Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Lettie
I didn’t remember letting go of Brock. That was the part I kept coming back to later.
The small, impossible detail my mind circled like it could change the ending if it found the right place to bite.
His hand had been there. Warm. Callused.
Anchoring. His fingers had brushed mine, and I’d held on because the rest of the world had tilted too far to trust.
Then the shouting started. My mother’s voice rose above the festival, sharp and breaking.
“Liars! All of you! You’re liars!” People pressed closer.
Ares barked something at the crowd, and bodies shifted.
Someone bumped the corner of my table hard enough to rattle the tea tins.
A jar tipped. Lavender spilled across the striped cloth like dried purple blood.
Mother sobbed into Zander’s arm, then twisted away from him and pointed at Rykard again, her face wet, ugly, and furious.
“You don’t get her,” she screamed. “You don’t get to come here after all this time and take what’s mine.”
Rykard looked like she’d shot him. Apollo looked worse.
Brock moved in front of me. Not away. Never away.
Just half a step, one shoulder angling between me and the crowd when Mother lunged forward like she might claw through him to get to me.
His hand slid from mine to my hip, then to my stomach, pushing me back gently while his body became a wall.
“Stay behind me,” he said.
I heard him.
I knew I heard him. But the words came from far away. Colette. That name kept striking inside my head, over and over, each hit knocking something else loose.
Colette Rush.
Rykard’s daughter.
Apollo’s sister.
A missing girl.
A stolen girl.
A dead woman’s child.
A stranger wearing my skin.
Violet Foster was a lie. Lettie was the name I’d built from what was left. Colette was a grave someone had forgotten to fill. I couldn’t make those things fit inside one body.
My mother kept crying. Not my mother. Claire. The name made me nauseous. She grabbed the edge of the table, sending two salve tins rolling. “Violet,” she sobbed. “Tell them. Tell them you’re mine.”
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. Because some sick, trained part of me still knew what answer she wanted. Still knew how much easier it would be to soothe her. To say, I’m here. I’m not leaving. Don’t cry. Sit down. Let me fix it. Let me carry the pieces so you don’t have to.
Then Rykard said, “Don’t do that to her.”
His voice was wrecked and furious. Mother’s—I closed my eyes tight—no, Claire’s head snapped toward him. “She owes me.”
Brock’s whole body went cold. I felt it even though he stood in front of me now. The change in the air. The sudden absence of mercy.
“Say that again,” he said softly.
Claire heard the danger and staggered back, but the crowd had tightened around us, phones lifted, whispers spreading like fire.
Zeus appeared near the left side of the booth, massive and grim, with Hermes behind him and Ares already forcing people backward.
I saw them in flashes. Cuts. Beards. Hands.
The black edges of the club moving around my booth like storm clouds.
Too many faces. Too many voices. Too much of everything.
“Baby.” Brock’s voice. I reached for it.
Well, I tried. Someone knocked into me from the side as the crowd shifted again.
Not hard, but enough. My hip struck the table.
Pain sparked. A woman apologized. A man cursed.
Claire cried louder. A child started screaming somewhere behind the jam booth, and the sound went straight through my skull. My lungs forgot how to open.
Then a hand touched my elbow. Not Brock’s. I knew that even before I turned. The touch was lighter. Careful. Familiar in the way festival things were familiar, like the smell of kettle corn and sun-warmed pavement, or the same quilt booth in the same place every year.
“Violet,” Zander said quietly.
I looked at him. His face was full of concern. Gentle concern. The kind people used when they didn’t want to startle a wounded animal. He wasn’t crowding me. He wasn’t grabbing me. His fingers rested just above my elbow, easy to shrug off if I wanted to.
“You look like you’re about to fall over,” he said.
I almost laughed because that sounded right.
I did feel like I might fall over. Behind him, Mother was still crying.
Rykard was saying something to Zeus. Apollo had bowed his head, one hand pressed over his mouth.
Brock turned slightly toward Zeus, only for a second, his jaw hard, his hand reaching back for me.
I saw his fingers. I meant to take them.
