The Struggle

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  poured out from me, crackling and snapping. It filled the room until there was nothing but light and power and all the pain that was tearing through my insides, ripping me apart. It went on and on until my throat turned raw.

  My scream gave out and the light flickered once before falling to the broken floor like shimmery paint thrown into the air.

  Alex and Aiden were on their backs. So was Luke.

  And my father was gone.

  ~

  I didn’t remember leaving the house.

  The next thing I knew I was standing on the rocky cliff that overlooked frothy, white-capped waves.

  My knees shook as the sun crested on the horizon, turning the waves from blue to pink, and then my legs gave out. Knees cracked off the hard soil and I fell back, landing on my butt.

  Too exhausted. Too shell-shocked. Too . . . too everything. I didn’t move. Couldn’t. My eyes stung. They were so dry, yet so full of tears burning straight through the sockets. Slowly, I lifted my gaze to the deep blue sky.

  Apollo had lied to me.

  He’d lied to me this entire time. He’d tried to explain himself to me in those blurry moments after he’d told me my mom was . . . that she was dead.

  He’d claimed that the lie had been necessary. For my own good. He’d said that I’d been under a lot of stress. That I needed to keep it together so I would be safe. He even said that when he’d looked at me in the dorm room for the first time as my father, he couldn’t bear to see me hurting more than I already was.

  He promised me that she was in paradise.

  These were the words that felt like my skin was being tattooed with. None of those words made up for the lie, because this whole time, for months, I’d been living as if my mother was alive and safe. I believed I would see her again, and I would hug her. I would get to tell her that I now believed those stories she’d used to tell me, the ones that I’d attributed to her sickness. Now I wouldn’t.

  Squeezing my eyes shut, I pressed my lips together as another roar of rage, another scream of pain built in my chest. I was here and my mom . . .

  She was gone.

  She’d been gone for a long time now, and I had no idea. I went on with my life and hers had ended. How hadn’t I known? How could that even be possible?

  Shifting forward, I planted my hands in the soil as my chest ripped open once more. The pain was so potent it was tangible, a bitter coating in my mouth and throat.

  Everyone was gone now.

  My grandparents. Erin, my roommate who also happened to be a furie. Solos. My mother. Seth.

  A tremble rattled my arms as my fingers dug into the soil, scratching up nothing but dust. He should be here. The moment those words entered my thoughts, I couldn’t push them away or forge them. Seth should be here for this—for me, because I needed him.

  I needed him at this moment more than I ever had.

  “Josie?”

  Inhaling sharply, I opened my eyes at the sound of Alex’s voice. I didn’t look or speak, and after a few moments, I felt her draw close.

  Alex sat beside me, drawing her knees to her chest. “I’m not going to ask if you’re okay. I know you’re not.”

  Lowering my chin, I lifted a shaky hand and pushed a few loose strands back from my face. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t find any words.

  Silence stretched between us, and then Alex said, “I had to kill my mom.”

  That got my attention.

  My head swung sharply in her direction. She was staring out over the ocean, her pretty face pensive. Maybe I’d heard this story before. In that moment, I couldn’t remember if Deacon had told me. “Why?” I managed to croak out.

  Smoothing back her deep brown hair, she rested her chin on her knees. “My mom had pulled me out of the Covenant when she learned that I was to be the Apollyon. We lived as ordinary mortals until a group of daimons found us. They attacked, and I had to run away, you know? I thought they’d killed my mom. Aiden and Apollo—well, Apollo was known as Leon back then, but anyway, they found me and brought me back to the Covenant. I didn’t really let myself process what I believed to be her death.”

  Faint sunlight touched her cheeks. “It was easier just not to think about it. After all, I had a lot going on. Probably wasn’t the smartest thing, but I learned later that my mom wasn’t dead. She’d been turned into a daimon, and she was hunting us—hunting me.”

  “Why was . . . why was she doing that?”

  She pressed her lips together. “She knew what I was. She retained all that knowledge after she was turned into a daimon. It changed her. Made her evil. She thought if she turned me, she could control the Apollyon.” Alex drew in a stuttered breath. “Once I knew she’d been turned, it became my duty to kill her.”

  I shook my head. “And you did?”

  She nodded as she looked over at me. “She never would’ve wanted to become what she had, and I couldn’t let her be that way. I found her and . . . and it was the hardest thing I’d ever done.”

  I couldn’t even wrap my head around it.

  “I know what you’re feeling,” she said quietly. “I’ve felt it twice. The anger. The pain.”

  My lower lip trembled. “Something else we have in common.”

  “Seems like we have some of the worst things in common,” she replied, a wry grin on her lips. “I know there is nothing I can tell you that’s really going to make you feel better except that I know your mother is in a better place.”

  A flash of anger surged through me. “How do you know that?”

