Ichor—visible for the first time in my life. Did Griffin somehow do that? I’d hardly call that pollution. More like power.
Pointed canines flash in a snarl. “A gutter rat plowing a future queen.”
A gutter rat? Griffin?She sends soulless, undead creatures to hunt down her own daughter, and yet she still believes she’s the superior person in all this?
Something violent and out of control breaks loose inside of me. I drop my sword and tear into the Vrykolakas with my bare hands, sinking up to my elbows in order to yank out its festering guts. I slap them in its face—herface—grinding and watching them smoke as my hands heat with a God-like power I can’t seem to control. I scream. I scream, and I keep screaming. I can’t stop.
Griffin bands an arm around my waist and lifts me back. I twist, kicking and shouting, spraying everything around me with black sludge. I smell like death, but I don’t care. I’m beyond caring. I want to rip my mother apart like I should have done years ago, even if it’s not really her, and she doesn’t really feel it.
Griffin sets me down next to him. Low and furious, he grates out, “Don’t talk to Cat. Don’t come near her. Ever.”
The Vrykolakas is still standing—and healing—proving it’s really hard to kill something that’s already dead. The monster takes a menacing step forward, Mother sneering “Filthy Hoi Polloi usurper,” in guttural tones from its mouth.
A concentrated line of translucent green, fast and strong, slams into Griffin’s chest. My heart takes a sickening dive, but he doesn’t even flinch. A circular hole gapes in his leather armor. The skin underneath is perfectly intact. Relieved, I thank the Gods for Griffin’s total immunity to harmful magic.
“What sorcery is this?” Andromeda demands.
“The kind that ends you,” Griffin says, his voice lethally soft.
The creature’s glowing eyes narrow to slits. Neither Griffin nor I move, not giving away the men sneaking up on the Vrykolakas’s back. Andromeda must have thought our friends would be laid out longer by her hit. She underestimates them. She underestimates us all, and maybe the fact that I’ve claimed these men as my family offers them some kind of protection, some small portion of the natural resilience alive in my Olympian blood.
With predatory silence, Carver swings his sword, beheading the Vrykolakas in one clean sweep. Mother’s magic implodes from the clearing like a reverse breath, pulling the air from my lungs.
I stagger, and Griffin steadies me by drawing me against him. He holds me tight. I stifle a sob, knowing that when that stupid, irrational ember of hope I never should have kept burning for Mother died like a spark under a careless boot, it snuffed a certain part of me out of existence right along with it. Any lingering naïveté—lost.
“Are you all right?” Griffin’s grip is almost painful, leaving me airless, but that’s okay because his warm, solid body is still there for me to be crushed and breathless against.
I drop my forehead against his chest. “I love you. I love you. I love you.” It’s the only thing keeping me sane. Without him, I would shatter.
Holding me, Griffin presses his lips hard against my hair. “I love you, too. I love you forever.” His words warm the top of my head. My heart. My everything. I want to crawl on top of him, into him, where I’m safe and treasured.
“Forever,” I vow. “In this world, and in the next.”
“Kardia mou. Psihi mou.”My heart. My soul.
I wrap my arms around his waist, clinging to the one thing I’m sure of in this world. Through damaged armor—steady heartbeat, steady breath, steady Griffin. The broken pieces of my soul that are still retrievable start fitting back together again as a breeze blows, silence falls, and the trees rain ashes.
CHAPTER 10
ILIFT MY FACE AND STARE AT THECHAOSWIZARD’Sdistant hovel, nerves fluttering in my belly. Cold, blustery air whips across the Frozen Lake. Magic nips at my skin with sharp little teeth, but the slight sting is nothing compared to the rush of power proximity to the Ice Plains brings. I breathe deeply, soaking it in along with the hint of frost on the wind.
After the disaster in the woods, we changed course and headed straight for Kitros, an outlying district of Tarva City. We replaced our ruined gear and clothing, and I used the time to rest and recover. For some reason, Griffin’s life force stopped transferring to me during intimacy, and no tingling warmth helped me regain my strength this time. Maybe I finally got back everything I initially gave, or maybe the seemingly increased ichor in my blood is the reason for the sudden change. I don’t know, and there’s no one to ask.
What I do know is that now that we’re finally in Fisa, all I really want to do is turn around and go back to Kitros. It wasn’t that bad, even with its nerve-racking proximity to Castle Tarva, its ruined neighborhood that everyone avoids, and the city’s entire population going berserk over the upcoming Agon Games.
My gaze leaves the hovel to sweep out over the lake. Whitecaps crash against the icebergs dotting the surface. Somewhere in the vast, deep-blue water, a giant three-tentacled trout trolls the depths. More than eight years ago, instead of swallowing me whole, Poseidon’s Lake Oracle granted me the gifts that got me out of Fisa, helped me to hide, protected Beta Team more than once, and saved Griffin from a mortal wound.
On the far side of the lake, a rippling green meadow stretches toward the first great, snow-glazed mountains, their towering sides clothed in patterns of aqua glaciers, crumbling shale, and weathered rock. Whorls form in the lush grass, the blades dipping and swaying like millions of primitive dancers moving to a mysterious rhythm only the wind and valley can hear. I strain and can almost hear it, too, just like I can almost taste the bracing flavor of magic on my tongue and feel the whisper of forces beyond any of our imagining setting my senses alight.
I open myself up to the strong sensations, almost foreign to me after living for so long in Sinta and largely in the south. The glacial shard in my pendant pulses with magic, and power explodes from somewhere deep inside of me. Lightning webs over my skin, crackling and bright, and the whole world suddenly takes on an orange hue, as if consumed by fire.
Gasping in shock, I try to tame the sizzling currents. When I can’t hold them back, I vault off Panotii, afraid of hurting him. I back away, and the ground under my feet darkens and smokes.
Griffin spins Brown Horse around and then leaps down, calling out to me. His voice is frighteningly distant even though he’s right there.
I hold up my hands to keep him back. His gray eyes widen at my expression, and then narrow when lightning surges out at him, narrowly missing his arm.
Inhaling sharply, I ball my hands into fists and tuck them against my middle. “Stay back!” The grass around me starts to smolder. Hellipses grass. Everywhere. Dry as kindling. Thunder rumbles, vibrating in my chest.
