My Boyfriend is a Dead Roman Hero | Jason Grace

I Bust a Ghost (It's My Mom)

Juliette was six years old when she realized she was adopted.

She knows - that's kind of late considering she was raised by a literal different species, but kids just don't think about those things until they're pointed out. In the back of her mind, Julie always understood she was different from the other saplings in Purple Aster's care (after all, she was the only one who wouldn't actually die if she forgot to care for the magical tree she slept in), but it never really clicked just how much.

Unsurprisingly, the realization was not a pleasant one. Like most major events in Juliette's life, it involved harsh words, physical violence, and blood.

A lot of it.

Meet the characters for this little tale:

There was Azalea - Julie would never admit it to his face, but he's always been her favorite grovemate. Like 80% of her personality is just a conglomeration of character traits that she's stolen from him. He took a pretty active role in Juliette's childhood since he sprouted only about 5 years before she was born. By "active role," Julie mostly means noogies and stealing her desserts, but someone had to humble her, she supposes.

Rhododendron took root right beside Azalea. The two of them grew up basically as twins, but their personalities couldn't have been more different. Where Azalea was loud and brash, Rho was kind and softspoken. Honestly, Julie's always found her kinda weird to talk to. She never did anything wrong. She's very sweet. Quiet people just scare her. It's too easy to forget that they're always there...listening.

Then, finally, the star of the show, Sugar Maple.

Ironically, Sugar Maple is, to this day, the least sugary sweet person Juliette has ever met (aside from maybe Clarisse). Pardon her French, but Julie can really only describe her as a Woozy Tooty Boogerface McFartknocker.

And you can quote her on that, because Julie's still got the scar across her calf from the bogus broken leg Maple caused her.

For all of this introduction, there's really not much to the story. Rho, Azalea, and Sugar Maple were doing what dumb young saplings do: cliff diving into a spring from the top of a waterfall knowing that their magical home bases make them pretty much impervious to physical harm. Add in one fragile demigod and a boat load of hazing and cruel words from Maple, and you get six year old Juliette crying in a puddle of smoking purple blood on the rocks down below.

Purple Aster had been furious. Julie had never seen the dryad so riled up before. She'd spent the entire evening lecturing the three older saplings before sending them off to think about what they'd done while sorting out the different animal droppings for fertilizer. Then, the woman had sat Juliette down (Well, technically, she was already sitting. Broken leg, and all), and explained to her that she is not a dryad like the others.

She's a demigod, a cursed one at that, and spilling her blood is very easy and very dangerous to do.

Finding out Aster wasn't her mother was different than heading to the courthouse with Sally Jackson. Everything changed for her in the grove after that. The other saplings looked at her like she was an outsider. The grown dryads treated her like her skin was glass. Nothing was the same.

Or maybe it was, and Juliette just noticed it more once she understood that she didn't belong.

So, going with Luke wasn't a very difficult thing to convince her of. For the first time, Juliette was going to be with one of her own kind. Chris and Luke looked at her with respect, like she was powerful and important. It made her feel powerful and important. She had wanted to prove to them that she was. To make them proud.