10. Chapter 10
Chapter ten
Corre
F ocus, Correlia.
The goddess watched her friend’s every movement as he circled her. She leapt forward and threw another punch, but Phineas blocked it and took the balance out from beneath her left leg, striking her to the ground. The pain stung, but the humiliation was worse.
“Are you okay?” Phineas’s confusion at her incompetence was unbearable.
She rubbed the back of her head and took her friend’s hand. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just a little distracted. Let’s go again.” He nodded, but she could tell he was skeptical.She didn’t want to think about the concerns spinning through her mind, let alone discuss them with Phineas. Or anyone, for that matter. She just wanted to fight. Get it all out of her system. Move her body until she was too exhausted to think about anything else.
No matter how hard she tried to focus, Theron’s face appeared in her mind. His voice rumbled in her chest, and the ghost of his fingers danced across her skin, pressed inside her memory like a fallen leaf in the pages of a book. She couldn’t think or focus or hear the world outside of her head.Those confusing moments with him had fastened themselves in her mind, and she couldn’t unlock herself from them.
“Does Demeter know you’re here?” Athena asked. The crimson-haired goddess approached with a disapproving look.
Corre grimaced. “She knows I’m working on my training today.” Athena raised a brow, and Corre’s shoulders fell. “I know what you’re thinking, but you know how much this training means to me, too. Plus, I’m helping Phineas. So please, don’t tell her.”
The older goddess narrowed her eyes, then sighed. “All right. But work on the training she expects you to as well. You know how much it means to her that you’re ready for your coronation. It’s only a month away.”
“I know.”
She pursed her lips, looking between the two young gods before turning to another pupil. A silver-haired goddess with eyes like a fox. “Hold the arrow lower. No, not like that. Here—” Corre’s eyes followed Athena’s movements until she was out of earshot.
She turned to Phineas. “It’s also not my mother’s job to keep us safe from threats, and with Theron lurking about, someone has to know how to fight. We live too far away from anyone else out there in the glen.”
Phineas frowned. “Corre, you’re talking about your mother here.”
“That’s why I’m saying it. I know she’d sacrifice herself for me. I know it. She always takes the fall for me, and I can’t let her do it anymore. Especially not a fall that could cause so much damage—one that could hurt her. Or worse. She doesn’t mind my training here anyway. She said so herself. I need to protect her.”
For a moment, he didn’t look at her, but then he grinned. “Want to go again?”
A matching smile spread across her flushed face “Of course. Let’s do this.” She didn’t let her mind wander this time. There was too much at stake. She focused on the patterns Athena had shown them, gliding along the forest floor with her friend in a warrior’s dance, dust rising from the dirt at their feet. As usual, Corre dodged Phineas’s every punch. Sweat coated her skin, and the rush of it all made her body soar.
Phineas utilized a few new moves Corre hadn’t anticipated, but she managed to dodge them, landing a few punches of her own. As one last throw headed her way, the thought of Theron pierced her mind. His lips. His breath. His hand on the small of her back. She faltered, and Phineas knocked her clean onto the forest floor.
She slid across the dirt until her body hit the base of a tree. Luckily it wasn’t hard or fast, but her ego was definitely bruised, and she hated whose fault it was.
“Are you okay?” Phineas offered his hands and pulled her up.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I just got distracted.” Her spine throbbed; it had curled itself against that tree in the least pleasant way possible. She was afraid to inspect it when she got home.
“Corre.” Phineas kept her hands in his until she looked up at him. “Corre, I know you. Something’s off. You usually run circles around me. What’s going on?”
“I’m fine!” she snapped, and her heart fell at his wounded expression. “I’m sorry. I just . . . I have a lot on my mind these days.”
“Like what?” His voice was soft. She shifted uncomfortably at his worried stare. “You know you can tell me anything.”
She wished that were true, but she couldn’t tell him this . She didn’t even want to admit it to herself—that she couldn’t shake Hades from her mind. That she might even be drawn to Theron of Tartarus for reasons unknown to her. “I’m just having trouble with my destined path.” The words weren’t un true, and the longer she thought about it, the more she realized how true the sentiment was. The anxieties that had suffocated her before Theron had distracted her came rushing back. “I don’t want my life to be growing things. I want to fight. I want to be useful in some way.”
Phineas took her by the shoulders. “Hey. Look at me. Your destiny is useful. You make the world a beautiful place. You make Mt. Olympus heavenly and provide life for the mortals. You are destined to bring breath and light to the world.”
She smiled weakly. “I don’t know. I just . . . It doesn’t feel right.”
This was the real issue plaguing her, she decided. Theron was a distraction. That was why she’d been so intrigued by him. Inside, all she’d wanted was to be distracted from the cold reality she had to face every day—that she was deemed the Goddess of Life and Nature, but she wanted to be somebody else.
Making plants wasn’t something she wanted to do. It wasn’t even something she was good at. It was something she’d been told she had to do. But it didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like her. It never had.
So, no. This wasn’t about Theron. This was about her.
“Corre,” Phineas said, and she looked up again. “You’ve already improved so much in your craft. You know that, right?” He lowered his face, a broad smile stretching so wide it had to make her smile, too. She nodded. His face lit up even more. “See? You know it’s true. You can do anything you set your mind to. You know that. I know that. I’m sure your mother does, too.”
“I guess you could be right.”
“I am right. Don’t think what you’re destined to do isn’t useful. It’s something we need. Something beautiful. Something like . . .” Whatever Phineas wanted to say next fell dead on his lips.
“Something like what?” she pressed, but he chuckled awkwardly and scratched the back of his head.
“Nothing. Just,” —his arm dropped to his side— “be yourself. You’re a wonderful person.”
She smiled. “Thank you, Phineas. Should we go again?”
“Definitely!” he said with a laugh, and the two of them took their positions.
Phineas is a great friend , Corre thought as she dodged a punch she knew was too weak to be his best attempt. But he doesn’t get it .
As the two of them sparred, Corre did her best to hide the aching in her chest. Her friend didn’t understand, but how could she tell him the truth? That who she was supposed to be wasn’t who she really was. A notion no other god or goddess on Mt. Olympus seemed to understand. And that was the loneliest feeling in the world.