Page 28 of Blood of Hercules
“They are waiting for you to say something,” Nyx hissed under my sweatshirt, and I was grateful for the cue.
“I will punish Charlie,” I said. “His behavior is—” I searched for an appropriate word. “—condemnable.”
The principal exhaled and sat back in his chair. “Ms. Hert, you’re the smartest student this school has ever produced. Please ensure it doesn’t happen again. Your brother is also one of our top students, and I don’t have the time or energy to deal with this foolery—we haveTitansto worry about.”
He waved his hand at the grown boys dripping blood all over the floor.
Everyone in the room waited for something.
I waited with them.
“Say something,” Nyx hissed.
“I u-understand,” I said.
I didn’t.
A few hours later, I climbed out of a rusty yellow school bus, another relic from pre-Spartan times.
We thanked our bus driver, and he flashed a single black tooth while grunting either a pleasantry or a vulgar swear word (it was definitely the latter).
Warm spring rain poured down, but neither Charlie nor I minded; anything was better than the freezing cold of winter.
Nyx grumbled about drowning to death.
For a wildsnake, she was surprisingly high-maintenance.
Charlie shuffled closer to me as we walked into the trailer park, shutting the barbed-wire gate behind us with a click.
Somehow, someway, the gate had kept out the Titans the entire time we’d been homeless.
It was a miracle. Yet I still stayed awake each night drowning in anxiety. The logical fallacy that just because something hadn’t happened in the past didn’t affect its probability of happening in the future, haunted me.
I flung my arm up across Charlie’s broad shoulder. He was skinny but built wider and taller than I was, like if he got proper nutrition, he’d have an impressive physique.
I pulled him close.
He hunched low.
There was something fragile about his larger size, like he feared his own capacity for violence.
Now his pale knuckles were coated in dried blood, yellow eyes sharp.
Charlie’s coloring was so different from my own golden skin and hair that people at school were surprised when they found out we were siblings.
But trauma bonds didn’t change your appearance, just your souls.
“Are you mad?” he signed with his long fingers.
When it had become clear eight years ago that Charlie didn’t speak, the two of us had learned sign language from an old library book.
I frowned at him with confusion and signed back, “Why would I be mad?”
“I beat that kid until he was covered in blood,” he signed with a frown—his hand motions jerky. “I didn’t mean to, but my mind blanked, and suddenly he was Father, and I just wanted to protect?—”
“Didn’t he push you first?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Charlie signedslowly.
