We Will Gain Our Fury

by Nicole Thorn

  “Mr. Rivers got The Bat. I wasn’t dressed that time and somehow it hurt a lot more. He tried to kill me and got mad when I didn’t die. He caved the side of my skull in, all of my ribs were crushed. Lungs punctured. I was so broken. One of my eyes stopped working. It was… so scary. He left me in my room to bleed. That was it. It was all too much.

  “I healed. I laid there, trying not to scream through it. I hate healing. It hurts so badly when you’re being stitched back together. But when it was over, I got dressed and snuck out. I hopped a bus, found Zander, told him. Ruined everything. He was so mad. And he cried so much.” My voice trembled and tears poured from my eyes.

  “I told him I was sorry and he hugged me. He told me to sleep and I did. I woke up and he was gone. I knew where he was. I found him after it was over. I saw the blood. The bodies. Then our mothers came. And they were crying too. There were so many apologies. But we needed to go. We weren’t safe. Zander’s mother told us to come here. She was so specific about it. She told us right where to go. Telling us that everything we would ever need would be here. We ran. Somehow, in all these years, Zander never looked at me like I destroyed everything. But I did. I did.”

  Jasper put both arms around me, holding me steady and stopping the shaking I couldn’t control. He held me tight and it was my safe place again. His thumb swept under my eye. “You didn’t ruin anything, Kezia. None of this was your fault.”

  I shook my head. “It was. And then I ruined things with you. You feel safe to me and I wrecked it. I saw you and all I wanted to do was have you. I wanted you to kiss me and touch me and do things I’m not allowed to want someone to do to me. I know I’m not supposed to do that. I promise I won’t do it again. You said it was nothing and that’s okay. I can be okay with that. That you didn’t like it when we were… you know. I’ll try to stop wanting you anymore and it’ll all be fine because you don’t want me either.”

  21: The Threat of Emotion

  Jasper

  I closed my eyes in exhaustion and something almost like pain. After everything that had gone down in the last two days, I would have suspected a lot of things from Kezia. This was not one of them. If she had been uncomfortable around me, sure that I could believe. If she had avoided me, yeah, that too. If she hated me after everything that happened, yeah, that was believable as well.

  The one thing I had not anticipated was that she would assume that I didn’t like her. It was absurd, really. How could I, as a straight man, not be attracted to her? She was gorgeous. All that red hair and those green eyes. Even if I wasn’t attracted her, how could she think I wasn’t interested in her?

  She was sweet and quirky. She liked my sisters. She liked spending time with me, even though I usually didn’t have anything to say. Hell, she even willingly was alone with me. She was so fascinating to watch when she was playing with her plants. She tried to keep my sisters from going off the deep end, tried to keep me from going off the deep end. She could joke around with me and not feel sorry that my jokes were kind of lame.

  How could she, for a second, think that I wasn’t interested in her? It was the most absurd thing this week and I was a Seer, sitting all cuddled up to a demigod, after getting mangled by a Fury when delivering a check to the father I hate. Fuck, I didn’t even realize I hated him until this moment.

  I shoved that aside, to focus on Kezia. My first instinct was to brush this conversation off. If I did that, then I wouldn’t have to worry about being an idiot and everything would go back to normal. The even keel that my sisters and I had been playing at for three years.

  My first instinct was wrong. My sisters and I were messed up. I knew it. I’ve always known it, even if I didn’t acknowledge it and I was tired. I was so tired of being messed up. Of not taking care of myself for reasons I couldn’t even name. Of picking my sisters up and dusting them off, only to turn around and have to do it again, all while not being able to really help them. I was tired of waking up and dreading actually doing something, because I wasn’t good at anything. I was just tired of it all and I needed something to keep me on the straight and narrow. I needed someone to be right there while I tried to figure out what healthy was.

