Chapter 9 #2
I stopped and looked at her. God, she was a hot mess. She resembled Athena in some ways—the dark hair. The pale skin. The slender yet strong physique. But her personality couldn’t have been more different. “You know your sister would have never let us leave you. You’re family.”
She scoffed. “Don’t pretend like you know anything about my family. Or Athena. She has you all fooled.”
“I’m starting to think I know more about your family than you do,” I said. “And I definitely know more about Athena than you. If you really believe she’d try to fool anyone, then you don’t know her at all.”
Katherine shook her head and broke into a hard, cold smile.
“You’re just like the rest of them,” she mumbled.
“You’ll believe anything as long as it fits your agenda.
Life isn’t everything you’ve grown up believing it to be,” she warned.
“You’re naive. You’ve been sheltered, I get it.
But eventually, you’ll have to grow up and see things for what they really are. ”
I ground my teeth.
Naive? Sheltered?
I choked down on my anger. Katherine could think whatever she wanted. To her, I was the stupid little girl Sinner dragged along with him wherever he went.
To her, I was a nobody.
And maybe she was right. Maybe I knew nothing.
But at least I wasn’t a backstabber. At least I hadn’t betrayed my own family.
My living family, anyway.
As the hours went on, Katherine didn’t get any better at planting the seeds, but at least she’d stopped complaining about it.
Or maybe she was too exhausted to keep it up.
If she felt like I did, that was probably the case. My muscles ached and tiny blisters had formed on the tips of my fingers from digging into my satchel of seeds.
Some higher power was trying to punish me by sticking me out here. Yep. It knew I hated grass, and thought, Hey! Let’s put that girl out there with even more grass!
Hour after hour, I pretended I was inside a nice, cool mansion with staff waiting on my every need.
It was better than accepting my current situation. But with Katherine hanging on by a thread beside me, I had to keep my complaints to myself.
Finally, someone shouted for us from the front of the produce field, signaling that our workday had come to an end. “Girls!” they called. “Over here!”
Katherine and I dragged our sweaty butts down the long path of partially-planted tomatoes and found Valerea standing with ten to fifteen other women—all of whom were from our bunkhouse.
“Tomorrow, we’ll meet with Gideon,” Valerea said, clasping her hands. “He’s been gone until recently, so he’ll want an updated status report.”
Some of the women nodded, taking note.
I raised my hand. “Is there something we can help with?”
Valerea’s smile was full of pity. “No. You two are just fine where you are,” she said almost patronizingly. “You’ll attend the meeting tomorrow, but you’ll keep quiet. Just observe. There’s a lot you can learn.”
Right. Great.
Did nobody care about the information we could provide? Katherine and I had literally been living with Director before we escaped.
I didn’t know what type of information they were including in their little status reports, but surely we could help?
Katherine elbowed me in the ribs and glared. Rude.
But the group of women quickly moved on, discussing the war, some updates on the defiance, and basics regarding the living situation here.
Before long, we were dismissed, and Katherine and I started back to our bunks.
“Wait up!” one of the girls called, jogging up to me. “You’re Margaret, right?”
Smiling, I stopped. “Yep, that’s me.”
With a sigh, Katherine kept going.
“I’m Annabeth.” She slid her palm into mine, clearly not as grossed out by the dirt I was covered in as I was. “It’s nice to have some new faces around here.”
A sense of ease seeped into me. Finally, a person who didn’t look like she hated our guts. “I’m just happy to be surrounded by feminine energy. I was with way too many men in those dungeons. Smelly, gross, loud men.”
She laughed, but the sound was a little stiff. “The dungeons? So you’ve performed the claiming, then?”
That comfort evaporated quickly. “No, absolutely not. I was lucky enough to avoid it.”
The energy in the air shifted. “Lucky…right.”
Awkwardness set in. Seriously? What was I supposed to say to that? Tell her my brother had practically sold himself to the Ministry to protect me?
To be honest, I was kind of sick of people protecting me all the time.
I was more than capable of protecting myself.
“By lucky, I mean…unlucky,” I stammered. “I guess. I mean—” Dammit, Margaret, get it together! “Director never set me up with a partner for the claiming. She was waiting for someone stronger, I guess.”
The woman scrutinized me, frowning a little. “There’s a reason so many women live here with the defiance,” she said.
I scanned the people dispersing. “I noticed that. You’re all unclaimed?”
She shrugged. “Most of us, yeah. We keep our freedom that way.”
“Ah. I get it.”
She arched a brow. “Do you?”
Another awkward silence fell over us. Yes, I understood that more than anyone else here, probably. What else did she want me to say?
I found myself looking over my shoulder for literally anything to change the subject.
But the woman gripped my wrist—tight—and yanked me toward her.
“What the—” I yelped, tugging away, but her pointed nails dug into my skin until they drew blood.
