Chapter 71 71
Annabeth's POV:
Marcus stopped by around four. He checked my pupils, my temperature, asked me to try reaching for my fire. I tried. Got a flicker, maybe, the barest hint of heat in my chest that disappeared the second I reached for it.
"Progress," Marcus said, nodding. "Slow, but it's there."
"Great. Super encouraging."
He gave me a look. That one, the dad look, the one that said I know you're being sarcastic because you're scared and I'm going to let it slide because I'm trying to build a relationship here.
God, that look was annoying. Mostly because it worked.
"Your aunt called me," he said. "She wants to come home."
"She can't."
"That's what I told her. She wasn't happy about it."
"Is she ever happy about anything I do lately?"
"She's happy you're alive." He said it simply, without drama, and it landed harder than any lecture would have. "I told her you'd call her tonight. She's still at Helen's."
"I'll call her."
"And Mara's been texting you."
"I know." Seventeen messages since this morning. I'd read them all. Mara escalating from "u ok?" to "annabeth respond or i'm calling the cops" in the span of four hours. Classic Mara. I'd sent her a voice memo around noon, making my voice sound as raspy and pathetic as possible: "Still super sick, sound like death, don't come over, love you." She'd responded with a string of frowning emojis and a link to some home remedy involving ginger and honey that she'd found on TikTok.
"She's a good friend," Marcus said.
"The best." And I was lying to her. Again. Adding it to the pile of lies that kept getting taller and more precarious, like a Jenga tower made of bullshit.
Marcus left to do whatever Marcus did when he wasn't here. Patrol, probably. Hunt for Order stragglers. Kill people and mention it casually over coffee the next morning. Normal dad stuff.
I called Aunt Sarah.
"Annabeth." Her voice cracked on my name and I felt like garbage. "Are you okay? Marcus said you were hurt, that they drugged you, that—"
"I'm fine. I'm recovering."
"He said they used some kind of weapon that suppressed your fire. And that Kaelen had to—" She paused. "That Kaelen helped."
"He's helping. Yeah."
Silence. Aunt Sarah processing. I could picture her sitting in Helen's guest room, probably on that floral bedspread that smelled like lavender, pressing her fingers to the bridge of her nose the way she did when she was trying not to freak out.
"I want to come home," she said.
"Not yet. A couple more days. Marcus says it's safer if you stay there until they're sure the Order isn't sending reinforcements."
"I hate this."
"I know."
"I hate that you're in danger and I can't do anything. I hate that Marcus is making decisions about your safety like he has the right after eighteen years of—" She stopped herself. "Sorry. That's not fair. He's trying to help."
"He is."
"Is Kaelen taking care of you?"
The question was loaded and she knew it. I could hear the subtext: the boy who lied to you, the one you've been crying over for three weeks, is he treating you right now that you're stuck together.
"He's healing me," I said. Careful, neutral. "His golden dragon thing. It helps with the drug."
"And the other stuff?"
"What other stuff?"
"The stuff between you two. The stuff that made you be depressed every day for a month." Her voice was gentle but firm. Aunt Sarah didn't do bullshit. Never had. "Are you okay being around him?"
I looked at the bedroom door. Closed. On the other side of it, somewhere in the safe house, Kaelen was probably standing by a window scanning the tree line for threats with his eyes half gold. Or sitting on the couch with his long legs folded up because it was too small for him. Or washing another dish, because apparently that was his coping mechanism.
"I don't know," I said. And for once it was the truth.
We talked for ten more minutes, about nothing important, about Helen's cat that kept sleeping on Sarah's pillow and the grocery store being out of her favorite tea. Normal things. Mundane things. I held onto them like a lifeline because they reminded me that somewhere out there, regular life was still happening. People were buying tea and shooing cats off pillows and not thinking about dragon-specific sedatives or safe houses or boys whose hands could heal you while simultaneously destroying every wall you'd spent weeks building.
After I hung up, I lay on the bed and stared at the Florida water stain. My new best friend, that stain. I'd memorized every curve and blotch of it. From this angle it looked less like Florida and more like a dog, actually. A weird lumpy dog with no tail.
The third healing session was at eight PM. Kaelen knocked, which was new. This morning he'd just come in, but now he knocked and waited.
"Come in."
He did. He'd been outside, I could tell, his nose slightly red from the cold and his hair messed up by wind. November in a safe house without proper heating. He'd brought a blanket from the couch, folded over his arm.
"Thought you might be cold," he said, and held it out.
"Thanks." I took it. Our fingers didn't touch during the exchange. We were being very careful about that now, rationing the contact, like if we touched outside of the healing sessions it would count as something else. Something neither of us was ready to name.
He sat on the bed. Same spot, close enough for our knees to touch. I held out my hands before he could hold out his, which felt like a small victory of some kind, and the warmth started flowing.
This time it was different.
Maybe because it was nighttime and the safe house was darker, just the one lamp on the nightstand casting everything in yellow. Maybe because I was tired and my defenses were lower. Maybe because three sessions in one day had made the connection between us wider, like wearing a path through the woods. But the bond didn't just open, it poured.
Everything he was feeling hit me at once. The fear that still hadn't left since the hotel, this low constant terror that something would happen to me and he wouldn't be fast enough. The guilt about the dead men that he pushed down during the day but couldn't outrun at night. The loneliness of the past weeks, an ache so deep it made my eyes sting. And love. So much of it, so much, this enormous thing that had nowhere to go because I wouldn't let it in.
And he felt mine.
I knew because his hands tightened and his breathing changed and he looked at me with an expression that was almost pained, like someone had reached into his chest and squeezed. He could feel all of it, the anger and the hurt and the betrayal and the thing I kept buried under all of that, the thing that made me press my hand against the wall between us at night, the thing that made me tighten my grip on his hands during sessions instead of loosening it.
Neither of us said a word. We didn’t have to. If we were feeling all of that though an incomplete bond, how would it be if it was complete? Overwhelming, probably.
The healing lasted forty-five minutes. When he finally let go, my whole body felt warm, genuinely warm, for the first time since the hotel. And somewhere deep in my chest, so faint I might've imagined it, a spark. Not fire. Not yet. But the memory of fire, the suggestion of it. Like smelling smoke from very far away.
"Goodnight," he said from the door.
"Goodnight."
He closed the door. I listened to him settle on the couch, that familiar creak, and turned off the lamp.
I was in the hotel room again.
Except it wasn't right. The proportions were wrong, the ceiling too high, the walls too close. The men were there but their faces kept shifting, features sliding around like wet paint. Eight of them. Or twelve. Or twenty. The number kept changing every time I blinked.
The man from the bench was talking but no sound was coming out of his mouth. Just this high-pitched tone, that sound, the one from the device, drilling into my skull, and I couldn't move. My arms were pinned. Someone had my hair, pulling my head back, and I could see the needle coming, slow, impossibly slow, the tip catching the light.
I tried to scream. Nothing came out.
Tried to reach for my fire. Empty. That horrible blank space, that missing limb.
The needle touched my neck and it was cold, so cold, ice spreading through me and my vision going dark around the edges, and I thought no no no not again, please, not again—
Hands. On my arms. Holding me down.
I screamed.
Except this time the sound actually came out, ripping from my throat so hard it hurt, and my body was thrashing, fighting, my fists connecting with something solid. I heard a voice, distant, saying my name, but the men still had me, they were holding me down and the needle was in my neck and the cold was spreading—
"Annabeth. Annabeth, hey, it's me. It's me. You're safe. You're in the safe house, you're safe, it's just a dream."
Not a man from the Order. Kaelen.