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CHAPTER TWENTY SIX nothing says murder like family
——— CONNOR! ( CAMP HALF BLOOD, LATE JUNE )
"SO, ARE YOU TWO like dating now?"
Travis and Katie Gardner sat across from him, their hands clasped together so tightly Connor was sure that his brother's hand may turn to dust from the sheer strength of both their grips. They had kissed twice in the last ten minutes, both times of which Connor wanted to throw up in his mouth. He stood by whatever he had said earlier in the year: love, or whatever it is this was, was mildly...no, majorly sickening, and he didn't want any part in it. Love was like the first leaf of poison ivy...no, it was not like the first lead, but it was exactly that. First, it spread to one part of your body, usually your arm, or in this case apparently, Travis and Katie's hearts, and then it infected the rest of you until you'd be blind to it. As Aphrodite had once mentioned to him or Verona or Percy or somebody (he was not sure who at this point as the goddess of love had advised so many half bloods after eons of simply meddling from behind her throne in the safety of Mount Olympus), love was a fickle thing that could cut like glass and harm like the oceans drowning to the depths of your lungs all at once. At some point, it went from your heart and infected your mind, and that's usually where things went wrong — when love led you blind, love led you shy of the line between selfish and selflessness. So, yes, love had to be a fickle thing.
Yet, Connor disagreed.
Love was not fickle or ill or every changing. If, and only if it were to exist (which Connor, admittedly, had not thought much of until recently), love would last an eternity and then beyond that eternity, he thinks, because who could keep falling in love over and over and over again and still have the strength to go on beyond heartbreak each time? He decided early on, many years before upon seeing his mother with her worn out smile and bright attitude, but the tears that shined behind her eyes behind closed doors and the upsetting lingering look in her eyes each time Hermes was bought up in their household that he did not believe fateful love existed. How could Hermes have met somebody like his mother and come back to her twice, only to break her heart two consecutive times? Had one not been enough? It had not. No, Connor had decided long ago that no matter what Aphrodite or Hermes or anybody else said, love was not all lasting and forever mending.
"I suppose we are," Katie giggled when Travis kissed her cheek, and Connor could spot their hands tightly interwoven still like the web of a spider from Arachne's clan. Katie had warm brown hair that shined like something between the colour of wheat and the sun, and it seemed almost golden when the light reflected off it. She had invited him on her picnic with Travis, getting along much better with both brothers now that she was dating one. Connor didn't mind Katie much — she seemed nice enough, she grew her own plants, cared about the environment and she made her brother's eyes light up (if they could do such a thing) as though they were watching fireworks from the beach during the Fourth of July (something that had widely become a prime dating event at Camp Half Blood, much to Connor's chagrin and somehow created by the Aphrodite cabin, yet again).