  “Because I’ve been there.” Her eyes met mine, and for some dumb reason, I had forgotten that Alex had died a mortal death. “I’m there six months out of the year,” she continued. “I one hundred percent agree with whatever violent thoughts you have when it comes to Apollo, but no matter what, he would’ve made sure your mother is in the Elysian Fields. Anything she wants, she will have access to, and she is not alone. She’s most likely with your grandparents right now.”

  If what Alex said was true, and I guessed it had to be true, I didn’t have to think of her as just . . . just ceasing to exist or being alone. Mom hated to be alone. Hope sparked alive. If Mom was in the Underworld, couldn’t I visit her? “Can I see her?”

  A sad smile tugged at her lips. “To get into Elysian Fields when you do not belong there is not easy.”

  “But I’m a demigod.”

  “That doesn’t matter. You’d need Hades to cross you over or you’d have to enter through one of the gateways, and that isn’t simple. You’d have to travel through the Underworld to get to Elysium,” she explained. “And with you being a demigod, there are things down there that would sense you right away.” She paused. “Maybe one day, once everything settles down, Hades would allow you to visit her, but it is not something often allowed. Your mom is safe and most likely happy, but she is dead and the living do not visit the dead.”

  Hope fizzled out. I bit down on my lip as I turned my head. “Except for you.”

  “Except for Aiden and me,” she agreed.

  Technically I’d died a mortal death when my powers had been unlocked, but it hadn’t been the same as Alex. I was simply a mortal one moment and a demigod the next. I wasn’t sent to the Underworld. I wasn’t sure I was even technically considered dead during any of it. “Do you visit your mom there?”

  She hesitated. “Yes.”

  That was something we didn’t have in common. I cast my gaze out over the ocean, wondering if what Apollo had said about Erin was true. For all I knew now, she could also be dead.

  My chest hollowed out.

  “It gets easier,” she stated. “It really does.”

  I was going to have to take her word for that.

  Dawn arrived as we sat side by side, and the sky turned a calm shade of blue, cloudless and endless. “Apollo is a shit father,” Alex said so suddenly that a harsh laugh escaped me. A small grin appeared on her face. “No. Seriously. He is.”

  “Yeah,” I forced
out, closing my eyes briefly.

  “I think he tries. Like, he really probably thought he was doing the right thing by not telling you about your mom. The gods . . . they have a very messed-up view of things.” Alex straightened out her legs. “Nothing we do will ever change that.”

  I gave a curt shake of my head. “He doesn’t try hard enough. He barely speaks to me when he’s here. He talks more to you and Aiden, and I know how that sounds. Like I’m jealous—” I exhaled raggedly. “I am jealous. You have a better relationship with him.”

  “I’ve known him longer and we’ve fought side by side.”

  Throwing up my hands, I cursed in exasperation. “Exactly. I get that he wasn’t supposed to know me before and that being around me now weakens him, but I . . . I don’t care,” I spat the last three words out. “I just . . . The time he’s here, he could try to get to know me. Try to be a father. And he lied to me, and I don’t care what his reasons are.” On a roll, I kept going. “And let’s not forget the fact that he never warned us that Seth could become the God Killer and might actually kill a Titan? We needed to know that.”

  “Agreed.” Alex twisted toward me, her brown eyes sharp. “Aiden and I were told to keep an eye on him, and I know you don’t like to hear that,” she added when I opened my mouth. “You were right when you told Apollo that no one knows Seth like you do.”

  I snapped my mouth shut.

  “You know this Seth, and I’m not sure who or what he really is now, but we know the old Seth too, and because of that, we have to be cautious. The gods had to be cautious.” Her lips curled on one side. “And they were cautious because apparently they kind of knew more than what they told us.”

  “He’s not evil,” I said for what felt like the thousandth time.

  Alex’s brows furrowed together as she turned back to the ocean. “I think . . . I think you’re right.”

  “I am,” I said vehemently.

  She nodded again and a moment passed. “I am sorry about your mother.”

  The next breath I took hurt. “Thank you.”

  Alex dragged the tips of her fingers through the crab grass and dirt. “If you ever need to talk about it, I’m here.”

  Pressing my lips closed, I nodded. I ran out of words along with the desire to find them. I didn’t say anything else. Neither did Alex. We just sat there in silence, shoulder to shoulder, joined in a way by the terrible things we’d experienced, the heartache we’d felt, and the shared dread of the unknown we faced.

  Chapter 6

  Seth

  The house was as quiet as a ghost as I stood in the room I’d sworn I would never return to. I’d only made it a few feet inside the door when my feet stopped moving.

  I couldn’t even believe that I’d walked into this damn house and I sure as hell had no idea why I’d come up here, to this room. It was the last place I ever wanted to be, but I was here, and had been standing here for what had to be hours.

