheated on his wife?" I asked. Of course, he would have had to in order to have a mortal child. No one said that out loud in school, or anywhere else, for that matter. I checked the surrounding trees to make sure no one was listening. A twig snapped somewhere, but it was an animal. Well, I prayed it was just an animal.
A bird took off into the night, flapping wings. Yeah. Phew.
"Yeah. He must have done that a lot back in the day, or he wouldn't have so many descendants now. I guess there are things they don't teach you in class."
"Is Hera ever going to file for divorce? You can do that now," I said.
"She's the goddess of marriage. I doubt it," Ronin said, turning his gaze straight ahead. "Feeling any better?"
It was clear he wanted to change the subject, that he'd extended himself too far. "Yeah. Much better. What if the power grows so much I can't control it anymore?"
Ronin went silent for a long time. "I don't know. I don't even know how much power I'll get. Most people who came from Zeus did so from a long ass time ago. Mine was recent. It worries me, too."
That was comforting.
But it was.
"I'm sorry," I said as we reached the back door of Cursed Academy. He would open up even more. Maybe, he would even—
But Ronin clicked off the flashlight. "The back door's free. And I won't be able to train you tomorrow, just so you know. Good night."
* * * * *
Ronin had once again taken the Chaos Dagger with him, and I didn't realize until I got up to my room
and unlocked the door. Disappointment had replaced the cold plasma. At least Maria had tied to a string to my keycard that attached to my uniform pocket. Yeah, I had a primitive pocket protector.
I texted Carmen the rundown. And I was honest. But she didn't answer, so I flopped down on the bed and tried to force the terrifying thoughts out of my head. When I did sleep, my dreams were full of swirling darkness blacker than black, ringed with icy, deep purple and groaning like the foundations of the world are quaking.
And when I woke, the ice remained, faint, in my limbs, just begging me to tap it.
This was getting worse.
The power of Chaos had to be something no mortal could handle. Maybe my parent who had it eventually died and Grandma couldn't bear to tell me the truth. No wonder she was miserable.
At breakfast, Maria and Mikey looked at me like they just knew. No kidding. But I ate in silence. We went to combat training, and since it was one of Ronin's off days, we just had Max barking at us to spar. And here, I just had my stick. Again. I couldn't help but notice that the fighting at Cursed Academy was low-key compared to the cool stuff they must have done at Olympian. Cal threw blinding light discs, for crap's sake. They fought giant golems. We just hit each other.
"No slacking!" Max shouted at me and Maria.
I half-heartedly swung at Maria, who blocked me with her club. She smiled, deflecting my staff with no problem and causing me to drop it. Nearby, Wendy snickered.
"Shut up," Maria told her. "Having fun over there doing the same thing?"
Wendy had to settle for a staff, too. Turned out the school kept them in case people lost their real weapons.
Wendy glared at Maria and then me. She hadn't forgiven me for taking away her birthright sword. The gold flecks in her eyes shone with hatred.
"Loads of fun," she said, turning away from Serena. "Having a great day, in fact. I heard the Society is making me a new sword. Also, I get to go to a party off-campus with the Olympians tonight."
Brag.
"You know, they look down on you, too," Maria said.
