by Elena Monroe
Kate spun around, glaring over the seat with a look meant to melt me into my place. “Nothing is normal in Arcadia, Arianna. That’s obvious.”
The final tone in her voice elicited a pout I wasn’t proud of. I felt scolded, like a child chanting why to every question and the parents drained of clever ways to answer.
I didn’t have any answers to anything.
The circle.
Arcadia.
My fake parents.
The royalty in my veins.
Abilities I only ever read about in books.
Memories I couldn’t remember.
I was forced to swallow a special pill—one that put a pin in everything, for as long as it took.
The mall seemed too big to be real. It made my features twist in to disgust just looking at it from the parking lot. It was full of all the clothes and stores I already loathed.
Turning the focus, I asked Kate about something she’d want to blabber on about: herself. “How long have you and Austin been together?”
She laughed, with a sly look on her face and a dramatic head tilt, analyzing the motive behind asking. “Long enough to not get jealous anymore… not long enough for the sex to go vanilla.”
“You’re both strong, very different, amazing queens.” Luna trying to use slang casually had us busting out laughing. Nothing modern fit too well on Luna. She was an old soul in every aspect of the word.
“I really hate malls,” I mumbled to myself as we walked in.
I followed Kate and Luna’s lead, at least there were people here. I punished myself with an eye roll at my own paranoia.
Kate
Shopping with Arianna was a nightmare. She was in the real world longer than us and she possessed no mundane qualities I was hoping to leech from her.
She didn’t care what dress or what color, and she didn’t bother to pretend to be excited that our cold king invited her as his date. He never asked anyone anything.
He made demands with no apologies.
Luna was firmly on Team Arianna, pretending to not care Nyx asked her to the dance after pining over him since he transferred in.
I felt like the only normal person. Not even for a good reason… for caring about a damn dance.
Everyone else was hyper focused on the ritual; the two would overlap, leaving the dance simply a distraction.
The one normal thing was deemed a distraction.
Seriously. No, like seriously.
Forcing myself to pretend I cared about the ritual meant not blowing off the meetings, nodding my head like I was listening, and not volunteering for anything. It had been working pretty well. I was sure everyone thought I cared enough to at least revel in the moment Arianna was going to get stabbed.
All I wanted was to be normal—as normal as I could get.
Being the daughter of Aphrodite and Demeter set the bar high when it came to the level of not normal I was born into.
Olympus worked solely on royalty (and some incest if we’re being honest). The gods were always fighting, killing, playing their wicked games to climb one more rung on the ladder.
My parents played the most wicked games... not to climb anything, just to laugh on the other end of someone else’s heartbreak.
The world had done them wrong already, and all they lusted for was to wrong everyone else to make the playing field even.
I was the opposite; all I wanted was the normal to out-weigh all the nefarious I inherited from them.
Normal could snuff out all the bad with pure boredom.
I was determined to make the Harvest Dance my bitch. Spike the punch, take the cliché photos with Austin, dance to some slow song neither of us knew, and end the night like any formal dance, alone with my boyfriend.
No one was going to get in between me and my hopes for tonight.
We took over the communal bathroom. I dumped all my products and makeup on the counter, smirking at my reflection owning this moment.
“Have you slept with Bolton?” The shock value part of me was never going away. I couldn’t snuff that out no matter what I tried.
I used to snap a rubber band against my wrist every time a rude, malicious, callous comment came out. The slight pinch against my sensitive wrist helped for a while, dwindling the comments down to only when truly needed, which was still less, but more than the normal person. I restrained myself to be less like a nightmare.
Arianna tucked her lips inward and tried to stop her mouth from turning up. I popped an eyebrow. I didn’t take Arianna as modest, and it was bowling me over.
She liked our cold king more than anyone knew—herself included.
Arianna wasn’t the type to admit any sliver of truth to herself, let alone the ones threatening her bleeding heart. She wanted to believe her heart was small, but for her it was the only organ she thought with.
She leaned forward into the mirror, inspecting her messy purple hair. “You and Bolton really never dated? Why isn’t Austin king, if the school crowned you queen?”
“Austin isn’t king material: he’s warm blooded and sensitive. Bolton is, no offensive, cold and heartless... he’s the perfect king.” Perfecting the concealer step of my process, I watched her turn inward, calculating how much he could care about her if he was heartless and cold.
Rolling my eyes, I turned to face her, dropping my beauty blender from patting the products into my skin. “Everyone has a weakness... you’re his. Trust me, he’d be pissed at Caellum for what he did, but not kill him... for just anyone.”
Playfully tugging a strain of her purple hair crowding her features, I gave her a genuine smile—well, as genuine as the callous, dried-up parts of me would allow.
That same obvious smile returned. She was falling for Bolton no matter how much she shouldn’t.
The powers inside me were wreaking havoc and setting off alarms I was choosing to ignore.
Having parents so rooted in love and lust only transferred their talents onto me like a modern day Cupid. I sensed love, saw their love stories unfold in my head, and it wasn’t always a match made in heaven. Sometimes it was a fiery kind of hell.
