Chapter 13 Kaira
KAIRA
Memories sometimes felt like a scab on the wound, constantly getting picked on, constantly fucking bleeding.
My eyes slowly opened, meeting the white ceiling with an almost invisible crack going through the middle, and I felt an onslaught of those wounded memories attacking my mind.
Attacking what little sanity I was left with.
"You need to believe, Kaira," my mother used to say after every single one of those stories. "Not everything is as black and white as you would want it to be." But I didn't listen.
I ignored her pleas, her wishes for me to learn about things that mattered to her, telling her over and over again how busy I was. Until she stopped trying to explain. Until she pulled back, letting me live my life however I wanted to.
One wayward tear ran down the side of my cheek, my eyes filling with its sisters the more I thought about my family.
If it wasn't for Thalia calling me and begging me to come home for Samhain, I wouldn't have been there.
Because I didn't want to deal with my mom.
I didn't want to see the truth that was always there, right in front of my eyes.
The pounding in my head only intensified as I pulled myself up, unable to recognize the room I was in. Almost empty apart from the bed I was lying in and a wardrobe opposite of it.
I kept thinking the entire morning and this entire journey was just a product of my grief. Or my mind was trying to protect me and make me focus on something else rather than the fact that I was completely and utterly alone. But deep inside my soul I knew it was real. Everything I saw was real.
And I remember the name my mom whispered as she read the bedtime stories to us. As she fought the tears I couldn't understand at the time.
I could still hear her voice, softening as she described him. As she spoke of the God of Death. A God who was kind to those he loved and destroyed those that wronged him.
Atos—she called him Atos in her journal, and as the memory that didn't really exist of my biological father passed through my mind, my hand clutched at my chest, trying to stop my heart from abandoning my chest. Trying to stop the emotions wrapping around my ribs like vines, reaching all the way to my heart and piercing through my lungs.
But my hand couldn't stop the tears rolling down my cheeks as I realized what I've lost and what I would never be able to have.
I had no idea what all of this meant, but I needed to find Thanatos. If Medusa was right, he must still be on the island. He must be here, waiting for the day when my mom and I would return.
My legs shook as I got up, but I pushed through, desperate for more answers, no matter what they were.
They dropped this bomb on me, opened the can of worms, and now they had to tell me everything.
My patience had run out the moment I realized there were unimaginable secrets waiting for me in this place.
There were so many things they weren't telling me, that much I could feel, but as I pushed the doors open, finding myself in the hallway close to the living room, I could hear their voices again, almost whispering, obviously careful with what they were saying.
"She's been out for hours, Ela," my aunt said, her voice laced with worry, and those same claws clenched painfully around my heart, reminding me that maybe I wasn't so alone. "Maybe I should check on her."
"Or maybe you could sit here and do nothing.
" Elandra's voice came next, somewhat subdued, as if the teasing she granted me with when I saw her in the hallway and during our conversation later was nowhere to be found.
"She needs to rest and allow herself to feel, Alyana.
She needs to process things on her own time without us constantly butting in and trying to tell her things.
" Maybe I did like her, actually. "Besides, this is just the beginning.
You know as much as I do that we don't have a lot of time, but for now she needs to rest."
"I know that," my aunt grumbled. "Don't you know I've spent almost thirty years thinking of this moment and what would happen if she ever came here without prior preparation?
My sister should be here, Ela. My sister!
" The sob that followed pierced through my own heart, reminding me once again that I wasn't the only one who had lost something.
"If truth be told, I feared this day would come.
I feared she wouldn't know anything and it would be up to me to navigate the situation, to navigate her grief and to help her.
Why did Daniela think it was a good idea to keep her in the dark? "
Silence fell on them and as I took another step toward the room, Elandra spoke again.
"We both know how painful the truth can be, which is probably why your sister kept all these things from her, hoping against all hopes that it wouldn't come to this.
That she would never need to know. Daniela was always a little bit stubborn, you know this.