“We protect our own around here, Margaret. And you? You’re one of them. Outsiders. You and your little friends. So if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get the hell out of here. It would be a shame if any of you were victims of a tragic accident here. You know how dangerous this place can be.”
My heart thundered in my ears. Um—hello? Was she threatening me?
I hadn’t been threatened in a very long time.
Actually, I wasn’t sure I’d been threatened since Father died. Elijah made sure that didn’t happen.
And—darn it all—my brain naturally chose this moment to fail to come up with a witty retort.
With her threat went any tiny sliver of hope that someone here might actually want to be friendly!
Without another word, the woman—Annabeth—ripped her nails away, successfully slicing the skin on my forearm, and marched down the street.
I wasn’t sure what shocked me the most—the blood running down my arm in long streams, or the way she pranced away with her ponytail swinging from side to side like nothing had happened.
Okay, wow! Rude!
Note to self: don’t hang out with Annabeth.
I shuffled toward our building, cradling my arm to my chest. It stung, but I’d survived worse. I was mostly confused about the threats.
Yes, we were outsiders, but wasn’t everyone who came here an outsider at first? Shouldn’t they be happy to have others joining their cause?
Especially mystics with gifts that could help them in battle if it ever came to that.
“What the hell happened to you?” Katherine’s voice made me jump. She came around one of the stone buildings and stepped directly in my path, surveying my injured arm.
“Nothing!” My first reaction was to deny. To play it off.
But why was I hiding this?
An odd sense of shame shrouded me as Katherine stepped forward and yanked my arm out straight. I shouldn’t be ashamed, though. I did nothing wrong.
Dang you, Annabeth!
“Did someone do this to you?” She glanced over both shoulders to make sure we were alone. “Was it one of the other girls?”
“I wouldn’t call her a girl, exactly,” I answered. “More like a lioness in a woman’s body.”
With an angered huff, Katherine pulled me around the building, to where she’d just come from. We were alone here—away from the prying eyes of the main street.
“Tell me what happened,” she said. “Don’t leave out any details.”
I heaved a sigh. “There isn’t much to tell. She gripped me with her freakish talons, told me we were outsiders and we should leave before we got hurt, and marched away before I thought of a comeback.”
“She threatened you?” Katherine asked, a crease between her brows.
I know, right? I’m a likeable person! “I’m as surprised as you are.”
“Here.” She pulled my sleeve up the rest of the way. “Let me heal you really fast.”
“Whoa.” I yanked my arm out of her grip. “No way.”
She reached for my arm again. “What? It’s not a big deal.”
“Athena didn’t trust you to heal her. And I’m on Athena’s side. Always.”
Katherine huffed and rested both hands on her hips. “That’s because Athena’s stubborn and too bigheaded for her own good,” she snapped. “You’re injured, I can heal you. End of story. Don’t make me rescind my offer.”
I held my breath, considering. She did have a point. And I didn’t need an injury slowing me down while I was just starting to get acquainted with the very friendly folks of the defiance.
“Fine,” I said. “But just this once.”
Rolling her eyes, she took my arm, and a few seconds later, warmth radiated from her body into mine.
I’d seen her heal before, but experiencing it firsthand was totally different. The warmth flowing through me was more of an energy, an essence that felt almost like life itself.
It didn’t feel like simply healing. It felt like…it felt like…soul.
“There.” She released me.
A coldness remained where her hands had just been, but when I looked down at my arm, the only evidence of an injury were the trails of blood staining my clothes.
“Don’t let them see your weaknesses, Margaret,” she urged. “The second they do, they’ll pounce.”
I frowned at her. “You really have your walls up,” I said. “No wonder you don’t have any friends.”
In the past, comments like that had gone without landing, but this time, Katherine flinched. She recovered quickly, though, probably thinking I wouldn’t notice.
Nobody thought I noticed things like that.
But I did. I always did.
“Whatever,” she said. “If you end up hurt, it’ll somehow bite me in the ass, I’m sure. So stay out of trouble, okay?” She stormed down the street, headed toward our lodging building.
The sun sank in the distance, casting a warm orange glow over the town. It was a cute town—I had to admit. I didn’t have much experience with towns or their associated cuteness, I supposed, after growing up in a place that was hardly more than a handful of drunks doing their best to survive.
I wouldn’t really call it a town. More like a commune of misery.
Then there was the town I’d seen with Benedict, Katherine, Athena, and Sinner. We had been running from the Ministry and fighting for our lives, yes, but that was still the most fun I’d had in a long, long time.
And we’d been together. I was always happy when we were together.
By the time I showered and slipped into my soft, fluffy bed, the sun had fully set outside the window.
Yet out in the distance, I swore there was a very tall, very attractive man looking this way, his golden, half-glowing eyes locked directly on me.