Page 8 of Flame and Fury

“Wren.” Atlas lays his hand on my forearm. His skin is warm, his fingers strong but not threatening.

A pair of clerics round the corner and I sit up straight. They zero in on the kids immediately. I can’t hear them, but the clerics’ mouths are wide and sneering as they yell at the children. The kids step back, but a cleric with shoulder-length greasy brown hair, fists his hand in a small boy’s shirt and drags him forward. The child looks terrified, but the cleric just smiles and then strikes him in the face. He can’t be older than seven.

“Fuck.” I bite out.

Before I’ve given it any thought, I throw open the door and jump out of the car. Thankfully, we’re going slow enough that I don’t faceplant.

“Wren,” Atlas shouts out from behind me, but I don’t turn around to look at him. I’m sprinting toward the bastard who thinks it’s okay to beat up a little kid for playing. He doesn’t even see me coming.

“Hey, fuckface.” I grab the back of the cleric’s robe and yank him toward me. His greasy hair fans out as I spin him to face me with a snarl. My fist crashes into his face before he can open his disgusting mouth.A small triangular pin falls off his robes as I throw him to the ground. I crunch it under my foot just as the other cleric starts shouting.

“Heathen! What are you doing? We’ll have your head for–”

He doesn’t get to finish his sentence because my foot is smashing into this mouth. My wings itch, demanding to be set free. I throw back my head, the feeling of finally doing something important rushing through me with a pleasure that makes my body sing. As the Dark Hand, I’d protected my neighborhood for years, bringing the hammer of justice down on clerics and lowlife scum. Gods, I’ve missed this.

When I lower my head, the cleric I kicked is screaming, blood pouring out of his nose. I lose it. I punch his ribs and stomach until he’s a sobbing mess. Arms wrap around me from behind and I growl, wrestling with the steel bands around my chest.

“Fuck, Wren, it’s me. We have to get out of here.”

It takes a moment for Atlas’s voice to penetrate the rage surging through me. My breaths saw in and out of my chest and I almost push him away. Then I see two other clerics knocked out on the ground. I didn’t even see them arrive. Did Atlas take care of them while I was having a rage blackout?

I struggle out of his arms, but his hold tightens.I take a moment to catch my breath and calm my temper. This has all been too much. Meeting Kat, feeling exposed, remember what it felt like as a child to sit in the middle of a lecture about how disgusting you were.

“I’m fine,” I spit out. “You can put me down.”

Atlas ignores me, striding back to our car that’s blocking traffic. “You’re not fine and we need to leave before someone figures out who we are. Let’s just hope we knocked all of those bastards out before they realized who was beating them to a pulp.”

“Worth it,” I grit through my teeth.

Atlas gets us into the car with an impressive move, never letting go of me. Even after the door slams shut and the car starts moving, I’m still in his lap.

“You can let go of me now. I’m not going to jump out of the car again. Probably.”

Atlas doesn’t say anything, and his arms stay banded around me. His hold is almost tight enough to restrict my breathing. My heart hammers in my ears and my lungs burn. But slowly, by tiny increments, I sink into Atlas.

He doesn’t have my trust. But for the first time in a very long time, I feel safe.

CHAPTER6

ATLAS

The car takes us back to my father's house. I'm sick of seeing the place. The champions had to attend a party here, which ended spectacularly or in disaster depending on how you look at it. Wren spread out beneath me is certainly a memory that I will never forget. Then we spent last night here, and it was the starting point of the parade. That’s more than I’ve been to this house in the last three years combined.

I've never liked the Olympus house. Architecturally, it's beautiful, but there's no warmth, no love in this forsaken place. Most of the time, my father ignored me completely when I stayed here. Ironic, since he’d be the one to summon me to the house for the weekend, pulling me out of the hellish training center and throwing me into my personal Tartarus.

Hera, on the other hand, would seek me out each time I set foot in the house. A bloodhound on the trail of a wounded animal. When I was much younger, she would drag me into her throne room, and force me to stand silently on a pedestal while her friends and admirers lobbed insults at me.

“How kind of you to let such a disgusting, insignificant offspring breathe the same air as you.”

“Does he even bathe? Is he too stupid to perform basic tasks?”

They’d lie around on couches, or wander around the room in small groups, aiming their insults just as they’d walk past me. Hera would watch the whole time with barely contained glee. It was always the jabs at my mother that threatened my patience, though.

“He’s so ugly. His mother must have been an absolute hag.”

“She must have paid a god of trickery for a love potion to use against Zeus. That’s the only reason he would touch a pathetic slag of a human.”

As I got older and grew more skilled at schooling my emotions, Hera lost patience with her game. Without my flinches or pained reactions, it wasn’t fun for her anymore.