  And I couldn’t put that on Kezia. After all the shit she’s been through, it wasn’t fair to put that stuff on her. It wasn’t fair to ask her to help me put myself back together. That was something I’d have to do all on my own. The one thing that I could do? Tell her the gods damned truth. If she hadn’t earned that, then there was something truly wrong with me.

  I put my hands on her hips and gently moved her off my lap, so that we were facing each other. Her eyes were already grieving, like she was waiting for me tell her to leave and removing her from my lap was the first step in that plan. It hurt to admit that I had been ignoring that look in her eye all day. I felt like a fool.

  “Kezia,” I said. “First and foremost, you are allowed to want whatever. Anything. You want me? Then want me. You want to wear pretty dresses,” I said, fingering the bottom of her shirt. “Or other clothes? Then do that. You are allowed to be happy and want whatever it is you want.”

  She opened her mouth, but I talked right over her.

  “You should want things. I don’t want to sound harsh, but those people? Those monsters? If you let yourself fade away, then they’ve won. None of what happened was about you and nothing you could have done would have stopped it. They just wanted control. Over you and themselves and each other. That’s what it was all about. There was no love or kindness in them. There was no evil in you that they wanted to exploit.”

  She opened her mouth again, but I still wouldn’t let her say anything. I could tell by the look in her eyes that she didn’t believe me.

  “And okay, so maybe I didn’t know them. Which is good, because if I had,

  I would have done the same thing to them that Zander did. Killed them. Violently. Do you think I haven’t had those kinds of thoughts? When I was growing up? Because, I did. All the time, whenever one my sisters starting crying, or when the constant downpour of rain when I was in the dog kennel became too much, I would think of my father dying. How much better it would be if he were just gone. Sometimes, I dreamed about killing him and it horrified me. Somehow, I felt like he always knew.” I realized I was rambling and changed topics.

  “Second of all, you haven’t ruined anything. You’ve done nothing wrong. The Furies? They’re being annoying, yes and they should probably just dive head first into some concrete instead of inflicting themselves on someone else, but they aren’t well. It’s not your fault that they’re after you. If they weren’t unwell, I don’t think they’d care that Zander had killed those two people. I think if they weren’t unwell and those people were still alive, they’d be killing them themselves.

  “Furthermore, Zander would have ruined his happy home eventually anyway.”

  Kezia blinked in surprise.

  “Because you weren’t there. You can think that you ruined everything, but whoever placed you in separate homes ruined everything. I’m willing to bet that on a daily basis, Zander felt a pang of guilt and sadness that you weren’t with him and that he was trying to be strong, because that’s what he thought you wanted. For him to have a happy home, to live with a family who loved him, even if they never know who he really is. But one day, he would have decided he was sick of it and he would have stopped it.”

  Now she looked thoughtful.

  “Last of all,” I said, bracing myself to take the plunge. “When you kissed me…” She tried to pull her hands away, but I very gently refused to let her do it. “When you kissed me, I was completely surprised. I didn’t think you would have done that.” More hand tugging, this time with more force. “The shock passed quickly though, because I was one hundred percent, completely, thrilled.”

  She stopped. This was getting to be too much for me. I met her eyes, but I felt the familiar panic closing in. The one telling me to stop talking and hide, because the only way to stay safe was to hide. I s
hoved it aside, knowing it would be so much worse later. All I could do was hope that I could get through this.

  “You are the only person in this house who I can talk to,” I began, “Without feeling like I’m doing something wrong. Since the only people I know and love are in this house, that means you’re the only person… at all… that I can talk to without my chest feeling tight and my brain shutting down.”

  She continued to stare at me. A very familiar look was creeping into her eyes. Not necessarily panic, but fear. The two are different enough that she could think through one, without having to run away. I loosened my fingers, just in case she couldn’t handle me touching her anymore, but didn’t let go of her hands.

