Chapter 5 - Zeno

The first strange thing happened with a bucket.

 

Which was unfair, really.

 

If power was going to finally crawl out of whatever dark corner of my blood it had been hiding in, it could have chosen something grander. Lightning split a tree. Wind bent an olive grove. Fire blooming in my palm. Something Damon would have stared at. Something Theron could not laugh away. Something Lykos could not pretend he had heard coming.

 

But no.

 

A bucket.

 

I had brought water for Mitha, balancing the old wooden pail against my hip as I slipped through the weeds toward the shelter. The morning was too still. That should have warned me. No birds shrieking from the scrub. No goats complaining from the hill. Even the sea sounded far away, as if it had pulled back to listen.

 

Mitha noticed before I did.

 

She was perched in the rafters, one clawed foot curled around the beam, her healing wing tucked carefully against her side. Her feathers had begun to look less like blood and dirt and more like themselves again—brown, gold, dark at the edges. Beautiful, though I did not say it every time anymore because she glared like she might drop from the rafters and peck my eyes out.

 

Her head turned sharply toward the field. I stopped. “What?” I asked, my voice low.

 

She lifted one hand, claws flexing. “Quiet.”

 

My stomach tightened as I listened. At first, nothing. Then a distant clink of metal.

 

My fingers tightened around the bucket handle, and the water inside trembled. I looked down. Tiny ripples moved across the surface, though I was standing still. They spread outward in perfect rings, one after another, as if something had touched the center from beneath.

 

My breath caught as the ripples grew sharper.

 

“Mitha?” I whispered, my voice barely audible.

 

Her eyes flicked from the field to the bucket, then to my face, wide with fear. Another sound came from beyond the olive trees—men’s voices. Not my brothers. Not Father. Soldiers. The anxiety settled heavily in my stomach as I strained to listen, trying to gauge their intent.

 

The bucket of water shivered harder, slapping softly against the wood. I stared at it, cold crawling up my arms despite the sun. I was not moving. The wind was not touching it. Nothing was touching it.

 

Except fear.

 

Mine.

 

Mitha dropped soundlessly from the rafter, landing in the straw behind me. Her claws scraped once against the dirt, and the bucket jerked in my hands so violently that water spilled over the rim and splashed my feet.

 

I stumbled back. “What is that?” I breathed, my heart racing with a mix of fear and curiosity.

 

Mitha did not answer, her gaze fixed on the strange sight before us. Outside, one of the goats screamed, its panic ringing through the air. The water in the bucket surged upward, as if it wanted to climb out and run, mirroring the turmoil inside me.

 

The goat screamed again, then another, and my whole body went cold.

 

Mitha moved before I did, slipping to the side of the broken opening and peering through a narrow crack between the boards. Her feathers lifted along her shoulders—not fully flared, not loud enough to rustle, but enough that I knew.

 

Danger.

 

I set the bucket down too quickly, water sloshing over the side and soaking the dirt, but I barely noticed. I crawled toward the wall opposite her and pressed my eye to a gap.

 

The farmyard stretched beyond the lower field, bright and ordinary and wrong. Father stood near the gate again, Damon beside him, Theron too—because of course Theron would never miss a chance to stand near soldiers and pretend he belonged among them. Lykos hovered farther back, restless, head tilted like he was listening to things no one else could hear.

 

Three Ares soldiers had returned.

 

Not four this time.

 

Somehow, that made it worse.

 

Three meant they had not come to search broadly. Three meant they had come back. After all, they believed something because they had not forgotten. After all, somewhere in their hard little soldier minds, Mitha was still unfinished business.

 

The lead soldier pointed toward the lower fields, and my heart kicked against my ribs.

 

“We found blood near the eastern ridge,” he said, his voice carrying in the still air. “Too much for the thing to have gone far. Someone’s been hiding it, or it crawled into a hole nearby.”

 

Thing.

 

My hands curled into fists.

 

Father crossed his arms. “My men checked the sheds after you left,” he said evenly.

 

“Your men don’t know what they’re looking for,” the soldier replied flatly.

 

Theron stepped forward, eager as a dog hoping someone would throw a bone. “I can help search,” he offered quickly.

 

“No,” Father said sharply.

 

The soldier ignored them both. “Old shelters. Storage pits. Brush piles. Any place a filthy little winged rat could squeeze into,” he said with quiet contempt.

 

Beside me, Mitha made no sound, but I felt her fear anyway. It filled the shelter like smoke.

 

My family thought this had nothing to do with us. That was the worst part. To them, this was an inconvenience—soldiers, questions, another interruption in a day full of work. Father would protect the farm. Mother would keep us away. Damon would stand properly. Theron would puff himself up. Lykos would listen.

 

And Mitha would die unless I did something.

 

I looked at her, and she looked back, eyes too wide, claws dug into old wood. The bucket beside me trembled again, and water crawled over the rim in a thin silver thread and ran toward my knee.

 

I jerked away from the water like it had bitten me. Mitha’s eyes followed the thin silver thread as it slid over the dirt, curved around a stone, and stopped at my sandal.

 

“Zeno,” she whispered, her voice tight with something between fear and awe.

 

I hated how small my name sounded in her mouth just then—not careful, not curious, just scared. That broke whatever had been frozen inside me.

 

“We have to move,” I said, forcing steadiness into my voice.

 

Her eyes snapped to mine. “Now,” I added.

 

For once, she did not hiss or bare her teeth or dig her claws into the floorboards like the shelter itself could save her. She only looked toward the farmyard, toward the soldiers spreading out near the lower field, then back at me.

