Gaea was stopped a decade ago, the monsters now reside in Tartarus, and the surviving heroes of Olympus have begun new generations of demigods. Fifteen year old Yvette Grimes doesn't know anything about this, but she does know something is different...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Grey. My least favorite color.
When I was seven, a grey storm cloud drowned my garden. All the vegetables I'd been growing for a school project had been washed away into the yard. It took me days to bring them back to life, and in the end I only got a B on the assignment. Grey was associated with the bad things from then on.
More examples? The uniforms I had to wear till kindergarten to fifth grade were the awful, dull color of grey. The shirt was too snug and the skirt fell to my calves. That school almost made me have to dye my hair, because they didn't like anything "unnatural". Luckily, we'd moved by then, but I'd never wear anything remotely like that uniform again.
The color of the hair of Mrs. Carson, our elderly neighbor who lived across the street from us, was grey. The kind of grey that was going on blue, all big and poofy. Mrs. Carson was horribly racist, and since my mother Katrina was from Colombia, the Grimes family had racial insults thrown at them from Mrs. Carson. Her husband was alright, but he didn't do much since he was hooked onto a breathing machine most of the time.
Grey was the epitome of an extremely bad time.
But there had been no other menacing grey than Finn's eyes. They were the color of that grey storm cloud; the color of that school uniform; the color of Mrs. Carson's hair. They were the color of the tools the dentist is going to put in your mouth; the color of your favorite black t-shirt after it fades; the color before the storm.
Finn was bored, you could tell because his words were soaked in it. "You know, your friends put up more of a fight that I gave them credit for. Of course, Cash fought the hardest. Hm... just to protect you."
I swallowed, looking at the... storm spirit. He was still in his Roman mismatched armor, a purple Camp Jupiter shirt underneath. It had slashes from swords on it, possibly Cash's? He didn't look anything but human, if you didn't know any better. Finn rested his chin on his left hand, while the other was busy playing with a rolled up paper. My eyes travelled to the red insignia on the scroll. As I realized what it was, my eyes widened in surprise.
"Ah, the scroll gifted to you by Hades." Finn managed to see what caught my eye. "It's dangerous to just leave things in your backpack, unintended. But, I see you are exhausted. Come, sit." He motioned to the end of the twin bed, a part that wasn't singed by fire.
"I can stand."
"So she can speak. Fine. I suppose you have some questions."
I crossed my arms over my chest, trying not to let my eyes land on Cash's unresponsive body. "If you let me have information, you'd kill me. There is no other reason why."
"You are smart. Smart indeed. But, sadly, you won't die today. In fact, m'lord won't let you die. Not yet." Finn's thin lips turned into a snarl. With his shaggy brown hair over his eyes, he didn't look human. Because he wasn't.
