Page 11 of Leda's Log

We returned to the dining hall to refuel. And no one refueled as fast as Cupid. She might have been built like a model, but she ate like a horse. She was popping chocolate balls into her mouth like they were grapes, devouring them with inhuman efficiency. Now, Ireallyliked chocolate, but even I didn’t eat it like that.

“So, Cupid,” I began as she dipped a chicken nugget into a big bowl of fudge, “tell us more about your powers. I’ve never met someone with your kind of magic. It doesn’t really fit into the rules of magic as we understand them.”

“Rules change. You should know that better than anyone, Leda Pandora,” Cupid declared, then shoved the whole fudge-covered nugget into her mouth.

Well, wasn’t she cryptic? And you know who else enjoyed being cryptic? Gods and demons. If it weren’t for Cupid’s wholerules changephilosophy—and her rather conspicuous love of junk food—I might have thought she was one of them. But if she was a deity, she was a deity cut from an entirely different kind of cloth.

“You are being evasive,” Nero told her. As always, he cut right to the point.

Cupid shrugged and grabbed the fried rice…then proceeded to eat it straight out of the bowl with a serving spoon.

“When’s the last time you got anything to eat?” I asked her.

“A few hours ago,” she replied between bites.

I looked at Nero, who lifted a disapproving brow. My husband was big on decorum.

“Gods, her table manners are even worse than yours, Leda,” Basanti snickered.

Cupid slammed the bowl down on the table, drawing her bow. For a moment, I thought Basanti’s words had offended her, but she turned to aim her weapon at the dining hall doors. A moment later, the doors quaked, like someone had pounded it with a battering ram.

“This isn’t good,” Cupid muttered.

The wooden surface of the doors started to sparkle, then swirl, like it wasn’t entirely solid anymore.

“I thought we’d have more time,” she added.

The wood continued to sparkle and swirl like molten metal. There was aswish!—then a gargantuan creature melted out of the door.

“I thought you sent those creatures back where they came from,” I said to Cupid.

“I did.” Her bowstring hummed with magic as she drew it back. “This is a different breed of beast entirely.”

I saw that as soon as the creature finished taking solid form. The armored beast looked like a cross between a giant kangaroo and an angry armadillo. Oh, and its spiked, wrecking-ball tail was on fire.

“How did this ‘something else’ make it into my castle?” Leila demanded.

“The same way as the other creatures did,” replied Cupid. “Through the dimensional rift in the lab.”

“The rift is still open.” Nero’s voice was level, calm, threatening.

“Yes, it’s still open,” said Cupid. “And as long as it is, creatures from that dimension will continue to come here.”

“Tell us how to close the rift,” Nero said in that same dark and dangerous voice.

“Wecan’t do anything about it,” replied Cupid.

“I don’t believe that,” I told her.

“Of course you don’t. But nonetheless, that is our reality.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I insisted. “Somehow. We always do.”

Cupid didn’t say anything.

“But in the meantime, can’t you do something about that guy?” I pointed at the armadillo-kangaroo. “Can’t you calm it down or something? You did that to the other creatures.”

“It won’t work.” Cupid shot an arrow at the beast anyway. It sank into its arm, exactly between two plates of armor. But instead of the beast going docile like the others had, it let out a bone-chilling roar. “See? This creature is different. Its emotions are not its own. They’ve been bottled up. And its free will’s been stamped out. The creature is being controlled. Changing its emotions won’t help if it doesn’t have any control over its own body.”

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