Chapter 34 The First Lessons
When Hecate arrived at nine o’clock the next day, I was still nursing my first cup of coffee.
She swept into Kian’s apartment like a storm given human form.
She took one look at us—me on the couch, Leo sprawled on the floor, May perched on the arm of a chair, Luz leaning against the window—and didn’t waste time with pleasantries.
“Sit.” Her voice was an iron chain, pulling us into immediate, startled silence.
We gathered on the floor of Kian’s living room.
The furniture had been pushed back against the walls to create open space in the center.
May and Leo sat cross-legged to my left, Luz to my right.
The three dogs had been banished to Kian’s bedroom to allow us the space we needed.
I could hear Duska whining behind the closed door, clearly unhappy about being excluded.
Hecate stood before us like a general surveying troops she wasn’t entirely sure would survive basic training. The morning light bent strangely around her, as if even sunshine knew to give her space.
Kian leaned against the wall behind us, arms crossed over his chest. His face was carefully unreadable—that professor mask he wore when he didn’t want students to know what he was thinking, but I felt him like a shadow at my back.
“This is not play,” Hecate said, her voice cutting through the nervous energy in the room. “This is survival. To awaken what lies dormant within you, to reconnect with what you have been across millennia, you must drink.”
Her hand cut through the air in a sharp gesture, and reality seemed to ripple in response. In her palm appeared a shallow obsidian bowl filled with a familiar liquid.
The waters of Mnemosyne.
Hecate held the bowl with both hands. “You were all prepared for this yesterday,” She paused, her gaze sweeping across May, Leo, and Luz. “It has been diluted enough for you to keep your wits. Mnemosyne will reconnect you to your lost memories, show you what you carry within.”
She moved toward May first, extending the bowl.
May stared down at the liquid, frowning. “If this kills me, I’m haunting all of you,” she muttered.
“Noted,” Luz chuckled. “We’ll light candles for your ghost.”
May took a breath, lifted the bowl to her lips, and drank. For a moment, nothing happened. Then she gasped, and the bowl slipped from her fingers, but Hecate’s hands were already there to catch it.
May’s body went rigid, back arching, and for a second she glowed.
Golden light poured from her skin as though she swallowed the sun whole.
It pulsed from her in waves, warm and blinding, making all of us shield our eyes.
Then it snapped out like a candle extinguished, leaving her gasping and pale, swaying where she sat.
“Holy shit,” she breathed, pressing a hand to her chest. “I felt… I saw—”
She couldn’t finish, staring at her shaking hands.
Hecate’s mouth twitched in what might have been approval. “Yes. The sun recognizes itself in you, Apollo. Hold steady, or it will scorch you alive from the inside out. You must learn to be the vessel, not the fuel.”
May rubbed her temples, still breathless. Understanding mixed with terror and fierce determination flooded her features.
Leo was next. He eyed the bowl with reckless confidence, then tilted it back like it was a shot of tequila, swallowing in one smooth motion.
We waited and watched him closely. Leo opened his mouth to say something—
And vanished.
“Leo?” I blurted, scrambling halfway to my feet.
A ripping sound tore through the air behind us, and suddenly Leo came tumbling out of thin air, with a yelp, directly above Kian’s antique dining table.
He crashed down hard onto the polished wood, scattering books and papers, knocking over the ceramic pitcher that went flying and shattered against the floor.
His momentum carried him straight through the mess and off the other side, taking down two chairs in a spectacular cascade of furniture and flailing limbs. He landed in a heap on the floor, tangled in an overturned chair, and laughing so hard he could barely breathe.
“Holy shit!” he wheezed between gasps. “Did you see that? I didn’t even mean to! I just thought about being over there, and then I was falling through space—”
Kian, who had jerked forward when Leo vanished, now stood frozen, staring at the destruction. Water was spreading across the floor, his favorite pitcher was in pieces, and chairs were overturned. I watched something die behind his eyes.
Leo looked up from the floor, his face going pale when he spotted the look in Kian’s eyes. “Oh. Oh shit. Kian, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“Are you injured?” Kian asked, his voice carefully controlled.
“No, I’m fine, but—”
“Then get up and help me clean this mess before I decide to let Hecate turn you into something small and squeaky that Cerberus can chase,” Kian huffed.
“You can’t turn people into things,” Leo said weakly, extracting himself from the chair.
Hecate smirked. “Can’t I?”