Arianna and Bolton weren’t a match. Neither were Luna and Nyx. I had seen their stories unfold, and they were all full of ache, insecurities, and flaws.
How do you tell your friends when they don’t even know your power? How can I break their hearts when love defies the odds every day?
I wanted to pretend I was powerless, so that’s what I did.
After putting my face on, I turned to Luna and manipulated her wild strawberry curls in a tight twist along her hairline, creating a crown.
We were all equally royal and going to look it.
My phone went off on the counter, shaking the products closest to the vibration.
Austin: Jasper is missing. No splitting up.
I kept my phone close to me, so only my eyes were able to read the message. Last thing we needed was Arianna’s dramatics and Luna’s worrisome eyebrows to dip.
Me: What do you mean by MIA?
Austin: Bolton poked the bear.
My fingers were frozen, hovering above the screen. I didn’t know what to type back. Bolton was rocking the boat before it was even in the water. Thankfully, Nyx and Bolton weren’t keeping the other girls in the loop like Austin was.
Pretending everything was fine was my special talent that I used every other day; tonight was no different.
We spent hours getting ready, talking, and snacking the whole time. It was straight out of a romantic comedy movie. There was always that one montage of the girlfriends together before they figured out how to be normal. Just like this.
I shimmied into my blush pink velvet wrap dress, making sure any static was banished from my look. I sat on the edge of the bench and pushed my feet into pink Balenciaga sneakers for some edge. I couldn’t let Arianna’s black number with Doc Martens steal the show.
I was on the dance committee, responsible for ordering people around and birthing the idea of th
e Winter Wonderland dance, but when I walked in, my own jaw dropped. I was seeing my handy work for the first time.
Austin’s arm was around my waist as I took in the magic around us; none of it was abnormal or god-like—just magic.
Nyx and Bolton met us here in true bad boy fashion. They weren’t going to conform to gentleman, even to walk across the quad to pick up their dates and walk to another building across the same quad.
Stubborn as they are handsome.
Almost all of me was focused on tonight and the dance, but the other half of me nagged at my senses. Something was wrong. Something in the air was grabbing my attention in a disappointing way, and I was hellbent on figuring out what was standing between me and the normal I lusted for.
“Did you have to push Jasper tonight? Of all nights? Are you begging for something to go wrong?” I barked at Bolton, while he was smirking at Arianna’s much more polished look.
Bolton’s mouth dropped exactly the way I planned to make these alpha men bow before the only women able to keep them in line.
I didn’t think she could pull it off, but even with her white Doc Martens, she still looked like royalty. Her lace black babydoll dress fit her so perfectly you almost didn’t notice the small hair piece I pushed against the crown of her purple hair. A tiny silver crown.
“He was pissing me off. I gave him an out, and he didn’t take it.”
A strong gaze from my half-mast eyes, heavy with mascara and fake lashes, and he knew exactly what I was conveying: an easy disappointment at his sloppy attempt to fix the situation before it happened.
He was throwing his weight into a brick wall, one not moving if they could hide betrayal this easily.
I had been feeling like someone was watching me for weeks now. It was a feeling that pushed my senses into overdrive, as I tried to pin the feeling onto someone looking my way or whispering in the distance. I had been searching all week for the culprit, but came up short. Whoever it was, was talented and hiding in the shadows, which is a place I had no determination to go.
Let them watch me.
Let the mystery person see how normal I strive to be.
Let them try to guess what my abilities are and what I can do.
I hadn’t even told Austin about this feeling. Not that he wouldn’t protect me or throw his weight around like Bolton; I just didn’t need him to. I wasn’t Luna or Arianna—someone looking for a shield to promote how strong I am. I was strong, and no man on this planet was going to steal an ounce of it.
I worked hard to be considered strong myself, apart from my sovereign blood and football player boyfriend—both equally deemed majestic in their own worlds. The mortal world prided themselves on image, and having a hot boyfriend that people adored was the same as having powerful parents in Olympus.
It made no sense, yet yielded more respect, even from me.
The dance was going smoothly, but the small hairs on the back of my neck were standing straight up still. I kept sweeping the room for threats; we all were. Tonight was the full moon and the start of the Harvest. There was no doubt it would happen tonight.
“Where’s Caellum?” My arms were around Austin’s neck, as we slow danced, trying to forget everything around us. Too bad my mind was glued to the drama.
“Probably going to blow us off. I heard Bolton really got to him.”
I couldn’t help the eye roll that came next. Bolton was single handedly playing the fool. It wasn’t like him to not play smarter than the average guy.
This was more than protecting Arianna. This was jealousy, anger, payback, and every other bad emotions lingering inside him for fourteen trapped years.
Men, as much as we condemned them to hide how they feel, we never stopped seeing how their actions were rooted in emotions.
My eyes swept the room as I pushed my chest against Austin’s, letting my pink velvet brush against his button down, complete with suspenders with small dogs on them. Austin was a rare bird, just like his father, Poseidon.
“Stop worrying. It creates wrinkles…” His voice was smooth and casual, like how I should be. He could feel how tense I was against his chest, relaxing sailed away when the nagging feeling of someone watching me grew even more heavy.
