Chapter 89 89
Annabeth's POV:
I couldn't sleep. Again.
Four nights now of lying in this bed staring at the ceiling, feeling Kaelen on the other side of the wall, knowing he wasn't sleeping either. The bond pulsed between us constantly, this low current of want that never shut off, and I was starting to lose my mind.
I got up around midnight and went to the kitchen for water. The cabin was dark except for the moonlight coming through the windows, everything shadows and silence. I filled a glass from the tap and stood there drinking it, trying to calm down, trying to think about anything other than the fact that Kaelen was maybe twenty feet away and I couldn't touch him.
"Can't sleep either?"
I nearly dropped the glass. Marlen was sitting at the kitchen table in the dark, a mug in front of her, watching me with those sharp eyes.
"Jesus. How long have you been there?"
"A while." She took a sip from her mug. Tea, probably. "I don't sleep well in new places."
"Yeah. Me neither."
Silence. I should've gone back to my room, avoided the awkwardness, but something made me stay. Maybe it was the fact that she'd actually spoken to me voluntarily for the first time since we got here. Maybe I was just tired of the tension.
I sat down across from her at the table.
"You don't like me," I said. Might as well get it out there.
She didn't flinch. "I don't know you well enough."
"That's not a no."
"It's not a yes either." She wrapped her hands around her mug. In the moonlight she looked younger, softer. Less like the tiny general she pretended to be. "I don't trust easily. That's not about you specifically."
"But it is. A little."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "You hurt him. After everything he risked to be with you, after he told you things he's never told anyone, you pushed him away. He stopped eating. He stopped sleeping. He walked around like a ghost for a month."
My chest tightened. "I know."
"Do you? Because from where I was standing, it looked like you didn't care."
"I cared. That was the problem." I stared at my glass of water, the moonlight catching the surface. "He lied to me about my father. About the one thing I've been trying to understand my entire life. And I know why he did it, I know Marcus made him promise, but it still... it broke something. For a while."
"And now?"
"Now it's fixed. Mostly. We're figuring it out."
Marlen studied me across the table. I couldn't read her expression, couldn't tell if she believed me or not.
"He talks about you constantly," she said. "Even when you weren't together. Even when he was miserable and pretending, he wasn't. Annabeth this, Annabeth that. It was annoying, honestly."
"Sorry."
"Don't be. It's just..." She sighed. "He's never had this before. Someone outside of us. Someone he chose, not because he had to protect them but because he wanted them. And I don't know if that makes you good for him or dangerous for all of us."
"I don't want to be dangerous."
"Nobody does. But you're a red dragon being hunted by the Order, and my brother is in love with you, and that combination has a lot of ways to go wrong."
She wasn't wrong. That was the worst part.
"I love him too," I said. "If that matters."
"It matters." She took another sip of tea. "It doesn't fix everything, but it matters."
We sat in silence for a minute. The cabin creaked around us, settling noises, the river rushing somewhere outside. I thought about getting up, going back to bed, ending this conversation while it was still civil.
But Marlen spoke first.
"He had nightmares for a year after our parents disappeared. Every night, same thing. He'd wake up screaming, convinced they were coming for us, convinced he'd failed somehow." She wasn't looking at me now, just staring at her mug. "I was eight. Lucian was ten. We didn't understand what was happening, just that our parents were gone and our brother was falling apart trying to keep us safe."
"Marlen..."
"He was seventeen. Seventeen years old and suddenly responsible for two kids and running from people who wanted to drain our blood. He didn't get to be a teenager. Didn't get to go to parties or date or do any of the normal stuff. Just us. Just survival."
I didn't know what to say. The weight of it sat between us, heavy and real.
"And then he met you," she continued. "And for the first time in five years, I saw him happy. Actually happy, not just pretending to be okay. He smiled at his phone like an idiot, talked about the future like it was something that could exist." She looked at me. "And then it fell apart and he was worse than before."
"I'm sorry."
"I'm not telling you this so you'll apologize. I'm telling you because..." She paused, choosing her words. "Because if you're going to be with him, you need to understand what you're getting into. He's not normal. None of us are. We don't get to have normal problems or normal relationships or normal anything. And if you can't handle that, if you're going to run every time things get hard, then you should leave now. Before it gets worse."
"I'm not leaving."
"You say that now."
"I mean it." I leaned forward across the table. "I know I messed up. I know I hurt him. But I'm here, aren't I? In a cabin in the middle of nowhere, hiding from people who want to kill me, and I'm not running. I'm staying. For him. For... whatever this is."
Marlen held my gaze for a long moment. Something shifted in her expression, that wall she kept up cracking just a little.
"The walls are thin," she said finally.
"You mentioned that."
"I'm mentioning it again. Because tomorrow night, Marcus is doing a long patrol and probably going to meet one of his contacts. He'll be gone until morning, he told Kael in front of me. And Lucian sleeps like the dead once he's out, especially if I put on a movie in our room."
I stared at her. "Are you saying—"
"I'm not saying anything." She stood up, taking her mug to the sink. "I'm just giving you information. What you do with it is your business."
She walked toward the stairs, then stopped. Turned back.
"Don't make me regret this," she said. "Don't hurt him again."
"I won't."
"Good." She started up the stairs, paused one more time. "And for the record... you're okay. For a red dragon being hunted by an ancient cult. You're okay."
She disappeared up the stairs and I sat there in the dark kitchen, my heart pounding, her words echoing in my head.
God. That had been... intense.