  “The last two days have been really bad,” I said. “The only good thing that’s happened was when you kissed me. Otherwise, I’ve been sitting down in my studio, ignoring the fact that I wanted to talk to you, to make things better between us, ignoring my sisters crumbling around me and ignoring the sadness that was in your eyes.”

  My mouth closed and I couldn’t think of anything else to say. We sat in silence, with her staring at me and her eyes getting kind of foggy with all the words I had just dumped on her. I wasn’t even sure which ones she was thinking about. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe it would have been better if she thought I didn’t like her that way, because then she would at least be willing to spend time with me. She would still bring me food that I didn’t want, but I needed. She would have still cared when someone was rude to me, like Celeste or my father.

  She would have still been around.

  But I freaked her out. I had to have freaked her out. She wasn’t ready for this kind of thing. She wasn’t ready to care about me, because I wasn’t easy to care for. I was a mess of a person and was only now realizing it. At least she knew how messed up she was and could work around her own issues.

  “Thrilled?” she asked. Her voice so small that I could barely hear it.

  “What?”

  “You said you were thrilled when I kissed you,” she murmured. Like she was worried that repeating the words would make them untrue. I understood more than I wanted to. Few things felt worse than knowing you said something you shouldn’t have and waiting for the other person to call you out on it.

  Well, that put us in the same boat, because now I was wondering if that was the right thing to say. It always feels safer when I keep my mouth shut. I shifted around on the bed and forced myself to look her in the eye again, even with the way my heart was booming against my chest all of the sudden. “Yes, Kezia. I was absolutely thrilled, because even if I hadn’t been aware of wanting it, I had been thinking, seriously, about kissing you.”

  She blinked again. Her fingers tightened around mine. “Um… Wow…” She murmured. It seemed to be all she was capable of. Since I was barely holding onto my wits as it was, I couldn’t blame her.

  “Are you okay?” I felt I had to ask. It had been a long couple of days and this conversation was only making it longer. After everything she told me, maybe saying that I had the hots for her wasn’t the smartest move? Maybe, if we were really lucky, the gods would smite me for being a moron and then neither one of us would have to deal with the consequences of this little conversation.

  Ever.

  And my sisters wouldn’t have to panic with me, while Kezia and Zander prepared to move out and Zander wouldn’t have to plot my murder, because I’ll already be dead. It wasn’t lost on me how sick it was that I was hoping for a smiting.

  Kezia took in a deep breath. “Jasper? I’m not running away, okay? I just… I think I need some time to think. Because that was a lot of things you’ve given me to think about and I need a moment.”

  “Okay,” I said. My voice came out even, despite the agony in my chest. I assumed this was what being shot would feel like. It went way past the sting in my shoulders, or the throbbing on the back of my head, from hitting the concrete.

  “I’ll come see you later?” Kezia said, the question very obvious in her voice.

  “Please do.”

  The demigod climbed off my bed and made her slow way to the door. Like she was worried about me thinking she was running away. She stepped out into the hall and gently closed the door behind her. So softly that I barely even heard the click of the latch. Seconds later, my back hit the mattress and my hands lifted to cover my face. Of all the ways this could have gone, none of that had been in my reckoning.

  I hoped with everything that I had, that this hadn’t been royally screwed up. Yet, at the same time, I had to admit that my meter for screwed up wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. My sisters and I were masters of denial.

  Ψ

  My phone blaring woke me up the next morning. I had been fitfully sleeping, so it wasn’t that big a loss. Nightmares and the inability to get comfortable kept me up. I grabbed the phone, without checking the caller ID and hit talk. “Hello?” I asked, groggily. Half wondering if Jasmine had gone out again and needed me to pick her up.

  “Jasper?” my father demanded and my heart sank. “I just got home and my entire yard is trashed. Juniper texted and told me you were bringing over the check, so what the fuck happened?!”

  I closed my eyes. I knew the text from Juniper was old, because she never would have blindsided me like this. That’s the one thing we all did for each other. We never sic’d Dad on the others. So at least my sisters wouldn’t be a witness to this particular beat down I was about to get.

