Immortals | ✓

21 | aethera

day one of Hades' deadline

━━ αθάνατοι ━━

TWENTY-FOUR hours have passed since I last heard his voice. Twenty-three since my last training session with my mother ended. Twenty-two since I have been able to eat a single bite of any kind of food. Twenty-one hours since Melinoe, my mother, asked me to take a walk outside with her numerous guards to calm my nerves and nineteen hours since I shut myself in my room, awaiting another call. 

Six hours back Jace called my mother again, he told her he was waiting with Art at a cabin nearby, checking if anyone had followed them. Five hours ago, I felt my mother dive into a prayer. At least that's what it felt at first. Later, I was told she was building the strength to repair the force field that was wrapped around us, which kept us away from Hades and the presence of his army. She would soon have to tear it ever so slightly to let Art in and swiftly close it, that itself required a lot on her part. Even a millisecond wasted meant a demon could sense us and report to Hades, or he himself would know.  

I have spent the last hour of my waiting with Roy. The small porch that lifts us away form the knee length snow is an uneasy place to sit at this time of the day but we would be able to see them the moment the appear from the dead forest from here first. 

"Ever since I heard the news of his birth, I have wanted to meet him," Roy whispered, his eyes diverting from the forest for the first time since we sat here. 

His eyes are a misfit. On the face of it, he is a man of almost fifty years with an old charm in the way he keeps his dark hair. His skin, his hands, his posture, nothing speaks of his age, but those eyes. They are ages old. Maybe it is the grey in them or the fact that they know beyond what his skin does. 

He reminds me of Clarissa. Young, yet old. At least Rubyn was stuck at an appropriate age but nothing about Roy says a century until one meets his eyes. 

"Did you ever give up?" I asked him after a moment of silence fell between us. 

"Never," he shook his head. "But I did come quite close to leaving it all behind and meeting him, especially whenever he was in the US."

"You were always nearby, weren't you?"

"Always at a comfortable distance when Reginald wasn't around to protect him," Roy chuckled. "I could never gather the strength to meet him...I am not an immortal with deep knowledge of technology, you see," he smiled and somehow even his smile spoke more of his age. "I was scared...to be caught in a camera near him...to face him because if I did, I thought he would remember my face."

"Roy, what if he had never changed; would you have still remained in the shadows?" I whispered, even though I knew his answer.

"You know that is what I would have done out of necessity, darling," he looked away to the forest again, waiting for the sight of his great grandson that was almost taken away from him. "That is the impairment of this life. His father wants to be an immortal like me...but he knows nothing of it."

"You could have told him, couldn't you?"

"I tried, oh, believe me, child, I did," Roy chuckled. "But from the moment he was born, I knew Reginald. He was barely a few years old when I left him, his father and my family behind but something about him since that age had always been...peculiar. He's my grandson and Art's father and my blood will always want me to love him, but I know that's not in his blood. He will kill me and his own son if that means that Gods like Hades will help him achieve immortality."