Branded - Pjo Fanfiction (FRAZEL!!)

5- Forbidden

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Hazel had a huge room for herself, with a king sized bed and a wadrobe that could fit the entire kingdom's outfits. She quickly took off her golden attire and settled for a simple white dress. She wore espardilles on her feet and braided her hair with a white ribbon before leaving the room.

Nico was already there, still in the same suit, waiting for her, as were Percy and Jason.

"How do you think the Titans are?" She asked, scolding with a look.

"Ugly?" Percy guessed "Ugh, I dunno, but I really don't want to marry them"

"Have you seen that servants are actual living people?" Nico gossiped, eyeing one of them.

"We shouldn't talk about that out loud" Hazel shushed him "Meeting at my room, at midnight, we'll talk this out"

With that settled, they headed for the dinning room in order to have dinner. They took their seats together and discovered that waiters and cooks were also humans.

"This is so weird" Jason said, while someone served him some water "Thanks, miss!"

The girl eyed him weirdly before scurrying off, back to her job.

"Really weird" Hazel nodded.

They ate the stew they were served, as hungry as they were, without barely breathing. The teenager Titand at the other side of the table kept eyeing them

"Do you think those are the ones?" Nico whispered.

"I'd bet my sword" Percy agreed "Just look at the way they stare!"

They were, in fact, staring at them with hunger, with desire, as if they were the dessert for that meal.

"I'm going to have to excuse myself" Hazel stood up, partly because Titans staring at her like that made her sick on the stomach and partly because her hunger had dissipated.

She held her dress as she walked, and she whispered something to Nico.

"The meeting will have to wait" Because she felt too sick to have a meeting.

She hurried through the empty, huge halls with high ceelings and imponent columns, trying to find the way back to her room.  That castle made her feel claustrophobic, because, back at Olympland, they didn't have any ceelings. The weather could be controlled, and they could be free.

They only had ceelings in their bedrooms, as to keep the cold outside. But there, she felt trapped inside a shoebox, unable to escape, with nowhere to hide. She glupped the thought back and finally found the way to her room.

She let herself fall in the bed, desperate, and placed the pillow in her face to muffle her screams. Oh, why? Why did she have to go to that cursed place? She didn't love the Titans, why did she have to marry?

She remembered the way they stared at her, yellowish-teeth smiles at her, with their messy hair and sharp nails, only wanting one thing from her...

...power.

She got up from her bed when her throat was sore from screaming, and reached for a tiny window in her bedroom, her last hope.

She opened it and took a deep breath.

The night sky was darker there. She couldn't see gallaxies or nubuloses, but she could see some tiny stars. And, in the middle of all of it, was Mars. It had comed all the way from Olympland, following her, and it was still there.

She smiled widely.

"Oh, Mars, thanks for helping me today" She thanked, kneeling in the floor "I am still broken, buy that is because of who I am, and the cursed destiny that fell upon me the second I was born. However, I'll always be thankfull for what you did, and ask you if there's anything I could do to say thank you to you, oh great tiny spot that lights up my long nights"

Mars didn't do anything, of course, as it's just a planet, but Hazel still nodden thankfully. She sat in her bed and loosed at a tiny clock in her wall. It was already three in the morning. She sighed.

Suddenly, she heard noise coming from downstairs. In a moment of doubt, she turned to the window, and she caught a glimpse of Mars twinkling. And that was all she needed to get up from the floor, still barefoot and in her white dress, and start running.

Through the halls, which were mysterious and scary in the dark, and through high corridors she ran, until she reached the main hall, and had to hold a gasp.

Two guards, both Titans, were carrying a human to a room with a big lock.

"No, please, it wasn't me, no!" The human tried to plead, with no answer.

"You should have thought that before you did that, weirdo" The guard replied.

"I can't control it!" The human cried.

That earned him a few slaps. Hazel reconized the human as the one who was carried their luggage before. She was ready to lurch foreward when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"I wouldn't do that, if I were you"

She turned and saw a Titaness in a long, pink dress, with jewellery everywhere.

"And why is that so?" Hazel asked, her fists clenched.

"Because... Well... He's a weirdo" She explained, her voice mellow and sweet "He can do magic, and that is forbidden"

"He's a 'weirdo' just because he has magic?" Hazel was ready to make a golden dagger appear "And what's the problem? Where are they taking him?"

"They will brand him" The Titaness laughed with glee "To stop his magical abilities and kill him overtime because, well, we can't have that awful curse breeding, can we?"

Hazel gasped, taking a few steps back, rethreating.

"I would go back if I were you as well" The Titaness added, smiling with vile evilness "Who knows what the King would do if he discovers you here, all alone. You have magic too, don't you? I'd watch my back, just in case..."

Hazel stared, horrified, and ran back to her room, her barefoot feet barely making a sound in the wooden floor. She ran until she was safe inside, and then locked the door.

What had just happened? She wasn't sure. All she knew was that she was scared, her heart pounding, she could feel it in her head.

Branding. That Titaness had said branding. Had she meant... Actually burning something into the skin?

She held her head and hugged her knees, unsure of what to do, in the cold lonely night, in a place where magic was forbidden.