Two years later, Maylin was in her bedroom on her red and gold bedspread, picking at a loose thread with a nail-bitten finger. Thalia was for some reason nervous, wondering if she should have cleaned her room first, if Maylin would notice the effort. Her hands shook most of the time anyways, an unknown sickness settling in her body one night and never leaving. The shaking was worse when Maylin was near.

“We’re almost sixteen,” Maylin said, her shoulder-length hair now cut nearly to a pixie, lopsided and self-cut. She looked over at Thalia, something intensely searching in her eyes.

Thalia reddened. “Yeah?” 

“And we’ve never talked about what we want to do. For the future, I mean.” She reached into her jacket pocket, fiddling with two thick forms that she had folded up haphazardly. The way she held them out silently told her that this was a secret - one her parents could not know.

The house always felt as though there were eyes in the walls, and Thalia was nervous as she grabbed them, fearing her mother’s entry at any moment. Her nerves bundled into fear when she saw the Academy’s name printed on the top of the forms, with instructions below of how to apply.

“You want-?”

“I’ve thought of it!” Maylin said with a shrug. “I thought - I don’t know - that I didn’t want to just sit around and let less fortunate people die. That I should help, too, maybe by learning medical stuff? But I - I want you to come with me.”

“I don’t have magic,” Thalia said flatly, feeling as though this dream was just out of reach, dangling before her in her mother’s grip. She would be useless to the Guardians, unable to cast and not knowing how to fight. She realized that she was nearly sixteen and yet she couldn’t think of a single skill she possessed.

Maylin rolled her eyes as if to remind her that she didn’t have magic, either. She had been born ordinary, too, Maylin would say. Thalia wanted to argue that there was nothing ordinary about her. “You don’t need experience. I talked with a recruiter when I went on that trip across the country - they’ll teach you everything. The first semester is more of a free trial, anyhow-”

“-It wouldn’t be for me!” Thalia said, her heart racing as she heard the front door open in the house. She wanted to go, more than anything, but she knew what would happen if she failed. “If I get in, my parents will never take me back. They don’t like the Academy, and I don’t understand it but-”

“Who would be against fighting seruses? Do they own a serus farm?” 

Thalia stood despite the fact that her knees were threatening to buckle under the weight of the world. Her heart was pounding in her ears and she could practically hear the blood rushing. 

Something was terribly wrong. 

“Stay,” she said, motioning to Maylin with a shaking hand. “Please.”

Maylin called out for her as she darted out of the room, seeing spots in her vision as she took the stairs by two. At any minute she expected to fall, for her muscles to finally give out under whatever fucking sickness she had. Her parents had said nothing when it had first occurred, merely looking on with disinterested stares as she fainted time and time again. She had heard her mother, once, as she struggled to separate reality from unreality.

“It’s still not enough.”

She didn’t remember if she saw her parents or not as she ran out of the house, not realizing that she was being followed until she collapsed in the courtyard of the garden of dead things, her vision swaying dizzyingly. There was something building up inside of her, a tension of energy buzzing at her fingertips. The grass by her hands swayed towards her by either wind or something more, but she did not notice. 

“Thalia!” Maylin called out, rushing to her and feeling her feverish skin. “What’s going on? You don’t - You don’t have to go! I’d stay with you. Talk to me!”

“I can’t. It’s getting worse,” she rambled, scrambling away and falling back down almost immediately. “It’s getting worse - I love you, but it’s getting worse.”

Maylin’s eyes widened as if she had said something particularly shocking, clearly wanting to ask about it but knowing that Thalia was rambling from the pits of her mind. She had seen this kind of sickness before, though people were often killed from it - or because of it. A bathtub where one falls silently under the water or a pyre for the person with serus blood in them. That’s what villagers often believed - that people who were sick possessed such monstrosities. 

Thalia’s parents never took her to a doctor, saying that it was in the family, that it was caused by her own neglect. Maylin thought they were fucking idiots.

She also thought, every day and every hour, that she loved Thalia, too.

Thalia reached for her in utter panic and Maylin did not hesitate to pull her close, even as she felt the cut of thorns pulled by something miraculous. It followed Thalia’s hands as that energy finally imploded, balled up into magic that would not budge under her mother’s harsh words. It only needed coaxing.

She never knew if Maylin understood that it was magic that she could not control, because she jerked away the moment the thorn cut across her shoulder, and instantly Thalia knew what would happen. 

“Oh, fuck,” Maylin said breathlessly, her eyes wide. It takes ten minutes for the Serus Tooth’s poison to enter the bloodstream. Five minutes if it already has. 

“I’m sorry-”

“There you are.” Heels clicked on the stone earth quickly, angrily. Thalia looked up to see her mother and for the first time, she felt relieved. She jumped up, rambling to her about the poison and that something had happened, unsure if she was making any sense but begging nonetheless to be heard.

Lady Ravaeri stood, lit a cigarette, and stared at Maylin’s pasty white skin as if she were an insect. “Do you expect her to be saved?”

“What - Obviously?” Thalia snapped. “She’s my best friend! She needs a hospital!”

“Then summon one,” she said with a shrug. “You must be naive if you think we don’t know how she distracts you. It’s filthy, and it’s time you grow out of it the hard way.”