At least he knew me well enough to know how to get my attention.
“Hey! I don’t have premature wrinkles! Something feels wrong…” I didn’t mean to say the last part outside my own thoughts.
Austin was my safe place, and I knew he didn’t cower easily. How could he among the men running into fire, hate, and death just to make points? He learned to let his sensitive heart come second.
I pushed the feeling down long enough to make it through my checklist before Caellum showed up in his gold bowtie and all white suit with tight dress pants to match. He was a show-off and wanted all the attention—something he conquered every time he walked into the room.
Caellum and I dated briefly when we first got trapped here. Living it down was hard when everyone hated him with so many colorful words attached to the end of his name.
I whisper-shouted into him before people noticed he had arrived: “You’re late.”
He smirked the way someone does when they’ve seen you naked, vulnerable, and in all the ways that leaves you defenseless. “Birds of a feather, Miss-Preps-For-Dates-Days-In-Advance. Where’s the demigod?”
I turned my body, arms folded against me, and swiped my tongue against the inside of my cheek, stopping any words from coming out, as I looked in Bolton’s direction.
He had his arm around Arianna and was whispering into her ear, probably some evil-nothings, which are similar to sweet nothings, but nothing was truly sweet about Bolton.
I grabbed his arm as he walked away, “You provoking him isn’t part of the plan.”
“Calm down. It’s almost midnight. It’s time.”
I could tell by his features set into his stony face that he meant every word.
I looked down at my phone; a watch didn’t go with this dress. It was midnight. Just like he said. The ritual was starting any minute, and I had to go back to straddling two worlds: mortal and something godly.
Alba sought us out individually, making sure we didn’t lose track of what tonight was truly about.
It had been one year since Cheyanne lost the love of her life by the hands of an old dagger that Bolton had to drive through his heart. No one was forgetting what tonight was about. It was hoping someone would survive the blade or send us home; everything else was happenchance.
Taking Austin’s hand tightly, I followed behind him to the secret hallway—part of the tunnels Bolton was so obsessed with that connected almost every building on campus.
They were dark, damp, and cold, like the wind got trapped along with our responsibility. The velvet black robes hung, each separately, lining the hallway, like some kind of fucked up monument to the ritual none of us even liked participating in. I took the robe down carefully, slowly, hoping something would happen before we actually went through with this again.
Arianna wasn’t mortal; that much we knew. The rules beyond that were unknown even to us. No one knew what to expect or what waited in the woods for us.
The gods are dead, and we’re the last of our kind. That means all bets are off.
Arianna
Bolton’s hand grasped mine with such strength it felt like he wanted me to lose all feeling as he watched the circle leave the gym where the dance took over.
I had never seen my dad cry, not even when the news broke that his wife/my mother died on the way to get me from school after acting out. I blamed my stoic dad for the discomfort I felt watching Bolton’s eyes turn a lighter version of brown than his normal muddy waters to a tea complete with milk, sugar, and honey. It wasn’t hard to tell he was scared; his features formed a giant question mark.
Bolton was a know-it-all, making it all the more alarming when he watched his circle disappear, like they were never here at all.
Watching Alba give Bolton a
stern nod, I felt a tingling sensation, not the lighting, but a new sensation: my own fear growing inside the edges of my stomach.
“You’re making me nervous,” I whispered into his chest, pretending to hide my face, by making his body sway slowly with mine.
“Just keep your head down and play dumb. Come on; it's time.”
I had gotten to enjoy the dance until midnight, and that’s when the magic seemed to fade out of the decorations. Everything seemed less glittery and even more fragile, like the paper that the snowflakes were made from.
I was all grit, all rude remarks, and not afraid to stir up trouble, until trouble had a face like Bolton. Now I was just as fragile as the glittering stars losing their magic.
He was still trying to cut the circulation from my hand when he dragged me behind him, out of the gym, and through the quad to the edge of the woods I vowed never to go in. My boots were cemented to the sidewalk that bordered the trees on their side, upholding my vow.
“Arianna…” The brooding tone of his voice was more than annoyed.
Walking me to my death in the forest, I didn’t belong. I didn’t belong anywhere, but especially there, not after last time. “I forgot something. I’ll meet you there.”
I tugged my arm back and bolted for the girls’ dorms. I felt like I was on auto pilot, even though this had never happened enough to create muscle memory. I knew my soul remembered, if that’s what we were calling whatever part of us goes back home.
Mortal ole’ me didn’t remember shit, and I wasn’t going to a knife fight without a gun. They can have their superhero qualities, but nothing does anger justice without a trigger. My trigger was the God Killer, and Henry Jon left it behind for someone to finally win battles against divine intervention.
It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Bolton; I did, more than I ever wished to. Although, liking someone so much it seems deadly didn’t kill off the less desirable parts—the parts that want to run into danger, fight, and fuck the rules. Those can’t be killed by anyone but yourself.
Shoving the tusk down the side of my ripped tights, I put on my brave face as I made my way back to the edge of the woods. Bolton pushed his hand out to take mine, and everything in me went into shock when I took it.
