11 May 2012
The first time Gina set eyes on James, she wanted to throttle him. An overwhelming sense of unexpected hatred engulfed her: hot, white rage. Rage like she'd never felt before.
Gina choked on it, latching eyes with him, and seeing the exact same dark fire burning in his retinas. Along with shock. The two had never met before; Gina would have remembered those grey eyes and that dark hair.
The next moment, she was flying across the courtyard, not minding the other students in her pathway. She was focused solely on the pulse beneath the new boy's skin: on how to still it.
On reaching him, however, she found a barricade. A cage of arms separating both him and her. Two other new boys - surely of the same family - restrained them, seemingly impervious to the earnest struggles of the trapped assailants.
'James!' The boy holding Gina barked. James. Now Gina knew his name. Now she could whisper it to him as she wrapped fingers around his neck and squeezed...
'Snap out of it!' The boy shook her, and Gina realised she'd been leaning towards James again.
Gina's mind seemed to return to her then. She sagged in the boy's arms, taking him by surprise, yet not running or leaping up to attack as he let her slide to the floor.
'What is wrong with me?' Gina looked at her hands as if they were foreign. For all she knew, they could be. She wasn't usually so angry.
'You're Gina Harper, right?' The boy who had been holding James - who had somehow vanished - knelt in front of her.
He was handsome, with a furrowed brow. Confusion. Or concern.
'Yes,' Gina murmured, almost inaudibly.
'Oh dear.' The boy ran his hand through his long, dark hair. An agitated gesture.
'Well, my name is Harry. My brother you just tried to kill? He's called James. And he's the prince of our people: the Demi Gods.'
Demi Gods. • Opuss № I