  “Jasper!” My father barked into the phone. “I know you’re still there. Don’t just sit there and sulk about being woken up. What the hell did you do to my yard? I want answers and I want them now. Do you have any idea what the neighbors will think when they see this? That my son is unstable. Is that what you want, Jasper? People to think that you’re unstable and that I raised you to be that way, because that’s not what I want them to think? I want them to think the best of my children, because God knows no one who actually knows you will think well of you.”

  I sat up and shoved the covers off. I didn’t remember falling asleep with them on, but I must have. Now they felt heavy and hot. My room felt too small. I felt too small. Everything was crowding in.

  “Hello? Am I going to have to come over to get answers out of you? I’ll have to wake up your sisters and drag them into this mess, just because you can’t open your damned mouth and tell me what’s going on?”

  My voice finally worked past the lump in my throat. “I’m sorry about your lawn, Dad. My friend and I came over to drop off your check and I guess she got a little overzealous, because she doesn’t really like you.”

  I made a mental note to tell Kezia about this. I had to come up with a lie that didn’t involve Furies, or disembowelment and that was the only one I could think of when I was half asleep. If it bothered her, then I would tell my father that I had done it. ‘Confess’ and take the blame. I did it plenty of times when I was a kid.

  So, it helps that he thinks I’m a coward. And maybe I am.

  “What, did you fuck this girl on my lawn?” he demanded. “What do you mean overzealous? Because it looks like a wild tiger rampaged around my yard, trying to find all the cat nip!”

  My eyes closed and I took a deep, deep breath. “Again, Dad. Sorry.”

  “Damn straight you’re sorry,” he growled. “I’ll expect another check dropped off for the lawn service I now have to call, because of you. Don’t think, for a second, that there won’t be other repercussions, either, because there will be.” With that, there was a click in my ear as he hung up.

  I dropped my cell phone on the nightstand and covered my face with my hands. Right. Well, I wasn’t tired anymore, so I might as well get up. By the time I was out of the shower and dressed, almost everyone else was up and about. I could hear Jasmine saying something harshly to Zander and Juniper was in the kitchen, making breakfast. I wasn’t hungry, but also wasn’t sure if that should stop me from eating. Was I really not hungry, or was I in denial?

 
; I was most of the way downstairs when the doorbell rang. I called out that I’d get it and stopped by the front door to take a deep breath. There was a good chance that this was my father, coming to scream at me in person. Would the demigods kill him when I stood there and took the punishment? It’s not like they would know that’s the easiest way to get rid of him, or that he didn’t really…

  Did he mean it?

  My head was all messed up and I wasn’t sure what was up or down anymore.

  So I pulled the door open and managed not to groan when I saw Celeste. She grinned at me, showing too many white teeth. Her hair was hanging most of the way down her back and was in loose curls. She was wearing a thick white tank top that still did nothing to conceal her braless chest and a denim skirt. “Jasper! I’m so happy you were the one to answer the door!”

  I seriously contemplated putting my head through the wall. On one hand, it would get me out of a conversation with Celeste and startle her enough that she might leave. On the other hand, I could seriously damage my face, break my nose, or give myself a concussion and I would have to explain to my sisters why there’s a hole in the wall and why I need to go to the hospital.

  Celeste stepped into my personal space.

  One ambulance ride coming up.

  “You look so tense, Jasper,” she said, shoving enough concern into her voice that it almost sounded genuine. It was her eyes that gave her away. There was this calculating light that I didn’t notice when we were dating, but couldn’t escape now.

  I moved away from her, but she just followed. “I’m fine. Actually, I’m not, so why don’t you leave?” I asked, trying to sound gentle. I still didn’t want to hurt her feelings, just because she hurt mine.

  “Who is it?” Jasmine asked, coming in from the kitchen, at the same time I heard footsteps on the stairs.