Page 30 of Marked by the Demigod

Isn't that over dramatic.

AIMES (4:43 PM): Eh, punched. By a dryad.

DAVE (4:44 PM): They're jackasses.

She cracks a smile, then immediately regrets it and clutches at her lip.

DAVE (4:46 PM): Katya tells me to manipulate you into getting self-defense classes. Do I need to?

A chuckle builds up in her chest, but she squashes it with another spoonful of ice cream.

AIMES (4:46 PM): Not really. This isn't a thing I want to repeat.

DAVE (4:50 PM): Good.

She eats her ice cream for a bit, curled up on the couch and feeling exquisitely sorry for herself, poking around on some coding for a bit before emailing the receptionist back with a few class requests.

* * *

Katya lurksat the back of the first class, still in her suit and combat boots, watching as someone - a honest-to-god fairy who doesn't quite glitter - makes the four people in the class drench themselves in sweat. It's not the most graceful Aimes feels, but it seems that every time she runs into Katya she's never at her best.

As they towel off, Katya speaks with the fairy before gesturing Aimes back to her office, and she's so covered in sweat she feels like she sticks to the chairs.

"You know, I'm tired of all my life revolving around this guy." Aimes slumps in the chair, past the level of caring to appear put together, as Katya takes some papers from her printer.

Katya's eyebrows quirk. "Near as I can tell, you're the only person who's been mistakenly bonded to like this in all of recorded history," she says, as if it was blasé. "Granted, there was a whole section of the Middle Ages where nothing was recorded but..." She sits down. "We have no procedure for dealing with your case."

As if that part isn't blatantly obvious. "And you needed to tell me that before my shower?"

She blinks. "I wanted to be clear with you, we have no set protocol."

"Yeah." Aimes replies, staring at the door and thinking longingly about the water pressure of her apartment. "Nothing makes sense and I wish it'd stop."

Katya frowns at her, but it's a thoughtful frown of someone faced with a problem that isn't going how they planned.

"I mean, I got punched cause I slept with a guy."

Katya hesitates, and it's clear that she knows something about that and didn't think it would be the best to talk about it but that she probably should. "The dryad in response was killed last night."

Aimes sits up straighter, her skin slicking off the chair. "What?"

"It's a string of deaths that are all otherwise unconnected, all within the purvey of our offices. He was the last." Her voice is grave, but her face doesn't change from its mask of professionalism.

Her breath catches in her throat, stuck, not hope but not separate from hope. "Do you think it's my guy?"

"It's easy to assume that, but it's been going on for about seventeen months." They stare at each other for a long second. "This world is big, sometimes, and it's terrifying in what it'll do."

* * *

Three months pass,and there's no more attacks and only a moderate amount of staring. Trixie dates the guy and is uncomfortable, and Aimes tries to not feel simultaneously lonely and empty.

It sucks.

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