His face turning terrible, the warlord roars and lunges for me.
“Don’t touch me!” I cry, evading. As soon as the magic works its way into my system, the poison will infect anyone who touches me. I don’t know how long that takes. It’s fast for a normal person. Longer for me.
My limbs get heavy quickly. More slowly, my skin hardens, turning gray. I’m not worried. Medusa’s Dust is magic-based. My body will chomp the poison like lamb steak for dinner. Force enough toxic berries down my throat or stick a few adders in my bed and I’ll die like anyone else, but magic won’t kill me.
The warlord watches my skin lose all color, his eyes somber, his jaw tight, and his hands clenched at his sides. Something in his gaze shocks me. I don’t ask why he cares, although I almost tell him that in a few minutes, I’ll be pink and soft and poison-free again, but that’s not something he needs to know.
I turn to Basil. He’s smirking, obviously glad he took that pesky soothsayer down with him.
“Thanks for the present.” I offer him a smile fit for the bloodthirsty maniac I was meant to be. “Here’s one for you.”
I grab his wrists with both hands, just above the gloves that protected him from the poison. Medusa’s Dust races up his arms. He hardens, freezing solid on a gasp, his mouth half-open and his eyes wide with terror.
I let go, disappointed. “That was fast.”
The warlord stares at me, his expression almost comically thunderstruck. “Why aren’t you dead?”
I throw him a saucy look. “You think I’m that easy to kill?”
Relief floods his face. He grins, and a tiny lightning bolt zings down my spine. “She’s the one,” he announces to his men. “I want her.”
Whoa. What?
Who? Me?
What for?
His warriors close in. I throw out my arms, creating a poisonous perimeter. “Back off or you’ll end up like Basil.”
“Is there a problem, Cat?” Aetos’s blue face towers above their heads. The warlord looks small in comparison, despite standing over six feet.
I shake my head. “Tell Selena we have a new gargoyle. She likes that kind of thing.” I slide a look toward Basil, trying to ignore his petrified expression and crooked teeth. His nostrils are flared, like he’s still trying to suck in air.
After sparing the human statue a quick glance, Aetos arches his eyebrows at me, picks it up, and then carries it away. Desma and he were right. I might accidentally kill someone tonight. Or not so accidentally.
Annoyance flits across the warlord’s face. “I’ve been trying to flush him out for days. Now I have no one to interrogate.”
“Some Tarvan woman wants your head in exchange for Basil’s brother’s life.” Shock vibrates through me. The words slipped out without my consent. I swear to the Gods I hadn’t even formed the thought before they were out there, hovering damningly between us. Who in the Underworld is in control of my mouth tonight, because it is not me!
The warlord’s lips part, not in surprise, but in some kind of satisfied expression I don’t understand and don’t like.
My gut clenching, I turn my hands palms up and shrug. “Soothsayer, remember?”
“You’re exactly what I think you are, aren’t you?”
The woman who divines the truth through falsehood? The most coveted diplomatic weapon in the realms? The Kingmaker?
I back my still-toxic self away, careful not to bump into anyone. I feel like the Gods are peeing on me from Mount Olympus. I was happy here. The circus was my family.
“There’s one of you every two hundred years.” The warlord stalks me through the crowd, his long strides devouring the space between us. “Kingdoms rise and fall for you. Because of you.”
His intense gray eyes are readable enough now. He’s thinking of ways to contain me, to catch and use me. He’ll expose me. He’ll put me in a cage and make me sing like a siren.
Strike that. He’ll try to make me sing like a siren. “Touch me and I’ll kill you.”
His mouth flattens. “You could try.”
If it means getting away, I’ll expose another talent in front of all these people. It doesn’t come to that, thank the Gods. I slip backward through the performers’ gate, and Cerberus steps between us, blocking the warlord’s path and making him draw up short. The hound’s enormous fangs glint in the torchlight, drops of venomous saliva hissing when they hit the ground. Three low, ominous growls shiver through the dark passageway as I quickly exit the amphitheater. Hades has a thing for Selena, and his watchdog guards her circus instead of the gates to the Underworld. Cerberus will hold the warlord back. Too bad he’ll keep Jason and my berry ice away, too.
CHAPTER 3
I wish I didn’t have to move on. Thank you for taking me in. “Oikogeneia.”
I say the word for family out loud as I write it in the ancient language of the Gods, hoping someone in the circus can read it and knows the power and promise it holds. Aetos doesn’t have that kind of schooling. Desma and Selena might, and I trust them to use the magic only if they have to. Aetos would die for me. Desma would die for me. Vasili and Selena might, too, and probably a dozen others. If they call me, there isn’t a threat in the three realms that will keep me from coming back to them.
Before I came to the circus, there was only one person I wouldn’t have been willing to kill, if it came to that, or let die for me. Now there are more than I have fingers and toes, and it makes me weak.