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Ruby laughs and shakes Logan’s hand. “I like you both already.”
The guilt twists harder.
Logan and I sit on the couch, and Ruby curls up in the armchair across from us with her legs tucked underneath her. Connor disappears into the kitchen and comes back with mugs of coffee that he sets in front of us, and it smells a gazillion times better than the halfway caffeinated sludge they give first years at Blaze Academy.
Ruby leans forward, both hands wrapped around her mug. “Tell me everything,” she says, her eyes bright and curious. “When did Tempest choose you? What was it like? Did you know her before it happened—like I did with Luna—or was she a stranger, like what happened to Amber and Sapphire?”
“I did know her, actually.” I take a sip of coffee—it’s even more delicious than it smells—and set my mug on the side table. “She was my family’s pilot. We called her T, and she flew us everywhere for years. I had no idea she was a goddess.”
Ruby’s eyes widen. “Your pilot,” she repeats. “Your family has a pilot. Which means you have a plane?”
“Yeah.” I play with my bracelet, because I try not to make a big deal about the money thing. But in these situations, it’s hard to avoid. “None of that stuff matters anymore though. It’s hard to care about your family’s donor plaques when you’ve got lightning coming out of your hands and a goddess who chose you to save the world.”
“Right.” Ruby shakes her head, smiling. “As for me, Luna was my college roommate. She knew my pizza preferences before she told me she was the moon goddess, although she didn’t just tell me. The goddesses are way more dramatic than that.”
“Dramatic is right.” I roll my eyes. “During the flight to the academy, there was a lightning storm. Tempest came into the cabin, put her palm on my forehead, and told me to relax and trust the storm.” I pause, because there aren’t great words for what happened next. “Everything hit at once. Starfire. Storm winds. Power burning through my veins. I passed out and woke up to Tempest driving me in a beat-up car in the middle of nowhere.”
From there, I tell her everything. The Hydra trial. Blaze Academy. The training sessions with Logan in the Scorched Circles. Watching Thaddeus kill Oliver on the Crown. Saving everyone at the school from the hellhounds. Escaping on the ship, the Lost Islands, and finally, ending up here.
I leave out the time travel, the Geryon, and the whole my boyfriend is a Revenant thing. That’s not going to be shared, no matter what.
Ruby’s quiet after I finish, her eyes bright, her fingers wrapped around her mug. Then she unfolds from the armchair and says, “You need to eat.”
“I’m fi—“
“You sailed across a sea that wanted to kill you on a stolen ship and fought monsters to get here,” she says, already heading toward the kitchen. “There’s leftover pizza in the fridge. Papa John’s meat lovers—my favorite. I’ll heat some up for you.”
I glance at Logan. He glances at me.
“Don’t,” he says.
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You were going to say something about New York pizza.”
“I was going to say thank you.” I pause. “And then maybe something about New York pizza.”
Logan smiles—just barely—and warmth spreads through my chest, because I made him almost-smile in a stranger’s kitchen after one of the worst days of our lives. I’ll take it.
Ruby disappears into the kitchen for almost ten minutes, leaving me, Logan, and Connor to have a very stilted conversation about Blaze Academy. Typical chit-chat, trying to avoid addressing anything important without Ruby here to listen.
Finally, she comes back carrying a pizza box and a stack of paper plates. Connor takes the box from her and sets it on the coffee table, and the easy way they move around each other makes my chest ache in a way I don’t want to examine right now.
“Ruby orders Papa John’s at least twice a week,” Connor says, and there’s a fondness in his voice that softens the whole sentence. “When we met, she was a vegetarian.”
“Seriously?” I look at wolf shifter Ruby, who just handed me a box of meat lovers pizza and stared at it like it was the gods’ gift to Earth.
“I hadn’t shifted yet, so my wolf instincts hadn’t fully set in.” She drops back into her armchair and pulls her knees up. “I was a college student who thought the food chain was a moral issue. Then I shifted into a literal predator, and my wolf had some very strong opinions about protein.”
“She held out for weeks,” Connor says. “Wouldn’t touch it. I had to make her a sloppy joe and practically order her to eat it.”
“You did order me to eat it. You dropped it on my plate and said eat like you were commanding a dog.”
“A wolf.”
“Same energy.” She grabs a slice from the box and takes a bite, completely unapologetic. “It was the most delicious thing I’d ever eaten in my life, so I guess he won that one.”
I reach for a slice and take a tentative bite. Turning down food when you haven’t eaten since yesterday would be stupid, and Ruby’s watching me with those turquoise eyes like she genuinely cares whether I like her favorite brand of pizza.
