Walk With the Shadows [ Percy Jackson OC ]

FORTY | Ophelia

OPHELIA WALKED ALONE as she led them from the tantalizingly beautiful Fields of Asphodel. Instead of carpets of flowers made of sparkling jewels, her feet hit black gravel and shards of slate.

You must lead them, Ophelia. No one understands the Underworld like you.

She would. She would lead them all. They still had the Lyre of Orpheus. The quest could still be won. And if these gods, these ungrateful parents who played puppetmaster refused to help, so be it. So much the better.

You see it now.

Not looking back, Ophelia started back up the small hillock into the Fields of Asphodel. She could hear Alex just behind, careful footfalls quiet and precise. He always moved with purpose.

Does he have the strength to see it through, Ophelia?

Purpose bound them. It always had. Those days on the Princess Andromeda with Alex, training to defend herself with a blade, those days had meant everything. For years she'd lived alone scrounging in dumpsters, going from homeless shelter to homeless shelter. Twisting the Mist came early to her. It was easy to avoid the police.

People didn't like her. Ophelia wondered how much of that was due to the way the temperature would drop when she entered a room, or maybe the way the shadows darkened. Or perhaps mortals, even through the Mist, could sense the darkness in her.

Don't fear it. It is your birthright.

She had found the dark corner of the bottom deck of the Andromeda a week after they'd boarded. Alex liked the dark. He didn't fear it. He never had. For hours, when she wasn't busy weaving the Mist that kept the mortals on board in a peaceful trace, they would train or tell jokes or just sit in silence in the shadows.

Ophelia's arms ached from swinging the celestial bronze sword against Alex. His anger had practically radiated out from him at every swing. No wonder he'd liked the dark; it cooled him off. Sweat had plastered his blonde hair against his forehead, blood trickling from a tiny cut on his cheek from the small scratch she gave him. With one hand, he had grabbed his shirt and wiped the sweat from his brow.

The scar across his stomach had glowed in the light of their battery powered electric lanterns. It had caught her breath. She'd seen a lot of bad things in her life, but as she stared at this boy's abdomen, she had never seen a scar like that.

He'd caught her staring. Ophelia shivered. Those pale blue eyes had narrowed in suspicion. But when she didn't ask, he hadn't turned his anger on her. He turned it on his father. Days of cursing the name of Hermes under his breath had followed.

But does he have what it takes, Ophelia? Here and now?

Alex had bent a knee to Hades. When his scuffed and battered knee had hit black marble, she'd stopped breathing. When she'd forced him to process his mother's death on the terrace of the Kennedy Center she hadn't meant for it to turn him into a supplicant. She'd only meant for him to control the rage. He needed his rage to save the living. He couldn't bring back the dead.