 

I grabbed the blanket, the little jar of salve, and the strip of leather she had finally trusted enough to use. “There’s another place,” I whispered quickly. “Closer to the shore. Behind the old stone trough. No one goes there because the ground drops too steep.”

 

“Water?” she asked, wary.

 

“Yes.” I swallowed. “Sea.”

 

Her feathers lifted, but she nodded once. That single nod felt heavier than any bucket I had ever carried.

 

I pulled the net aside, and Mitha slipped out after me, crouched low, one wing tucked tight and the other held carefully. She moved better than before, but not fast enough—not if the soldiers saw us. So I walked first, not because I was brave, but because if anyone looked, maybe they would see me before they saw her.

 

We kept to the weeds along the irrigation channel, where the barley grew tall enough to hide us. Behind us, voices rose.

 

“Check that old shelter!” one soldier shouted sharply.

 

Mitha stumbled. I caught her wrist without thinking, and she went rigid. I let go at once, hands up, heart hammering. “Sorry,” I said quickly.

 

She stared at me for one breath, then grabbed my wrist herself. “Go,” she hissed.

 

So we ran.

 

The ground sloped toward the forgotten edge of the farm, where broken stone walls gave way to scrub, salt grass, and the old trough Father said had cracked before Damon was born. Water still gathered there after rain, greenish and useless for animals, fed by a narrow trickle from the irrigation channel.

 

As we reached it, a soldier shouted behind us. “There!”

 

Mitha froze. My fear hit so hard I could not breathe.

 

The trough exploded.

 

Water shot upward in a glittering sheet, far higher than any cracked old trough had a right to throw. It burst toward the soldiers in a sudden spray, soaking dust, stones, and dry grass. The nearest horse reared with a scream. One soldier cursed, and another slipped hard enough that his armor clanged like a dropped pan.

 

I stood there, arm still half-raised in front of Mitha. The water hung for one impossible heartbeat, shimmering in the air like the sea had opened an eye. Then it crashed and mud splattered everywhere.

 

The soldiers shouted over each other, suddenly looking at the trough, the horse, the ground—anywhere but us.

 

Mitha’s claws tightened around my wrist. I could not move. I could not think. Only the sea below kept breathing, louder now, closer somehow.

 

“Zeno,” Mitha said sharply.

 

I blinked. She pulled me behind the broken stone wall, into the narrow, hidden dip where salt grass swallowed us from view. I dropped beside her, shaking so hard my teeth clicked.

 

“What did I do?” I whispered.

 

Mitha looked toward the drenched trough, then at me. “Saved me,” she said quietly.

 

Saved her. The words should have made me feel strong, but they did not; instead, they made me want to crawl out of my own skin.

 

I stared at my hands, waiting for them to glow, shake, crack open, do something that would explain what had just happened. They looked the same—mud beneath the nails, scratches from weeds, one old pale line from Mitha’s claws near my wrist. Nothing special.

 

Except the water had risen for me.

 

No. Not for me. Because of me.

 

Beyond the broken wall, the soldiers cursed and argued. One shouted about loose stones near the trough, another blamed the horse, and a third swore the ground had shifted. None of them said power. None of them said Poseidon. None of them understood enough to be afraid.

 

I did, though I did not know how.

 

The sea below the cliff breathed against the rocks, and every pull of it seemed to tug somewhere deep behind my ribs. The irrigation trickle whispered through the grass, drops slid from the cracked trough, and mud sucked at the soldiers’ boots. Every bit of water nearby felt awake now, listening with cold, bright attention.

 

Waiting for me.

 

“Mitha,” I whispered.

 

She looked at me, and the fear in her face had changed again—not fear of me, never quite that, but fear for what I had become.

 

A shout rose from the farmyard.

 

“Zeno!” Father called, his voice sharp with urgency.

 

My stomach dropped.

 

From higher up the slope, Lykos stood near the barley, staring toward the trough with his head tilted and his face gone strangely still. He had seen something—maybe not all of it, maybe only the water hanging too high, maybe only me standing there with my arm raised like I had called it. But Lykos heard everything. Maybe he saw everything, too.

 

“Zeno!” Father shouted again, closer this time.

 

Mitha’s claws dug into my wrist.

 

“Go,” she whispered urgently.

 

“I can’t leave you,” I said, my voice tight.

 

“You can,” she insisted, her eyes flicking toward the slope and then back to me. “You must.”

 

The words hit wrong, too much like goodbye, too much like prophecy, though neither of us knew what those tasted like yet.

 

I shook my head hard. “No.”

 

Mitha grabbed my face between her clawed hands, careful enough not to cut me, fierce enough that I stopped breathing.

 

“Zeno,” she said, low and sharp, “power means they come.”

 

I stared at her.

 

She understood before I did. Of course she did. Mitha understood hunters. She understood what happened when dangerous things were named. She understood how quickly the world reached for cages, spears, chains, titles—anything that could turn a living thing into something owned.

 

Power meant my family would finally look at me. Power meant House eyes. Power meant men and women in fine clothes deciding what I was worth. Power meant Olympus would come—for me, for the boy no one had thought mattered.

 

And if they found Mitha beside me, they would come for her too.

 

Father’s footsteps crashed through the weeds.

 

Mitha released my face and vanished deeper into the salt grass, silent as a shadow with wings.

 

I rose on trembling legs just as Father broke through the barley, Damon behind him, Lykos farther back with that terrible knowing look still fixed on me.

 

“What happened?” Father demanded, his tone sharp and suspicious.

 

I opened my mouth.

 

Below us, the sea struck the rocks hard enough to send white spray leaping into the air. Every man on that slope turned toward it—every man except Lykos.

 

He kept looking at me.

 

And for the first time in my life, I wished I could go back to being nothing.