Awakenings

[This post is from Hecate’s point of view.]

Matt stayed quiet for a few long moments. If he’d noticed any change in her expression from the pain moving had caused, he didn’t show any sign. He just stared at nothing for the space of a few heartbeats before he said, “My sister’s looking forward to finally meeting you.”

Hecate startled a little at the news. “Really?”

He nodded, seeming thoughtful. “She was up at the forge when I got there. Said she’d needed to stretch her legs, but I think she was mostly there because she was looking for me. She kind of admitted to that.”

“She was worried about you?”

“A little,” he admitted. “Not as worried as I thought she would be, though.” He lapsed into silence again, but looked down at her afterwards. “I really think she meant it.”

“Meant what?”

“That she’s looking forward to meeting you.” One corner of his mouth tugged upward in a now-familiar smile. “Said you must be something special.”

She blushed and burrowed deeper under the blankets, vainly trying to hide the mixture of pleasure and embarrassment that washed through her at the thought. She was flattered, that was for certain, but there was also worry there.

It was an old worry, the same one that had plagued her for centuries, one she’d never quite seemed to be able to escape no matter how hard she tried. She’d always feared that somehow she wasn’t good enough.

What if Marin Astoris decided that she wasn’t good enough for her beloved brother?

“Hey,” Matt murmured, lifting the blanket to peek beneath it, seeking her face in the shadows. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, though the answer came a little too quickly for him to believe her—she knew it, too, even without seeing the slight shift in his expression, the flicker of worry in his eyes. She stopped just shy of sucking in a breath, not wanting to further betray her nerves.

Please don’t ask. Please don’t ask.

He hesitated a second too long before he sighed. “All right,” he said. “But if you—”

“It’s not really anything worth worrying about,” she said—and meant it. “Just baggage. Shit I should have let go of a long time ago and…didn’t. In my defense, I never really had much opportunity to work through it, though.”

Matt nodded slowly, then leaned down to kiss her gently. “As long as you’re sure.”

She wasn’t, but she was more than halfway there and didn’t want to let her uncertainty win this time. “I’ll be okay,” she said, then smiled weakly. He brushed her hair back from her face again and smiled back.

“Promise?”

Hecate nodded. “I promise.”

Those words, at least, were true.

[This post is from Hecate’s point of view.]

The door creaked softly open and she stirred, fingers bunching in the fabric of the pillowcase, immediately tense. This wasn’t home and she knew that, though the bed smelled of him and it was comfortably dark, the room small and snug. Hecate reached for her magic but it eluded her, slipping through her fingers like the trailing edge of cloth, as if someone were walking away too quickly and she couldn’t move quickly enough to stop them.

Then she heard the sound of his tread, his breathing, and relaxed. The door clicked quietly closed behind him, keys jangling as he set them down.

“Are you all right?” she asked in a whisper.

“I don’t know,” Matt said, a chair creaking as he sat down to take off his boots. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

“I was already awake,” she said, peeking out from the nest of blankets to watch him in the dimness. “I heard you leave earlier. It was hard getting back to sleep.”

He winced. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right.” She studied him for a long moment, the way red and gold strands caught what little light there was in the room, the curve of his jaw, strong but not too sharp. Her fingers curled inward, fingertips brushing against the bandage wrapped around her hand. The place where he’d cut her palm for the binding still ached, though it was a comforting ache, not like the pain in her side. The pain in her hand was born of love. The pain in her side had been born of hate.

“I went up to the forge,” he said. “I just felt like I needed to. I’d left so much unfinished, I needed to make sure that—that—”

“That everything was the way you’d left it,” she whispered. His shoulders slumped slightly and he nodded, his hands falling limply between his knees, his boots unlaced now but still on his feet.

Slowly, he rose, working his boots off, and crossed the floor to the bed. “This is still my home.”

“I know,” she said, reaching a hand out for him as he sank down onto the edge of the bed next to her. His fingers laced through hers, squeezing gently. “I don’t want to take you from it.”

I’m just afraid.

He looked down at her and reached down with his own bandage-wrapped hand to brush her hair back from her face. The fond smile on his face made her heart miss a beat and she smiled back, though weakly.

Her smile faded. “None of this should have happened the way it did, Matt. I handled it badly.”

“I’m not sure what choice you had,” he admitted, looking away. He stared at the door, at their jackets hung up there. The hole in hers had been stitched up, though she could still see the faint stain where it had been soaked with blood—her blood.

If Pluton had managed to get it an inch higher, or an inch over…

“What are you thinking about?” Matt asked, his voice quiet. She winced.

“Nothing that I should be, probably,” she admitted. She inched closer to him, trying to conceal the pain that wrapped around her midsection as she moved. Healing would be slow—she knew that. It was a price she was willing to pay this time, though. What they had managed to do was worth every extra minute, every extra hour, every extra day, week…it was worth all of it.

I killed a god of death before he could kill me.