Leo scrambled to his feet with renewed urgency.
She shook her head. “Portals. Messy, uncontrolled, and dangerous to yourself and everything around you. You quite literally threw yourself through space with all the grace of a drunk man falling down stairs.”
Leo sat up straighter, still grinning despite the lecture. “Okay, but did you see how fast that was? I could get anywhere—”
“Or nowhere, if you bisect yourself by accident,” Hecate replied coolly. “Hermes had millennia to master this ability. You have weeks if we’re lucky. So perhaps less celebrating your mediocrity, more focusing on not dying stupidly.”
That sobered him up. “Right. Yeah. No dying stupidly. Got it.”
He began to help Kian clean the mess while Hecate turned her attention back to us.
“Should we be doing this outside?” Luz asked, eyeing the wreckage. “Like a park or something?”
“Wards require enclosed spaces,” Hecate explained.
“Buildings, rooms, vehicles. Open areas cannot be protected. The Underworld is too dangerous for mortals, and conjuring a training space would cost energy and time that we don’t have.
This is the safest location available. Now, it is your turn, Leuce. ”
Luz took the bowl without hesitation, as if she’d been waiting her whole life for this exact moment. She whispered something under her breath in Spanish as she brought the bowl to her lips.
“Madre tierra, reconóceme. Soy tuya, siempre he sido tuya.”
She drank deep.
The reaction was immediate. The floorboards beneath her feet groaned as if roots were pushing through from below. The scent of wet earth, petrichor, and loam filled the air. Her skin shimmered faintly.
Hecate inclined her head in something that looked almost like respect. “You remember what you are. The earth knows you, and you know it in return. That familiarity will make the learning easier.”
Her eyes narrowed. “But don’t mistake talent for mastery, bruja. You may know how to call the roots, but do you know how to command them? How to shape them with precision?”
Luz smiled confidently. “Don’t worry, maestra. This bruja can manage. I’m ready to learn what I don’t know yet.”
There was respect in the look they exchanged.
Hecate turned last to me. “Your turn, child.” Her eyes glinted as she smirked. “Show them what you are becoming.”
My throat went dry. I pressed my palm flat to the floor, fingers splaying across the smooth wood.
I closed my eyes and focused. The wood warmed beneath my skin.
A crack formed, thin as a spider’s web, spreading from beneath my palm.
A shoot pushed through, unfurling toward me.
Bright green leaves uncurled, and small white blossoms trembled at its tip; night-blooming jasmine.
It was beautiful and alive, all because I’d willed it.
But in that same moment, I felt the other half of me stir. The bloom trembled, petals browning at the edges, curling inward. It withered before my eyes, life draining out as easily as I’d poured it in. The leaves turned yellow, then brown, then black, collapsing into dust and then nothing.
May gaped. “Gods, Mel, that was—”
“Beautiful and horrifying at the same time,” Leo finished. “Did you mean to kill it?”
“She can’t help it,” Hecate spoke solemnly. “Death follows life automatically. It’s part of the cycle and who she is.”
Kian hadn’t moved from his position against the wall, his eyes never leaving me. When I glanced towards him, he gave me an encouraging smile.
Hecate’s gaze was like a knife. “You carry two realms within you. Bloom and decay.”
She moved closer. “But you are letting them spill into each other, letting them mix and blur without a boundary. But you lack control.”
She straightened, looking me in the eye. “Your power is over the cycle itself. I’ll teach you to separate them and choose which power you call forth and which you hold back.”
Training began in earnest.
Hecate lined up fifteen white taper candles across Kian’s mantle. “Light them one at a time,” she instructed May. “Just one.”
May’s first attempt lit all fifteen candles at once; a massive blaze that scorched the ceiling black and had Kian lunging for the fire extinguisher.
“One candle,” Hecate said with strained patience.
May tried again. Three candles lit, then two. Finally, after several attempts, a single flame flickered to life. By that point, she was breathing hard.
“Good. Now extinguish it. Just that one.” Hecate instructed.
May tried. All three candles went out, plus two unlit ones burst into flame.
Hecate pinched the bridge of her nose. “Once more.”
When the exhaustion broke her focus, the entire apartment flooded with sunlight, pure radiance pouring from her skin and eyes.
“Control!” Hecate barked. “You command the sun! It does not command you!”
The light snapped off as May collapsed to her knees, gasping.
“Again,” Hecate demanded.
May groaned but pushed back up.