Dead & Gone
It used to be just a game.
In fact, it was one that Sebastian had fully supported. He would pour over the newspapers or inquire discreetly, helping her find a wedding. He even picked out the dresses with her and drove her to the venues.
.
On their wedding night, he gave her a piece of polished obsidian. “Don’t break it,” he had warned. “What you’d be left with would have edges sharper than razors.”
She doubts that could be sharper than some of the weapons she had encountered, but she took care regardless, keeping it cushioned whenever she slipped it into her pocket; her purse, when there was no pockets available.
.
There were three things she always had on her, three gifts - three reminders, really. Three items she couldn’t bear to lose.
.
The night before their wedding, Nico gave her a locket. It nestled nicely in the palm of her hand, a solid weight, opening at her touch to reveal a tiny vial of liquid and a handcrafted miniature of a dagger the length of her thumb, made with a mixture of celestial bronze and imperial gold. There was also a whistle made from stygian ice.
He shrugged when she glanced at him inquiringly.
Laughing, she straightened up - “He’s a mortal, Nico, he’s not a threat. I can take him down without help.”
Nico snorted at that, looking away. “Just be careful, Reyna.”
A moment of understanding passed between them when their eyes met again, because she knew. She couldn’t help softening her gaze, just like he couldn’t help stiffening and raising his metaphorical hackles in response. The tension dispelled when Leo poked his head in to ask if they’d seen his screwdriver, and, after they’d sent him away, Reyna carefully replaced the items inside the locket and put it on.
“I still don’t like him,” Nico declared eventually, watching her warily.
After a pause, she replied with a simple, “I know.”
She wanted to defend Sebastian; she should have, but. She knew him better than anyone else ever did - both of them, really, and she couldn’t fault him for not trusting Sebastian.
In the end, there was nothing more to say, was there?
.
She had given up on love, actually. Jason was her sky until suddenly, he wasn’t, that night she dressed up for the first time since - she dressed up for him, and he was gone. Taken. The next time they met, he had a girlfriend, he didn’t know her and she didn’t know him, not really, not anymore. Then there was Percy, just like his sword, the riptide that dragged her underwater and drowned her. It took her completely unexpectedly, sweeping her off her feet before dumping her, soaked and miserable, alone on the shores, because, of course. Percy had someone, too.
She was fine with it - she had accepted that she had to give up something for the chance to make her mother proud. Nico had it so much worse and it’s not like she needed any boy to validate her anyways.
.
(She’d given up on love, but Sebastian made her believe again.)
.
He was twenty and there and she was sixteen and shattered when they first met. He had his whole future ahead of him, while she was lost, wrung out after two wars -
…Scrambling, searching desperately for a home, too much responsibilities on her shoulders, too much blood on her hands, still looking for the family the warmth the innocence she lost long ago, because…
.
She never used to stop and wonder why Nico helped her instead of trying to talk her out of this when he found out. They were both broken in their own ways, she understood, and maybe that was why everything went wrong -
she was broken, yes, but
Sebastian wasn’t
.
The moment she steps into the venue, the game begins. She always manages to catch the groom’s eye, and… Depending on how well they do on the first test, it could be over as soon as it began.
Or it could last until their last night together.
.
Nico was the only one who took one look and knew.
It helped, she supposed, that he was the one who found her while she was still coming down from the thrill of a first kill almost gone wrong.
Not Sebastian, not Jason or Percy or Frank or Leo.
When he found her, the only thing he did was to get her out before teaching her the different ways to get away without being detected, with or without a partner.
.
It had always just been a game, though.
Playing with their hearts and their lives, before ending it.
.
It was fun, smiling shyly at them, luring them into bed - their bed, always. She loved the irony. It would be their deathbeds, after all. And the looks on their wives’ faces when they come back from wherever their husbands sent them to…
Just for that one glimpse, she always stayed the night.
To see them understand, to see them despair.
To see if they would cry or if they would rage, if they would mourn, or
do nothing at all.
.
It stayed just a game until she found Sebastian -
with somebody else.
Her heart shattered and, it made sense for her to shatter it -
it was poetic justice.
He was her third kill.
.
She should have seen it coming, really. In the end, although Sebastian gave her the idea, he never understood, never believed. Perhaps, there had been a reason she occasionally found herself wondering why he would help her.
In her darker moments, she wondered, too, why he stayed when nobody worth it was willing to look at her and see her instead of the praetor or the lost little girl she
used to be
.
The police officers who arrived were nice. Gentle, kind. As they helped her up and bundled her up, she didn’t even have to pretend to be numb and in shock and grieving for her loss, because she was. Because it wasn’t an act, because she did care, and
she would never forget the relief on his face when she pulled him into their bed with her, telling him that she would erase every trace of the other woman from him before muttering the sweet nothings that truly meant nothing, now that she knew
.
For a while, after him, she had fallen into a rut. She had truly loved him, after all.
Still did, if she was honest with herself.
But.
.
The betrayal on his face when she dug the shard in and broke his heart, splitting it along the median septum - it made her want to claw it off his face. To yell and scream that he had no right to look like she had betrayed him, not when he was the one who had betrayed her. He had no right. He was the one who broke her heart and killed her, all those promises and vows,
their plans their love their future
He lied.
He deserved it.
.
It was staring at the shards, glinting maliciously, that spurred her back into action
It would appear that she was wrong - they truly were razor sharp, cutting her deeper and leaving her bleeding more freely than any other dagger
But she wouldn’t toss them away, they were more than that
They stayed in the locket she swept them into, next to her heartbeat where he’d always been, always would be
Except -
He’d put a hammer to her heart and left behind only this: scalpel sharp pieces that sliced away the useless emotions he had taught her to feel.
Broken hearts, Reyna learnt, weren’t the crippling things people told you they were. They simply cut away all weaknesses and allow you to unleash your potential to the fullest, while shielding you with an armour of shards.
So she got back into the game, searching for weddings and dresses and driving there
(alone, alone, alone…)
But.
It stopped being a game.
(It became an obsession.)
He taught her that it was good to be crazy.
Didn’t he?
The games, the plans, the lies
.
Nico never did like him. “He’d break your heart one day, Reyna,” he had said the first time she introduced them, after Sebastian had left, leaving the two of them in her living room, alone together.
“He wouldn’t,” Reyna defended immediately. “He’s a sweetheart.”
Nico didn’t reply.
In his silence she heard the unspoken ‘Alabaster was, too.’
.
He never knew her.
Did she know him?
She couldn’t forget this either:
His blood, mixing with everything already staining her hands, immiscible and yet another life she’d bear full responsibility for ending, like her father, that first time she snapped.
It didn’t matter anymore, though.
He’s gone.
Only the shards weren’t.
Nico wasn’t, either, but he was the only one who stayed. Even though, unlike everyone else, he had this freakish ability to just know.
It made sense, Reyna decided. It does take one to know one, after all.
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, though, eventually settling for drinking herself senseless in his company on the nights he wasn’t called away by his father and his duty, because she could trust him to protect her from the world and to
protect the world from her.
In the end, the only thing keeping them from killing her was the locket containing them, heavy and warm against her heart, a constant reminder that no matter how good this feels, it would never compare, ever,
but,
He lied
(And he’s gone.)
Dead and Gone