She thought she could escape the fate written in the stars, but she couldn't. No one could. "
"But then how do I tell her, Ela?" my aunt asked.
"How do I tell her the answers she wanted in order to move on aren't the answers she actually needed?
" She took a deep breath as I frowned at her choice of words.
"How do I tell that poor girl that the father she basically just found out about is no longer here?
" No. "How do I tell her the day she was born was the day Thanatos died?
" No, no, no. "How do I tell her they found a way to kill him, to destroy him? " No. "How do I tell her all of that?"
No. Impossible. He can't be… He can't be dead. He can't be.
My back hit the wall behind me as my chest rose and fell, my body struggling to get the air in.
"Fuck!" came from somewhere to my right, but I couldn't look. I couldn't see them. I couldn't fucking breathe.
I couldn't breathe.
"Kaira." My aunt's voice pushed through the pain, the denial, the fog surrounding my mind, but I didn't want to hear her anymore. I couldn't be here anymore. "Kaira, please."
She moved toward me and I moved back, inching closer toward the doors, toward freedom.
Freedom from this tomb, from this pain, from this truth I didn't want. The truth that was supposed to help me, yet was cutting through me with sharp blades, widening the wound that never truly healed.
I couldn't look at my aunt. I couldn't look at Elandra. My throat kept closing, clogged with the tears assaulting my entire body. The grief I tried so hard to bury over the last couple of days rushed through my bloodstream, awakening as if this was what it was waiting for all along.
And now… Even this new world, these new discoveries, weren't enough to keep it at bay.
"I'm sorry," I choked out as I opened the doors of the house and rushed out.
I am so fucking sorry, I whispered to myself, to my mom, to my dad and my biological father. I am so fucking sorry for the fates they got, because of me.
All because of me.
I ran mindlessly through the streets of the town, ignoring the stares, the whispers, and the creatures I could now clearly see. Their glamour, as Elandra called it, was not working on me. I ran like a wild animal, trying to find her freedom. Trying to run from her captors.
But I didn't have captors. I wasn't caged, not literally, yet it felt as if the world around me kept getting smaller, closer, its walls pressing into my sides as I tried to escape the fate that was written for me.
I had hoped that coming here, finding him, would somehow appease the darkness spreading through my body this past year, but just like with many other things, I was wrong.
I thought I was ready for the fact that he might have been gone, but hearing it and realizing my biggest fears were my bitter reality made me wobbly, tilting my entire world.
The secrets my mother harbored were no longer important. The truth Elandra and my aunt spoke of was no longer interesting, and I just wanted to disappear. I just wanted this pressure in my chest to leave, to let me fucking breathe!
The wound I thought was healing had reopened again. That cut in the center of my heart was a valley of broken dreams, forgotten promises, and pain I would never be able to erase.
My legs screamed in protest as I kept pushing through the crowd, trying to get away from the curious eyes and the lips whispering my name, my fate, as if they had any right to do so. As if they could talk about me while I broke in the worst possible way.
I ran from the girl I used to be and the girl I was becoming. For all my bravado and all my courage, I was still ten-year-old Kaira somewhere deep inside my core, asking her mom to read her just one more story, one more chapter. Just one more day.
One more hug.
One more kiss on my forehead.
One more memory.
Just one more.
But there were no more memories with them for me.
There were no more kisses, no more softness in my mother's hands and no more laughter coming from the bed opposite of mine where Thalia waited for her turn.
There was nothing but darkness, this eternal void, spreading through my body and claiming me for its own.
My skin vibrated as my heart thundered, begging me to stop, to breathe, to remember where I was, but I couldn't.
I couldn't even remember how I got to the edge of the town, surrounded by silence and that dark forest to my left.
I couldn't remember at which point I managed to escape the crowds, with my aunt frantically calling my name, she and Elandra probably rushing after me.
I had no idea how I still stood tall as I stopped running, for the first time allowing my lungs to fill with air they couldn't get as I sprinted away from that place.