Thirty – 03

[This post is from J.T.’s point of view.]

His feet felt heavy as he and Leinth began the walk back toward the village. J.T. stayed quiet, hands shoved deep into his pockets. He could feel the weight of concern, feel Leinth’s eyes on him. She was worried.

Truth be known, so was he.

Something was bothering him, though, had been bothering him since the encounter with Persephone. He looked sidelong to Leinth, who looked quickly away, as if she didn’t want him to know she’d been watching him.

“She called you cousin,” he said quietly. “Why would she do that?”

Leinth glanced at him, her brows going up in tandem. “Of all the things you could ask, you’d ask me that?”

J.T. shook his head. “That was the only part of what just happened that really surprised me.”

Leinth sighed, turning her gaze upward for a few seconds. The sky was a deep, bottomless blue, the kind of sky that seemed to go on forever, regardless of the season. She crossed her arms, lips thinning for a few seconds. “Well. Why wouldn’t she call me that?”

“You’re from different Otherworlds,” J.T. said quietly. “Aren’t you?”

“Barely,” Leinth said. “And we coexisted for so long it seems as if they might as well have been all the same. Dozens of generations of dealing with them.”

“Still. To call you cousin?”

“Hecate could easily do the same,” Leinth said.

“We’re not talking about Hecate. We’re talking about Persephone.”

“We might as well be,” Leinth said. “Those two—they were close. One protecting the other at every turn in equal measure.” She exhaled a sigh. “That was how I knew she couldn’t have been a monster. I had known Persephone well enough to know that she could never care that much about someone evil.”

“So you knew her?”

She sighed again. “Yes. Yes, I did. And I failed her. We all did. Every single one of us.”

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