Daughter Of The Moon

Chapter 16

Artemis

There is only one thing worse than flat-out guilt.

Feeling guilty about not feeling guilty.

How does that work, exactly?

Well, as a random example: say you break the one promise you were supposed to keep, you break it, and then you feel... happy. Even though it jeopardises your life and those of the ones you love, happiness sticks to you like a disease, and you can do nothing but watch your life crumble and... smile.

I am smiling.

My life may not quite be just like that example, but it is definitely on the way there. After all, I kissed Jake.

If he had kissed me, I guess that wouldn't have been so bad. Countless men have tried to kiss me over the years, and they can hardly be blamed. I am a goddess, after all. But I kissed him, and it's now on my head.

But no, it isn't.

I can't be punished. But Jake can. That was the plan all along, wasn't it, right? One of Aphrodite's games probably: get Artemis to break her vow, admit she loves a man, and then rip him from her in the most brutal way. 

I haven't spoken to Jake since the kiss, which was four weeks ago. After I pulled away, I had done the most cowardly thing I've ever done: I gasped and ran away, out of the observatory and down the streets of Manhattan, which were veiled with a carpet of snow. I've been foolishly avoiding him since, as if my troubles can only touch me when I am with him. Maybe I think I'm protecting him... I can't really tell. My thoughts are too jumbled. But protecting him would mean leaving him alone entirely, and I haven't done that. Every night, I've come and watched him, just like before he noticed me that night all that time ago.

I twist my fingers around my crescent moon pendant and look down at Jake. He's asleep in an armchair, his hair endearingly ruffled, and his face calm and peaceful. I am sitting on the arm of the chair, gazing down at him while fighting my own thoughts. Everybody looks young when they're asleep, but Jake just seems so young in comparison to me.

I suppose it would be strange if my mind had aged: I may have thousands of years of wisdom, but I still think much in the way of the twenty-year-old I have tailored my body to look like. But still, Jake may be only twenty-two, but in comparison to my life, it is but the blink of an eye. I could go on a hunting trip, a short holiday... and when I came back, Jake could be seventy years old and surrounded by his grandchildren.

That is how time passes for me.

So why does it feel like it's so slow now?

I want to ask Jake: he has always been so wise, so kind, so logical. He could give me the answer, and then I would curl up with him on that armchair, finally at peace.

I could... it would be easy. In fact, I could probably get away with this strange little relationship, but Jake wouldn't. Zeus would smite him down or pluck out his eyes or cripple him, and I would simply have to stand and watch, because I cannot die and my injuries heal at the blink of an eye.

"Artemis?"

I was too deep in thought to acknowledge Jake waking up, and now when I look at him, his face is composed instead of relaxed, his startlingly-blue eyes staring into my own with a piercing intensity as they always do.

In the blink of an eye, I have jumped off the chair and dashed to the window, halfway through it- half of me feeling the bite of the December cold, and the other feeling the warmth of the observatory. I am about to climb through and disappear into the night like I always do when Jake starts to wake, but this time, something stops me.