From Darkness (Hearts & Arrows Book 3)(92)

Perry giggled. “Followed closely by, Timing is everything, and, Beware of rest stops after midnight.”

“Exactly. And then we can all move on.”

Perry and Dionysus sipped their drinks, and the statement hung in the air between them all, unanswered.





Josie looked out the window with music in her ears and the midnight forest flying by outside, holding herself tight with her arms around her waist and her feet on the dash, trying to sort through everything she felt and making no headway.

When they’d left the motel, she’d popped in her earbuds so they could both have some semblance of privacy for a while. Jon fumed from behind the wheel with his head propped on his hand, fingers tangled in his long hair. He hadn’t made eye contact with her once. His anger rolled off him and filled every molecule in the air.

But she just didn’t know what to say to make it right. She didn’t even know what right was.

The moon strobed between the trees as her thoughts jumbled together like a pileup, all metal and sharp points and busted glass. It was too much, too many things to deal with at once.

“You’re far more dangerous than I ever was.”

It was true. For so long, she’d been alone, fanning her anger and pain, blaming him for everything. For abandoning her, for loving someone else, for not saying goodbye. But it was all a lie. Everything she felt had been based on her perception, which was sideways and skewed. He’d tried to tell her, tried to make her understand, but she was too bullheaded to hear him.

Jon had done what he believed was right at every step, and she’d only punished him for it.

She felt like she was waking up from a coma, learning how to breathe again, dragging her heart behind her like atrophied limbs. And she couldn’t give him any part of herself until she found a way to heal.



Jon stared at the road with his forehead tight and his heart in a pressure cooker.

After everything they’d been through, after all he’d tried to do, and she couldn’t even have a conversation with him about herself, about them. He wasn’t asking for the world, just for her honesty. But he wanted everything she wouldn’t give, and she wanted the one thing he wouldn’t.

He’d give her anything, everything, but he refused to be used.

She was twisted up and mangled, but he couldn’t help her, no matter how hard he tried. No one could; she threw every attempt on the fire.

Josie had said she didn’t know if she wanted anything from him, but he wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. Maybe his feelings were one-sided. Maybe her feelings were only physical, only attraction, and she’d never really cared for him at all. His stomach burned at the thought. He could have read her wrong the whole time. How could he win her heart back if he’d never had it to begin with?

But he knew better. He hadn’t imagined it all. She had been through so much, and he knew it, understood it. He just couldn’t be a casualty anymore, wouldn’t put his heart on the line again for her if she wasn’t even willing to try.





It was late, though Artemis wasn’t sure of the time as she lay in her tent on her feather bed, running her hand through the sheepskin underneath her. For hours, she had been chasing sleep, staring at the roof of her tent, watching the shadows cast by a flickering candle as it burned down.

She should have been happy that Jon and Josie had fought, that they were once again at odds. But, as Artemis had watched their hearts break, she found no joy. The game suddenly seemed cruel, and she wanted no part of it. Josie was too hurt, too confused to toy with, to keep away from a man who would do anything, be anything for her. A man whom she loved, a man who could heal her. If Jon walked away again, she would never recover. That much, Artemis knew.

It was a life that had become her own.

She slipped out from under her blankets and stood, feeling her rug under her bare feet and then the grass as she pushed her tent flap open and walked into the night. Her shift was long, nearly dragging the ground, illuminated by the moonlight and glowing against the black of the evening around her, as black as her hair that tumbled down her back.

The moon called to her. She made her way through the sleeping camp with her eyes on the stars, scaling the slate boulder to stretch out on the cool stone.

Solitude was not only something she was accustomed to, but something she sought. When she was alone, there were no expectations. Her failures could be forgotten or remembered. She could be whatever she wished, even nothing at all, a slave to her instinct as she hunted or as still as a river stone, watching as life rushed past.

Perhaps Eleni was right. Perhaps she and Josie were too much the same. For once, Artemis’s logic and instinct failed her, and she reached the point where she wanted Josie to find peace more than she wanted to win. Josie’s pain had become her own, a mirror of her own loss, her own loneliness.

Orion twinkled on the horizon, and her eyes followed the line of stars that made his form.

“I have missed you more than can be imagined,” she said to the sky. “I do not know where I lost myself, but along the way, I have changed, and I wonder whether you would be proud or disappointed.”

A lone tear fell from the corner of her eye and into her ear. She could never have him back, but she didn’t know how to let him go. Time had healed her, but the break had never been set, and what was left had healed crooked, bent and twisted from neglect.