Iridescence

CHAPTER FIFTY

FAITH

I was starting to get desperate. Genie had promised she had a cure for Artemis, but so far, she'd only stabilized her with magic. Artemis was still unconscious. She was hanging on, but barely.

"You've barely spoken to me, Genie," I said. "Don't villains usually love to monologue? Isn't that what you live for?"

"I'm not a villain, Faith," Genie replied. "Do you understand what brought us to this moment?"

"Not really," I admitted, "except that your dad sucks."

"My father is an amazing man!" She snapped. She said it so sharply I wondered if she was trying to convince me or herself.

"He's a sociopathic traitor who murders his friends for fun. I wouldn't call that amazing," I baited her. If I got Genie talking, maybe I could figure out a way to get Artemis out of this situation. No matter what happened, I wasn't letting her die.

"He's misunderstood," Genie insisted. "He was always kind to the other deities. He cared about them. He wanted what was best for them. The Gods in charge of the different pantheons were all terrible leaders. My father wants to unite them beneath him."

"By killing anyone who doesn't go along with his plans? That's called a dictatorship. Emphasis on dick."

Genie slapped me across the face. I have to admit, I didn't expect that from her. "Are we fighting like mean girls? I thought this was a street fight," I taunted her as I punched her in the gut. "I mean, you're a foster kid, Genie! Have some self respect!"

She doubled over in pain and took a moment to recover. I was half terrified she'd take her anger out on Artemis, but she didn't. Instead, Genie sat down and looked me in the eyes as she caught her breath.

"You don't know him, Faith," she finally said. "You just believe what the Gods told you. There's so much more to the story."

I considered this. Maybe making Genie mad was the wrong plan. She might be a sociopath just like her father, but first and foremost, Genie was a teenager who was all alone in the world. I didn't know how much of the history she'd told me was true, but if any of it was, maybe I could appeal to her human side.

"So tell it to me, Genie," I said. "What really happened to you? Did you actually live with your grandmother? Did she really die? Or was all of that a lie? Did you even have a grandma?"

"My Ya-Ya was real," Genie told me. The sadness in her eyes was convincing, but remembering who her father was, I didn't take her at her word. "I'm a reincarnation of a Goddess, although I was never destroyed... I chose to live amongst mortals after my father died, and I just kept reincarnating until we found each other again. As Eugenia Stefanopoulos, I was born in Athens, Greece. My parents were killed when I was a baby, just like I said. What I didn't tell you was that lightning struck my house. The whole thing exploded."

"How did you survive?" I asked, partially to keep her talking and partially out of genuine curiosity.

"My Ya-Ya found me. She wasn't related to me by blood. She was my neighbor, but she saw the house explode and, knowing my parents had an infant, she rushed over to help. Everything around me was destroyed, but I was untouched. That was the day Ya-Ya realized I had magic. Ya-Ya had magic, too. She had no family left, so she took me home with her and raised me. We moved to New York when I was five and lived in Astoria. It's a really Greek area, so we fit in, and it was easier for us to get by until I picked up English. It took Ya-Ya longer, but I helped her learn the language, too. We didn't have much, but we were happy, Faith. Material things didn't matter as long as we had each other. She was the only person in this world who I thought loved me..." Genie paused, looking haunted.

I didn't understand what had changed until she said, "But she was just using me, like everyone else."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"When my father found me, he proved it to me... Ya-Ya was using my powers for her own advantage. She found a way to drain my energy, and she used it for profit."

"Your father's a liar," I reminded her. "Why would you believe anything he told you?"

"He showed me visions of things that happened in my life. I saw them from my Ya-Ya's point of view. I saw her harnessing my energy. I saw her creating the charms she liked to sell. They all had my energy inside of them. She was making money off of me. That's all I was to her. She didn't love me."

"He could have made you see anything he wanted," I pointed out.

"He wouldn't lie to me. I'm his daughter. He loves me, Faith."

I saw something in Genie that I'd seen before in other foster kids. She was desperate to be loved, and that made her an easy target for someone like Altheos. She had to believe he loved her to justify his behavior. It was a coping mechanism abused kids often clung to.

"Why didn't anyone know about you, Genie?" I asked. "Who was your deity self's mom?"

She hesitated, like she hadn't expected that question. "She didn't want me," she finally replied. "She doesn't matter."

"No one knew Altheos had a daughter," I pushed gently.

"He raised me in secret," Genie replied. "I grew up in a pocket realm. He took care of me. He loved me."

Altheos abused his kid, I thought. It was painfully obvious to me that, at her core, Genie was just another broken foster kid. I could work with that.

"That must have been hard," I said.

"When he died, I was all alone. It took me a while to escape from the pocket realm, but once I did, I knew I wasn't safe. He left me a letter that told me to hide with the mortals until he returned... So that's exactly what I did, for millennia."

Altheos was a Seer, I remembered. He knew that, even if he fell, he'd be back one day.

"That must have been a lonely existence," I said, trying to sound sympathetic. I might have wanted to set Genie on fire for poisoning Artemis, but I also understood that sometimes kids raised in toxic situations made extremely bad life choices. I saw the evil within her, but maybe that wasn't all that she had.

"I knew I'd find him one day," Genie replied. "My memories tend to unlock every time my incarnations hit their teen years. It took a long time, but he kept his word. He came back to me."

"Genie," I said, sensing an opening, "what happened to your grandmother?"

"Ya-Ya tried to keep my father away from me. She attacked him. He had to do what he did. She left him no choice."

"What did Altheos do to your Ya-Ya?" I pushed.

She looked away from me. "She was using me... She deserved it," she replied.

He's got this girl completely brainwashed, I realized. She's reciting the same words like a mantra. The truth is too traumatic for her to process, so she needs to believe this.

Suddenly, my sympathy for Genie was slightly more genuine. "He killed her?" I asked.

"He... He had to," Genie said again. "He was protecting me."

"Genie, that woman loved you and raised you as her own, and he murdered her," I said. "You understand how messed up that is, right?"

"Shut up! You don't know anything, Faith!" She snapped.

"I know that he betrayed you, Genie, not your Ya-Ya."

"You're wrong!" She insisted.

"I bet he made you watch, right? He was testing your loyalty. He was making sure that, no matter what he did, you'd stand by him."

Her face turned unreadable, and I knew I'd stumbled onto the truth. "My father always has a reason for the things he does. I understand that," she said. "Excuse me, but I'm going to step outside and check in with your uncle, Faith." She left the room.

Finally alone with Artemis, I knew this was my only chance to save her. There was not any sign of the anti-venom, so I knew I'd need to find another solution. "Come on, Artemis," I said softly as I pulled her into my arms. "You're the toughest Goddess I know. Fight, Artemis. Fight!"

She didn't stir. I sighed and tried to think. There had to be another way to save her.

I gathered every ounce of strength I had. My body turned to flames. I let the essence of Fire flow through Artemis. Her temperature began to rise.

She's a Goddess, I reminded myself. She can survive a dangerously high fever. I have to burn this poison out of her before it kills her.

Artemis groaned in pain as the Fire magic did what it needed to. I didn't let myself stop. I burned as bright as I could. I used Fire to burn away the venom and then used even more to give her strength and bring her back to her full power.

Fire could destroy, but it could also restore things like energy and, by extension, life force... At a cost. The amount of power I was channelling was somewhat dangerous for a Fire Nymph. It was deadly for a mortal body.

I didn't care.

I felt incredibly weak as Artemis opened her eyes and looked at me. She sat up and took a deep breath before getting to her feet.

"Welcome back, Gorgeous," I said. I promptly collapsed into her arms and blacked out.