Jack saw his first Invierno native the next morning.
“Bianca?” he mumbled, peering up at the morning-fuzzy face.
“Jack,” the familiar voice murmured. A chilly hand touched his cheek. “Finally awake.”
“Yeah...” Jack tried to wake up more, but his eyes wouldn’t cooperate. “I overslept...”
A smile was in her voice. “I noticed.”
Jack pried his eyes open, then pushed himself up on his arms. “Be careful,” Bianca said, too late to keep him from the pain that attacked his skull.
He sucked in a breath and slid a hand into his hair. “Ow...”
A strange absence to his side made him look over. He tensed. “Where’s Holly?”
Bianca sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. “She’s sick. Migraine, little fever. It doesn’t look bad, but the doctors didn’t want her to infect you.”
Jack swallowed back worry. “Oh.”
“How do you feel?” Bianca took his hand. Jack couldn’t help remembering the night before, Holly’s fingers in his. They had been rougher than Bianca’s were now, calloused by a weapon’s wooden handle. But gentler.
Then Jack remembered her question. “Oh,” he repeated, closing his eyes. “Exhausted.”
“I don’t blame you.” Even with his eyes closed, he could feel her piercing gaze on him. “Do you know what happened?”
Jack’s eyes snapped open of their own accord. “Holly said Hermes cursed me.”
“Something like that.” Bianca wouldn’t let go of his hand. “It was a punishment, by the Agency and the Prophetic Board.”
A trickle of images dripped into Jack’s mind’s eye. The darkened temple, the statue, the two people, falling, the clatter of metal, sudden weakness. A curse already at work leaching his strength.
“...called it a mark, but I’m not sure what the difference between that and a curse is.” Bianca paused. “I wasn’t happy.”
Jack almost smiled. He laid back in the hospital’s pancake pillows and rubbed his temples, trying to ease the pounding there. “I appreciate your concern.”
“But you... you feel all right now?” Bianca asked anxiously.
“Pretty much.” Jack glanced at the window. Midday light shimmered through. “How long have I been out?”
Bianca did a quick calculation. “Thirty-six hours.”
“All in a hospital...” He shook his head. “Not the triumphant entry I was expecting.”
But the entry I deserved... Jack pushed away the bloodied, gutted soldiers of his mind’s imagining.
“You certainly have everyone jumping,” Bianca commented. “The whole city is talking about you.”
“How did they know I was here?”
Bianca’s face twisted wryly. “When Jack Frost comes back to town, everyone knows it. We all know what you look like.”
Jack pondered it. Generations and generations, too many to really count, had passed by while he spent his term in Tartarus. And still everyone knew who he was, what he looked like, what he had done. What he had done...
“You’re everyone’s hero, you know,” Bianca whispered.
Jack looked at her sharply. His fingers dug into the mattress. “Why?”
Bianca seemed startled by his shift in mood. “Because... Jack, you’re winter. Of course you’re the Ice People’s hero. They think you were misrepresented. That’s what happens over time, you know.”
Jack slid down into the bed with a groan. “The idiots...”
“They can’t help it. And you were rather a sympathetic warrior—“
“I was a blind fool,” Jack snapped. “A sympathetic warrior doesn’t kill people because he’s bored.”
Bianca tried to get him to talk, but Jack didn’t have anything else to say. He just stared out the window, his heart imprinting itself over and over against his ribs. His stomach churned. The ache in his head grew. Words fit for conversation were out of the question.
Eventually, Bianca gave up and left him to his thoughts.
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