Another shove moved through the crowd as Ares forced a man with a phone backward.
Someone’s shoulder blocked my view of Brock’s hand.
Zander’s fingers tightened just a little on my elbow.
“Let’s get you some air,” he said.
Air.
That sounded reasonable. Safe. Small. Not a decision.
Not leaving. Just air. Just two steps out of the press of bodies and voices and pity.
Zander had been coming to the festival for years.
He bought lavender. He carried chairs. He called my mother Carol in a voice that made her blush.
I didn’t fear him. I didn’t feel much of anything.
That should’ve scared me. Instead, the numbness felt like mercy.
“I should tell Brock,” I said, but my voice sounded thin and strange.
“He’s right there,” Zander said. “He’ll see you. I’m just getting you out of the crush.”
I looked toward Brock again. He wasn’t far. That mattered. He wasn’t gone. He was right there, broad shoulders tense beneath his cut, head turned toward Zeus, one hand lifted as if giving an order or stopping one. He was less than ten feet away. Ten feet was nothing.
Zander guided me around the edge of the booth.
I let him. That was the terrible part. I let him because he didn’t feel like danger.
Because my head was full of names that didn’t fit.
Because my mother’s sobs crawled under my skin.
Because Rykard looked like a man bleeding out in public and Apollo looked like the boy my stolen life had ruined.
Because Brock had been solid all morning, and for one breath, I believed solid things stayed where you left them.
The crowd swallowed us in three steps. Noise folded around me.
Bodies pressed close. A woman with a stroller cut between us and the booth, then two teenage boys with snow cones, then a cluster of women turning to stare back at the commotion.
Zander’s hand moved from my elbow to the center of my back, not pushing, just... steering.
“This way,” he murmured.
I followed because there was a gap there. Shade between two booths. Less noise. Fewer faces. My heart beat wrong.
Brock.
The thought came late. Too late. I turned my head, but the booth had disappeared behind a wall of people. Balloons. Smoke from the barbecue stand. A yellow banner whipping in the wind.
“I need to go back,” I said.
“In a second.” Zander’s voice stayed gentle. Calm. “You’re shaking.”
I looked down. I was. My hands trembled at my sides, fingers curled like I’d been holding on to something that wasn’t there anymore. Brock’s hand. Panic flickered. Not a full flame, just the first lick of heat under my ribs.
Zander guided me between the quilt booth and the honey table, past a stack of folding chairs and into the narrow service lane behind the vendor tents.
The noise dropped so suddenly it felt like sinking underwater.
The backs of booths were uglier than the fronts.
Cardboard boxes. Coolers. Extension cords.
Trash bags tied to posts. A woman counting cash inside a trailer.
A man smoking near a generator. Ordinary.
So ordinary. That was why I didn’t scream.
Nothing had changed enough for screaming.
“Zander,” I said.
He turned his head slightly. “Yeah?”
“I need Brock.”
The words steadied me. Brock. Not Hades.
Not the VP of the Gods of Mayhem. Just Brock.
His hand on the back of my neck. His voice in the dark.
“Need me. I can handle it.” His mouth against my hair when I woke from bad dreams I refused to name.
The way he drank tea from my hands and stayed.
My breathing hitched. I stopped walking.
Zander stopped too. For the first time, his hand didn’t fall away. It stayed at my back. A little too firm. My skin prickled.
“I need to go back now,” I said.
“Of course,” he replied.
But he didn’t turn around. He smiled instead. Not wide. Not cruel. Not anything dramatic enough to explain the cold suddenly crawling up my arms. Just a small, patient smile that didn’t match the man who bought lavender every fall.
“Zander.”
“It’s loud back there,” he said. “Too many men. Too many people pulling at you.”
My mouth went dry. “Let go of me.”
His hand shifted. Not off. Around my wrist. The grip was still gentle enough that anyone watching might think he was steadying me. That made it worse. Danger should announce itself. It should bare teeth or raise a fist. It shouldn’t wear a familiar face and speak in a calm voice.
