Lycheron scoffs. “No girl. No Drakon. I have nothing to gain. Only the fleece on my back is keeping me from crushing you where you stand.” He leers at me. Winks. “Except for you,matakia mou.”
My little eyes?I’ll show him eyes—the evil kind. I glare. Too bad we didn’t keep the golden lyre. We could have offered it up for the bargain. I’d have happily thrown it at him if I could lift it.
“Are you on friendly terms with the Hydra?” I ask.
Lycheron’s ocher eyes spark with rage and take on a sudden, luminous quality. “The Hydra ate two of my Nymphs last week on our migration. It mistook them for human women.”
I guess that’s a no. “If we lose, we’ll kill the Hydra for you.”
Lycheron snorts, clearly skeptical, but then his eyes gleam with interest again. “How did you get past the Hydra?” he asks suspiciously.
“Very quietly,” I answer in the same bored tone the Ipotane Alpha used earlier.
“Do we have a deal?” Griffin asks quickly.
Something like reserve clouds Lycheron’s expression for the first time. Is he suddenly seeing more to us than he did before?
Nevertheless, he nods once. Bargain struck.
“I run but never walk. I have a mouth but never talk. I have a head but never weep. I have a bed but never sleep.”
As soon as Lycheron says his riddle, my mind goes completely blank. It’s the strangest thing. I can’t think ofanything. All I can do is stare at Griffin, holding my breath and hoping his brain is still functioning, because mine isn’t.
Luckily for us, and Sinta, and likely all of Thalyria, our minds don’t work anything alike.
“A river,” Griffin answers almost immediately.
Lycheron swishes his tail, a low rumble resonating in his throat. He demands they arm wrestle for the second challenge, unsportingly assuring himself a win. Griffin’s defeat isn’t immediate, but it doesn’t take long.
Griffin ducks his dark head toward mine, cursing softly under his breath. “Flynn’s the only one who’s ever beaten me.”
“That was like you arm wrestling me. It was hardly fair.”
His mouth a flat line, he shakes out his arm. It must be aching.
For the third challenge, Lycheron wants to summon Artemis, pay homage, thank her for the golden fleece, and askherto set the final task. Not only do I not want the Goddess, undoubtedly followed by the archer, anywhere near Kato, or Griffin, or any of us for that matter, but… “There’s a reason people don’t just casually summon Gods!”
Lycheron shrugs his massive shoulders. The human ones. Well, male anyway. Entirely, hugely, beautifully male.
“‘Call a God, lose a soul,’” I quote. “Sound familiar?”
Lycheron’s eyes meet mine with new interest, and I shiver. His previous interest was already more than enough.
I turn my back on the disturbingly virile Ipotane Alpha and gather my group. “Even the most powerful Magoi don’t use those spells. The scrolls holding those chants were hidden centuries ago because even Hoi Polloi can do them, but they were almost never educated about the consequences. It’s not actually magic, it’s just words. But string the words together, and you get a death trap. People finally understood how dangerous it was and locked the knowledge away. Gods always take someone as payment for being summoned. They come, but they never leave alone. It’s risky, treacherous stuff.”
Lycheron chuckles behind me, and I stiffen, hating the visceral impact the sound has on my body. Warmth washes up my back. My nape prickles.
“The Magoi female is right. But we’re on the Ice Plains,matakia mou. Different place, different rules.”
I spin around, treating the Ipotane Alpha to my death stare. “What does that mean? Different place, different rules?”
Lycheron eyes me like a bug. A bug he’s seriously considering dragging off to his horse den, but still a bug. “I live in the shadow of Olympus. I am not some human dabbling in matters I don’t understand.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
His ears flatten tetchily. “You doubt my skill? I am a creature created by the Gods.”
“Aren’t we all?” I ask.
