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REYNA
Reyna, in the three months she’d been a Legionnaire—Probatio, whatever—had seen some things.
Ten minutes after getting through the front gate, Reyna had been assigned to the Third Cohort by the snobbiest legacy of Apollo she’d ever met.
Ten seconds after getting through the Senate’s double doors—dual blades in hand—she’d ended up with a Fifth Cohort boy as her trainer.
A trainer who’d just declared himself Centurion of said Cohort without opposition.
Which her own Centurion said never happened, and could not be done.
Well…to be fair…Centurion Jason had also been holding a blade to said self-assured legacy’s throat and ordering him to ‘close your mouth or I will close it for you, permanently’.
Which, to be fair, was after the Augur had attempted to sell them out to ‘Nero’ as part of this joint partnership with the Legion.
However, to be fa—
Focus, Reyna. We don’t need another detour on this stupid quest.
“…even if the stakes are Bacchus missing his precious missing pet for another twenty-four hours…,” she muttered under her breath.
Tragic. My heart bleeds.
If Jason could hear her, he didn’t show it.
The point was, nothing about any of this had been normal.
A daughter of Minerva, though?
That took the idiomatic cake.
Blonde curls in wild disarray, stormy gray eyes that knew no master, erratic and tired breathing, patches of blood-red between plates of golden-bronze armor where she’d rubbed her skin raw against the ropes. Bound to the bottom of a net, carried in a caravan, by a convoy of eight draecaenae that would’ve made a certain goddess spit out her drink.
Minerva was a goddess who considered love and war to be a waste of time. The wasteful pastime of hot-blooded warriors that went through swords and spears like water, tarnished armor in days. A distraction from the masonry that enabled cooking, the garment-sewing that kept children warm and cool throughout the year.
And this girl…this warrior in gold, rubbing her skin raw tearing at ropes…was apparently her daughter.
Jason stared at Reyna.
Reyna stared at Jason.
Reyna.
Jason.
Reyna.
Jason.
What did I even just witness?
“We should probably follow the convoy to see where it’s headed.” Jason suggested.
A beat passed.
He’s joking.
He’s not.
Reyna squinted. “We’re in the middle of a quest. To Sonoma. We don’t have time for a detour.”
She blinked.
“A daughter of Minerva in battle armor.” Jason said.
There’s no way that I—
“Probatio Reyna, I thought I should warn you before you take on this quest.” Praetor Gwendolyn said, brown eyes piercing into her sharper than most spears, tone deathly serious whether she intended it or not.
“If you think I’m going to struggle with tracking down Bacchus’s missing pet, you need to get your head checked.” She retorted.
“Not you, I’m not concerned about you,” Gwendolyn corrected. “Jason. He has a tendency to take detours. His last quest took twice as long as intended.”
So this is why.
“Yes, it’s really strange,” Reyna admitted, unable to believe the words coming out of her mouth, “but we are on a deadline.”
Jason stared at the sleeping girl as the convoy moved.
“Really strange is an understatement. This is a daughter of Minerva in battle armor we are talking about.”
Reyna nodded slowly, amicably, trying to ignore the way her eye was twitching and Jason’s wasn’t.
“And we’re tracking down a wine god’s lost leopard in a town with more cows per acre than men. This is where you draw the line?” She challenged.
“This sits up there with ‘Diana became a 50s housewife, had a son, and that son took up baking’. It’s…a matter of priorities.” Jason countered.
Reyna realized with rapidly growing concern that—
“Okay, how on EARTH did I become the voice of reason here?”
If Reyna Avilla ‘could not follow an order to save her life’ Ramirez-Arellano had become the voice of reason here, that stupid leopard was the least of their problems.
This is going to be a long quest…
They tailed the convoy for a while.
“This is only the first few days. We’re not losing…that much ground, really.”
Reyna hadn’t ever been a very good liar.
It kept going. And going.
“So this is why Praetor Gwendolyn says that every quest you go on ends up lasting twice as long as you anticipate. Stuff like this. Detours.”
Jason barely glanced at her.
“It was how I first found you.” He said. “I was on a sea-faring quest for the Trojan Sea Monster, found you in a dive, that requires a detour.”
Of course he brings that up.
Yet even mentioning that quest always seemed to put pain in his eyes.
What did you lose?
