Forty-six – 01

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

Matt stood frozen by the back door, feeling like he couldn’t move as he stared blankly out at the storm. It wasn’t until Hecate squeezed his arm and moved away that whatever held him there gave way. In its wake, his heart ached and weariness threatened to overwhelm him. Was this what guilt—real, true guilt—felt like?

“Was he your friend?” Hecate asked, her voice barely audible over the rain.

“He was Cíar’s friend,” Matt answered, his voice low and weak. “I’ve barely gotten to know him since they joined us.”

She nodded, reaching up to cup his cheek with her palm. She lingered for a moment before she turned and closed the door. Matt sucked in a deep breath and turned toward the kitchen island, where Gilad leaned silently, watching them and waiting.

“I’m sorry,” Gilad said again. “I wouldn’t—I wish I didn’t have to be here.”

Matt nodded, trudging toward the stove. “Take your coat off. You’re soaked.”

“That’s what happens when you get caught in a storm.” Gilad shrugged out of his long coat. Hecate quietly moved toward him to take it and the man flinched, for a second, then winced as she hesitated. “I’m sorry,” he said again, this time addressing her. “I didn’t—”

She shook her head as she gently took his coat. “I did everything I could a long time ago to make people afraid of me so I wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore. The expression on your face is something of my own making. You don’t owe me an apology for that.”

As she walked toward the hooks near the back door to hang up his coat, Gilad cleared his throat and said, “I do owe you an apology, though, for what we did to you after we lost him, when we disobeyed his orders.”

Matt’s stomach dropped and he turned away from putting a kettle on for tea in time to see Hecate tense, then relax. She glanced back over her shoulder at Gilad and offered him a weak smile. “What you did to me,” she said softly, “was no worse than what I did to myself.” She held up one arm, letting her sleeve fall back to reveal the old scar there, the one that still made Matt’s heart ache.

Gilad sucked in a sharp breath. “I—”

“If you apologize again, I might regret putting away my blades,” she said, though the words were tempered by a weak smile that faded with her next words. “Sit down. You said something awful’s afoot and we might be able to stop it. Tell us?”

Gilad sank into a chair, nodding slowly. “Right. Olympium.”

“Olympium,” she echoed, drifting toward Matt’s side. He wrapped his arm around her when she reached him as she slid her arms around his waist, her lips thinning away to nothing as she pressed them together.

“They’re going after my family,” Matt said softly. “Why?”

“They’re looking for the two of you,” Gilad said. “They want you badly.”

Hecate took a deep breath. “That doesn’t surprise me,” she said. “And yet it does. It felt like they were glad to be rid of me then. I wasn’t useful anymore.”

“I guess now you are,” Gilad said, swallowing hard. “At least they think you will be. You’re lucky they haven’t sensed you up here yet; they weren’t that far away when we ran into them.”

She cursed softly, shaking her head hard. Matt’s arm tightened around her.

“He warned us,” Matt murmured.

“Fuck him,” she spat, loathing filling her voice. “Fuck Leviathan. I am not playing his games. I am not going to turn one master in for another because that’s exactly what he wants. He wants us on a leash, Matt. He doesn’t want allies, he wants soldiers.”

“Leviathan was here?” Gilad asked, his voice curious and wary all at once. “Well. That’s interesting.”

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