Rowan → Ethan Nakamura ✔

Enough

It was hot. Her breath hung in sweltering air before falling limply to the ground, observed by the beady eyes of birds perched on overhead branches. Her feet trekked forward, one after the other in automated movement on a sandy path, dead earth beneath her shoes beaten into submission from years of use.

Where had she come from? A brief flash of red banners and ancient words in traditional black calligraphy, braving weather hot enough to crack skin as well as paper as they hung on the outside of grey, stone huts. That was all she knew - when she turned to look back, the path stretching behind her looked identical to the one before her.

Light barely penetrated the thick canopy of leaves above, a forgotten edge of the universe, not even wilfully ignored by the sun. She could try to leave, perhaps step off the path and into the forest, walking for centuries through thick trunks of trees that were older than time.

With a start, she realized she had tried that before, only to eventually come to the same yellow path. The same dark, doomed column at its end.

Indignant humiliation rose to the back of her throat, bitter and biting, although she did not exactly know why at first. She saw the hole in her mind's eye, but when her fingertips scraped cool stone, she was staring at the bottom of a well.

Bottom was not right, for there was no bottom.

A cool, inviting darkness devouring all that fell into the well stared back at her. A refuge from the oppressive heat that boiled her blood. Any longer and she was sure it would spurt out of her ears like a kettle, the pressure too much for vessels to bear. The solution was in front of her; she could hear the cold water lapping at the sides of icy limestone, could imagine its soothing touch travel down the inside of her throat and across her skin.

Her stomach jolted. Wind, where there had not been before, had arrived, a swooping gale turned to a howling tempest. Her hair whipped round her face, obscuring her vision. The birds were gone. The heat was gone. She understood that she did not want to go into the well.

It was too late. Someone had pushed her.

They had all pushed her.

As blurry shapes of moonlit blue came into focus, Rowan came to two realizations, one of which was that three pairs of eyes were staring at her.

"Ro?" Another face appeared. Ethan's. Rowan looked down. He was holding a blanket. "What happened?"

She blinked. "You tell me." Her throat felt dry, as if sandpaper had been run along the back of her mouth.

Billie raised a finger to her lips and gestured upwards. Rachel was sound asleep on the upper bunk, unaware of the small party that had gathered below her by Rowan's bed closer to the ground. Meanwhile, Billie's sleeping bag - one of many that the Mas kept for Hunter stakeouts in the wild - lay half-opened, occupying most of the room's remaining space.

"You were rolling around so much that it woke me up," Billie whispered. "Your eyes went green."

"Not just your eyes," Nico said quietly. "Your whole body. You glowed green, stronger than what Will looks like now."

In the dark of Rowan and Rachel's room, Will's gift as a son of Apollo was as clear as it had been inside the dragon's mouth - a faint yellow light emitting from his skin. Will smiled half-heartedly. "Not as impressive as what you did."

"How long was I like that?"

"A few minutes after I woke up. I don't know how long before though." Bille frowned. "Are you okay?"

Rowan hesitated. Ethan knew why; he could tell from the furrow in her brow and the curve in her lip - she had worn the same expression when Robbie asked her why she had beat up a few of her classmates after hearing them make fun of Robbie's glasses a month or two before he had left. She hadn't been suspended, but Old Man Ma had shouted at her loud enough for the whole family to hear once Rowan was trying to figure out whether to tell them or keep them in the dark, torn between enlightening or protecting them.