Page 65 of Creatures that Breathe

Tell the truth. Not put the team at risk.

The Blackguard comes first.

I should make them say my name. See if they can.

My stomach rolls as I choose my words carefully. “She could have killed me, and she protected me. She helped me.” It’s not a fucking answer. “She didn’t have to. She won’t do anything to us …”

“Enough,” Atlas. Monotone. “The female’s too great a distraction. She goes. Now. And Cross, you’re with Rune until you can focus. Online surveillance.”

Rage, hot and jarring, starts to boil over. “She came to me for protection. Remember when we used to do that?”

Zeke quirks up. “Who’d come to us for protection?“ Like who’d go to the landfill for a cup of coffee?

“Never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but Cuckoo’s making sense. We don’t exactly have the hero card anymore.” I jump at the low tenor of Meda’s voice.

She’s not beside Luke anymore but poised on the stage beside Atlas and it speaks of her own gift that she snuck up on me. She’s drowning in an oversized hoodie, braids caught in the collar, dark circles under her eyes.

“Come on, boys,” she says, “It’s obvious what needs to be done.”

Sin starts laughing, in on the obvious.

I add a note to his file: complete asshole.

Meda sets golden eyes on me. “You need to sleep with her.”

15

Leni

secret lairs belong in the Mediterranean

Better Alone. Words to live by, to survive by. I trace the angry ink etched down my chest in the fogged mirror while I adjust my necklace stack to fit inside the B. Blotchy patches of pink dot my torso, bruises on their way to healing.

Gone but never forgotten.

I tug the waistband of Cross’s sweatpants up, and slip on the soft black cotton shirt. Sniff it.

Soap. Nothing.

Cross.

Draven smells like apples.

Fat red apples plucked and sliced from Vinia’s trees. Sweet. Watery. Revolting.

The same scent I got from the Gorgon blood. Fruity, faint.

Information on Gorgons is thin and conflicting, even in the king’s own marginalia, because the first Gorgon, Medusa, was mortal, and cursed into a creature.

Not unlike Cross.

Medusa was more than just a survivor, she was a protector. Mother of Pegasus and Chrysaor, first in the Gorgon line, she ensured none of her family would ever be prey. The snake hair faded with age, but the poison never did, and while no modern Gorgons are making stone statues, they can freeze attackers in the middle of battle with just a single drop of spilled blood.

It’s all in the scent.

The theories differ on the scent’s nature. Some estimate it’s simply your favorite smell or a strong emotional memory. A few assume, in order to be effective, it must be the essence of your Fated, but the one I’ve read most is that the scent reflects who you’ll spend your life with. A sister, a child, a lover.

A captor.

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