Page 51 of Creatures that Breathe

A threat. “You really are an abomination.”

The side of his mouth kicks up in genuine pleasure. “And you really do remember me.”

Understatement.

Good fucking girl.

I squirm in my seat, lighting the butterflies flapping in my stomach on fire. “Yes. I do remember you, and I rather think you’re due for a little fainting spell.”

He reaches forward to deposit the peel and I flinch, shuffling back into my seat until my spine locks.

When he leans back, and splits his clementine—or maybe mandarin? There’s no sour smell, just sweet—his jaw is stiff, the tendons on the side of his throat protrude, as if he’s swallowing back a shout. “Doesn’t work like that,” he grumbles. “Not now. You should eat.”

I should stop staring at his mouth. I don’t.

He doesn’t either. Enraptured, we watch each other. Me, with my head tipped to the side, wearing his dirty shirt and lingerie from my wedding trousseau, damp and bruised and aching. A general wreck. Him in sleek black, licking sweet juice off the seams of his fingers.

Shivers cascade down my back, my blood feels hot lazy, like it’s taking a scenic route over my body, setting each crevice aflame.

He bosses me around. He wants me fed and healthy!

“I didn’t fight the Keres in the war,” he says at long last. “In the first year, I was captured.”

A lump forms in my throat. Every creature in the realm knows about the Keres War. A grueling eight year siege led by Kadmos on the Keres—an underground empire of chauvinistic, savage creatures who drink blood and devour souls. The death toll was so staggering, Yaya claimed the only victor had been Charon’s pocketbook from the sheer quantity of ferry rides he gave across the River Styx.

Then again, she also said Charon invented surge pricing, and invested an endowment of drachmas in Uber.

“They didn’t know how to kill an abomination, but they gave me their worst.” Cross flashes me a sad, half smile. “The Emperor himself charged me with isolation and starvation to get me to break. He didn’t realize that the shadows are not my power, but merely a fraction of it. My gift is to hide.”

He says gift like I would curse. And I hate this story before it begins.

“They forgot they had a hostage. Forgot the cell was full. They forgot me entirely. Assumed my screams were other prisoners. Even when I screamed my own name, when I begged them to look at me. I stopped screaming at some point.” He runs his fingers through wavy, salt-sprayed hair, averts his gaze to the window and shrugs. “Everyone does.”

“But you got out.”

“Eventually, the cuffs rusted around me, splintered into red dust.” He sets his tiny special orange down, wipes sticky hands down his thighs. “I could’ve walked out. They didn’t know I was there. No one would’ve stopped me.” His eyes lock on mine. “I didn’t.”

My throat tightens. My mind generates a million ending to his story, all worse than the last.

“For six years, I burned with hate and violence in my captor’s home. I memorized the spread of their empire, and I hurt them.” His eyes are hard, anguished, but his voice is soft, as if this part needs to be said in the quiet, underneath the roar of the engine. On his thighs, his hands curl inward. “I hurt them. Until damaging their armor, spoiling their food, destroying their weapons became too insignificant to the carnage I truly desired.”

Six years. Hiding. Alone. My lungs cave in. I yearn to reach out and touch him, to remind him he’s not there. I shove my hands under my thighs.

“The Keres live in tunnels underground, and I got an idea. Fuck, it had felt like an epiphany, like Zeus had seen me.“ He pushes out a hard laugh, wets his lips. “I blocked off the exits to the surface. Each and every one. And every time I did, the sun was on the other side, and I never once looked.” His throat moves. He takes a deep, pained breath. Closes his eyes. “The war could’ve been over and I wouldn’t have known as I welded them shut. I would’ve collected my vengeance even if they bent knee to my king, swore their fealty. It wouldn’t have mattered. I would’ve hungered the same for their heads, for their blood and deaths.”

His eyes find mine and pin me with everything coursing through him. Rippling fury, vicious hunger, pure, unfettered hatred.

The longer I stare, memorizing the splits of obsidian and the dark green slivers in the steel, the more my chest swells with sympathy. He still ached from this, it’s still raw in him. How helpless he was, how lonely. How abandoned.

“I flooded the catacombs,” he whispers, tracing his tongue over straight white teeth, his demeanor changing from somber to furious. A corrosive edge enters his voice. “The Keres weren’t killed. They didn’t fall in battle. They were eliminated. I eliminated them. Two thousand Keres. Bodies.”

Eliminated them, like pests. Like he barely thinks about it. Even though it’s clear he does, clear he regrets it, hates the choices he made.

Hoping to ease his suffering, I say, “I’ve read every creature history book in the royal library. Not one mentions a flood.”

“Who do you suppose recounts the war to the historians? The winners or the drowned?” He laughs again. Cold. “Kadmos called it a necessary breach to the cause.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

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