She had her reasons—good ones, too—for hating the sea. That was why she hadn’t asked him. She didn’t want to explain what had happened with Blackbeard—
GET OFF OF ME!
—stop don’t think like that!
She didn’t get a visual this time, didn’t need one. Her body remembered even if she, luckily, didn’t.
Her chest got heavier, breathing shallow, like she was drowning on dry land. She half-walked, half-waded over behind the tree-line to get out of the sight of the convoy.
You are safe, you are fine, they are gone.
It was a lie she was far too familiar with.
After all, a dozen pirates, and nobody raised an eyebrow about how a teenage girl seemed to know exactly how to hide from an angry drunk with a knife.
Behind the pillar.
The tree worked.
Her sister knew just as much as she did about how failure was the best teacher.
“Heart rate. Need to… rest…a moment…”
And what did the Centurion of the Fifth Cohort do?
Sat down in the dirt right next to her.
“Alright. Let me know when you’re ready to move again.”
She wiped sweat off of her forehead as her back leaned against the column…
…of the tree.
Of course. All the talk of detours. And now, her:
ROAD WORK AHEAD
“Sorry,” she muttered, which had to be the first time she’d apologized to…anyone since…the memory wouldn’t come.
“No need. I understand.” He said, without even paying her a glance.
He seemed to be brushing that coin in his pocket, oddly enough.
“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” Jason said, his voice as flat as most Romans were. “I have them too.”
GET YOUR HANDS OFF OF M—
A fleck of sun reflected off the steel of the blade even if the man holding it was long dead.
Except it wasn’t sun.
It was spark.
Jason’s sword—Imperial Gold with IVLIVUS, JULIUS, carved into the hilt that he looked at like a Faustian Bargain—was now glowing faintly.
Nothing with Octavian’s face on it can be a good thing.
“What’s the deal with your weapon?” She asked, though she already knew.
That second sense of hers that always activated around weapons and battle, that her mother had told her was her ‘inner warrior’, could see her own stress leaking into it like molten metal pouring into a vat.
The sense that just knew how to operate any weapon she could hold in her hand. Like X-Ray vision for a locksmith, she could see the inner workings in her gut, knew exactly what it would do.
Except, it wasn’t just hers.
Jason wasn’t a typical weapon. The signal was…full of interference.
“I suspect, you.” He said, even though nothing ever sounded like an accusation coming from him.
“Me?” She asked.
“A daughter of Bellona. If my emotions leak into the environment like wind and thunder and rain,” he said, and she realized that the spark had been him, “it only reasons that yours would leak into weapons and battle.”
Then he nearly quoted her mother verbatim.
“You can give strength to others, you can show them the strength they did not know they had.” He said.
Nearly, because it ended with this:
“That is your ultimate strength as my daughter.”
She wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that. Or what she had meant by that.
“I… don’t know yet what that means. Or… even how to control it.” She said, feeling her heart rate start to slow down.
She tried to tug the bit of her power she’d left in Jason’s sword back to herself.
Something came back with it.
There were no pictures, no sound, no memories. She did not know the story behind it. But with that power, came a pulse of hope, of calm, and a pulse of grief.
“You’ve only just begun your time with the Legion, Legionnaire Ramìrez-Arellano. These things take time. Lots of it. Be patient with yourself.” Jason assured her.
She tried to imagine herself—bitter, arrogant, petty—being patient with herself.
“You don’t know what you’re asking.” She muttered, but didn’t know yet if she meant it.
He met her eyes. Most Romans did not like eye contact. At all. But he made it seem almost inviting.
“I’m learning. After all, I took a detour, and you’ve been patient with me, so maybe you do have it in you after all. Maybe you just need someone to pull it out of you.” Jason said, voice calm and flat and steady.
The grief pushed through her mind and out again, shoving her train of thought aside in transit. Jason’s grief.
Pull it out of you.
He seemed to be sitting slightly taller now as she got moving again. He stood up with her.
“I am ready to get moving again.” She said.
Mom, she prayed, not knowing if she was doing this right, I didn’t understand what you meant before…I still don’t.
She began following the path she’d seen the convoy take, tracking it by the arms aboard.
But…
She felt another tug, a different kind of grief, missing your second half, a kicking and biting and tearing grief, sitting right between the weapons. The grief wearing golden battle armor.
…I think I’m starting to get it now.