  Hours.

  The people in the house—the staff or servants or whatever—had given me a wide berth as I’d entered. All except one. He was a male half-blood. He’d stayed back as I climbed the stairs, but I knew he was out in the hallway. Whoever the half was, he possessed major common sense and an admirable amount of instinct, because he’d known not to follow me into this room.

  If he had . . . ?

  The coldness in my chest spread like a vortex of ice and wind. If anyone had followed me in here, it would’ve been the last thing they’d done.

  My hands open and closed at my sides as crackling power seeped out of my pores. The room was just like I’d left it all those years ago. A neatly made bed stood in the center of the spacious quarters. The nightstand by the bed only had a lamp positioned in the furthest corner. How many times had I moved that lamp closer to the bed and then found it the following evening pushed back to the farthest corner of the nightstand? Every single godsdamn day. There was a narrow dresser across from the bed with the same damn TV sitting on it, and that was it. Nothing else was in the room but a fine layer of dust covering the dresser and nightstand.

  This had been my bedroom.

  I wanted to burn this room.

  Why did I want to come here? This wasn’t a place of happy, happy memories.

  Emptiness poured into my chest as I surveyed the cold and lifeless bedroom. Coming back to this house meant I’d be near only a few thousand people. Andros wasn’t heavily populated. Coming here was a smart move, but walking into this room was a mistake.

  I rubbed my palm over my chest, but nothing filled the gaping hole there, because that void had nothing to do with this house or this bedroom.

  Exhaling roughly, I walked toward the heavily shrouded window and pulled the curtain back. Dusk had begun to settle over the courtyard down below. I closed my eyes, and instead of being sucked back into those long nights and mornings of staring out this window, watching my mother, I saw Josie’s face and I wanted to be there. I wanted to see her—

  And then it happened.

  My heart took a beat and every cell in my body scattered. One second I was in my old bedroom and the next I was standing in a small room that appeared to be a hotel. I took a step back as my gaze swung around the room. Heavy curtains were drawn, blotting out the sun. I caught a glimpse of blonde hair splayed out across a pillow.

  Shit.

  I hadn’t meant to do this.

  But I had.

  I’d brought myself to Josie.

  Holy shit.

  It had only taken a second, a freaking second, and I was suddenly within feet of her, and she was right there, lying on a bed, curled onto her side. Her back was to me, but I knew that was Josie. I knew the line of her body, even under a thin white blanket. That was her curve of the hip and waist. That was my Josie—that was psychi mou. My soul.

  Only hours had passed since I’d left her, but it felt like a fucking eternity. I took a breath and it got stuck somewhere in my chest.

  She was right there.

  I didn’t move or dare to breathe too loudly. She couldn’t wake up. If she did and she said my name—if she looked at me, I couldn’t walk away again.

  I shouldn’t be here.

  Seconds slid by in a slow succession as a hundred questions rose in my head. Where was Josie? This didn’t appear to be the house we’d been in. Were they still in Malibu or had they left? If I concentrated hard enough I swore I could hear the ocean outside. Where was everyone else? Alex and Aiden? The boys and Poseidon’s son? How in the hell had I come all this way without realizing I was doing it?

  The gnawing in the pit of my stomach rumbled like hunger pangs.

  I needed to be gone from here. Josie wasn’t safe with me.

  One foot followed the other and then I was at her back. My heart thundered in my chest as muscles along my back and shoulders tensed. All thought processes were clicking off and common sense dive-bombed off a cliff. My fingers grazed over her soft, silky hair. I lifted a thick strand and curled my fingers around it. My gaze crawled up over the slope of her bare shoulder and the thin strap of one of those tank tops she was always wearing. I laid the strands of her hair down on the pillow as my gaze tracked the deep rise and fall of her chest. Lowering my hand, I snagged the edge of the thin blanket and drew it down, revealing the deep dip of her waist. The tank top she wore had ridden up, showing off a section of skin and the lacy edges of her panties.

  Josie squirmed in her sleep, shifting halfway onto her back. I held my breath as those thick lashes fluttered. Any second she could open her eyes, and I’d be lost. I’d be found. And there would be no going back.

  Those eyes didn’t open.

  Her hand fell to the side, slightly brushing my arm. It was like a jolt of electricity, lighting up every cell.

  Wake up.

  That order whispered in my thoughts. It was wrong, so very wrong, but if she opened her eyes and saw me, I . . . I couldn’t walk away.

  I wanted to wake her up. I wanted to touch her—hold her. I want
ed to curl my body around hers. I needed to feel her skin flush against mine. I needed to hear my name on her lips. My gaze flickered to the swell of her breasts, and the hunger raging inside me mixed with stark arousal. I needed everything about her.