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Dare laughed tiredly. “Right, this is kind of our first date, huh? Shit, look at me, immediately taking off my clothes. Way to be a gentleman, Dare.”
I turned my face into his chest, smiling against his skin, letting the sense of warmth and rightness of having Dare here wash over me. This wasn’t like the rush or uncertainty of meeting Riot, or the confusion and longing of meeting Bullet, or the frustration that had accompanied meeting Wild. The circumstances were terrible and the guilt was crushing, but being in Dare’s presence felt like coming home.
“Would you rather sleep some more? Wild is going to bring up some breakfast soon.”
“I’ll try to stay awake,” Dare replied around a yawn. “I don’twantto sleep—I want to spend time with you. I’ve been wondering what it would be like for so long, sleep feels wasteful.”
Swoopwent my belly, a sudden round of butterflies taking me by surprise. Despite the weirdness of the situation and the fact that after so many delays, Dare had gotten here and promptly almost died during our first kiss, I decided to try to treat this as if it wasn’t abnormal. As if we were just two regular soul bonds meeting for the first time, out on a private date away from my other bonded so we had time to get to know each other.
For the most part, I hadn’t felt like I’d missed out on any agathos experiences—most of them weren’t worth having—but the process of dating a new soul bond and integrating them into the group was one of them.
“How’d you get the name ‘Dare’?” I asked, voice muffled by his chest. I exhaled softly as he ran his fingers gently through my hair.
“It’s very unexciting—I just couldn’t say no to dares when I was younger. It was mostly Riot’s doing,” he snorted. “Daimons aren’t particularly attentive students, and it was a way for us to kill time in high school. My mom hated it. Both the dares and the nickname.”
I swallowed thickly, stiffening against him despite my best intentions at the casual mention of his mother. I had to tell him, though. Not just because I was an agathos who couldn’t lie, but because I got the feeling that I’d caused Dare a lot more pain than he’d ever let on, and I didn’t want to cause him any more.
“I met her.”
“You met who?” Dare asked absently, combing through my hair with his fingers.
“Your mother. Ruby. I met her.”
Dare’s hand stilled, his brows furrowing as he stared down at me.
“When?”
My bonded downstairs must have been picking up on my nerves; pulses of love and reassurance surrounded me from three sides, but it only made the stark emptiness of the fourth spot where Dare belonged stand out in sharper relief.
“The day she died. I met her in the underworld, in the palace of Hades. I didn’t understand why Queen Persephone had wanted me to meet her at first, but now I do.” I exhaled shakily, remembering the shrewd look Ruby had given me before we parted. “I think your mom knew, or at least she hoped, that you were mine. Or someone’s. She said she hoped you found an agathos soul bond of your own one day, and that you’d be good to her.”
Dare made a strangled sound and I tightened my grip around his middle, needing to offer him comfort somehow, even though I was the one upsetting him.
“I don’t know. That sounds too nice to be my mom,” he said with a watery laugh. “Maybe you met someone else.”
“Maybe,” I agreed. I could have been wrong, but I felt like it was her. “She said… she said that her son was a good son, though maybe not a very good daimon, and that she preferred him that way. And that she should have told him that.” I took another steadying breath, my voice wavering as I spoke. I didn’t want to cry—this was about Dare, and I didn’t want him to feel obligated to comfort me. “She called him a ‘mother hen of a daimon.’”
A startled laugh burst out of Dare at that, his body shaking against mine. “Okay, that’s definitely my mom, she’s been telling me shit like since I was old enough to speak.” He shook his head slightly, and I understood his disbelief because sometimes I struggled to comprehend my life too.
“I was always pretty weird for a Philotes daimon—for a daimon in general—and she never quite knew what to do with me,” Dare explained, his voice wistful. “I hung around her more than most daimon kids do with their parents. Cared about her more than most daimon kids cared about their parents. It wasn’t in her nature to accept that care, she didn’t know what to do with it, but she didn’t outright dislike it either.”
Throwing caution to the wind, I nestled fully into his side draping my leg over his and resting my head over his pounding heartbeat.
“It sounds like she appreciated you a lot, even if she didn’t always know how to articulate that. We’re a generation of experiments, the Fates trying to figure out what to do with us, how to bring agathos and daimons together. I’m not sure they intended it to cause such friction with our elders, but it has,” I sighed. “Not everyone, of course. Plenty of my old agathos friends back in Auburn seemed to have good relationships with their parents.”
“What about you?” he asked, squeezing me close though I could tell that even that small gesture cost him energy he didn’t have. “What’s your relationship with your family like? You have a lot of parents, right?”
I laughed quietly. “I suppose so. By daimon or human standards, at least. Four dads, one mom. I have two little brothers too. And one of my cousins lived with us; she was like a sister to me.”
“Mercy,” Dare replied instantly. It was strange to hear Dare say my cousin’s name like he knew her, but I guessed gossip spread fast. “Her soul bond, Dice, got me out of a tricky spot recently. He came across me while he was looking for her. He’sstilllooking for her.”
“I don’t know how much success he’ll have with that. She made a deal with Viper to hide her.” I caught Dare up on that day at the community center, before launching into an explanation of everything that had happened since. Every weird, unbelievable moment that had been my life. Dare listened quietly, occasionally asking questions but mostly just stroking my hair.
“So what happens from here?” he asked when I’d caught him up, finally pausing to take a breath. “It wasn’t exactly hard to track you guys down, so anyone with bad intentions could do the same. Not just the agathos, but humans too. I’d like to think you’d be safe from them, but change freaks people out, you know?”
“I know,” I sighed. “It would be nice to stay in one place, but I don’t think this is it. Vasileios and the others should go back to Leonidio—theywantto go back there. It’s a safe haven of sorts, protected by the gods of the underworld. We’re too exposed here. But there’s the Spartoi, I don’t know what to do with them. And us…”
I trailed off, mulling over Hygeia’s words. The true agathos, the originals, had offered us a safe place. While Hygeia hadn’t been particularly pleasant, Sophia’s wisdom had helped me out of a few sticky situations now, and I trusted her.