I pulled back. His fingers tightened. There. There it was. Too late. My heart slammed into my ribs.
“Don’t,” I said.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
Every part of me went still. Because that was what people said when hurting had already begun.
I looked around. The service lane had emptied without me noticing.
The woman counting cash was gone. The smoker near the generator had turned the corner.
The festival noise was still close, but muffled by canvas, trailers, and distance.
Close enough to feel safe. Far enough that no one was looking.
I had walked myself out of sight. No. He had walked me.
My breath came too fast. Brock will notice. He’ll turn, reach back, find air where I was, and the world will end for whoever stands between us. Hold on to that. I clung to the thought with both hands.
Brock will notice.
Hades will come.
Zander’s grip tightened another fraction. “You matter more than I thought.”
The words made no sense. “What?”
He studied me with a strange softness, like I was a puzzle piece he’d finally figured out. “She talked about you for years, you know. Carol. Violet this, Violet that. Always complaining. Always needing. I thought you were a leech.”
My stomach dropped.
“But you’re not.” His gaze shifted past me, toward the crowded street where I could no longer see my booth. “You’re leverage.”
Cold flooded through me. I yanked back hard.
He was faster. One hand clamped over my mouth, the other arm locked around me, and the calm vanished beneath practiced strength.
I twisted, slammed my heel down, and tried to scream against his palm.
The sound died hot and useless against his skin.
Brock. The name tore through me without sound.
Zander dragged me backward between a trailer and a row of stacked crates.
My shoulder hit metal. Pain flashed white.
I fought harder, but my body felt half disconnected, shock turning my limbs strange and slow.
I thought of Brock’s voice. Breathe, baby.
I tried. Air scraped through my nose. I forced myself to stop wasting strength on panic and reached for the small pocket sewn inside my skirt.
Zander caught my wrist before I got there. He smiled against my ear. “Smart girl.”
Terror opened beneath me. Not because of the words. Because he’d expected it. Because somewhere in that quiet, watching mind, he’d already decided I wasn’t harmless.
I drove my elbow back. He grunted, and for one second, his hand slipped from my mouth.
“HADES!”
The scream tore out of me, raw and broken. His hand slammed back over my mouth. Too late, maybe. Please, God, let it be too late. The festival noise surged, then swallowed everything.
Zander shoved me through a narrow gap behind the last vendor trailer.
A vehicle waited there, half hidden behind a delivery van and a line of portable toilets.
I barely saw it. Dark paint. Open door. Empty seat.
Something on the floor. My mind refused to make sense of the details because making sense meant admitting what was happening.
“No,” I tried to say. It came out as nothing.
Zander’s face was calm again. That calm frightened me more than rage would have.
“I really am sorry,” he said. “But they took something from me too.”
I didn’t know who they were. I didn’t know what he meant. I only knew his hand was on me, the booth was gone, Brock was gone, and the sky above the service lane was too blue for what was happening beneath it. He forced me inside. The door closed. The sound was soft. Final.
For one suspended second, all I could hear was my own breathing. Fast. Broken. Not enough. My palms pressed against the seat beneath me. My skirt twisted around my legs. My wrist burned where he’d grabbed me. I gripped the handle, but nothing happened.
Then Zander slid behind the wheel. I stared at the back of his head. The man from every festival. The man who bought lavender. The man my mother had come alive for. The man I hadn’t feared until fear no longer mattered.
He looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Don’t worry, Violet,” he said gently. “He’ll follow.”
Brock. He means Brock. The thought should have comforted me. Instead, it told me exactly what I’d become. Not a daughter. Not a sister. Not a woman with three names and no ground beneath any of them. Bait.
The vehicle moved. My body went numb. Somewhere behind us, the festival kept going.
Somewhere behind us, Brock would turn and find me gone.
I closed my eyes and held on to the only thing that still felt real.
His hand at the back of my neck. His voice in the dark.
Need me. I can handle it. I needed him now.
More than breath. More than names. More than the truth.
And as the sound of the festival faded, I prayed he could handle what came next.