27. Cross

“Leave us.”

Leni knows my command’s not for her.

Sticky red drips down my fingers, my legs are numb from below the knee and my voice hits my ear like nails on glass, but if I must, I’ll fight two of my own to have a minute alone with her.

To look at her. Hold her. Inhale her.

Supplicate. Repent. Sacrifice.

Give whatever the Gods demand in return for her.

“It’s been a week.” Lev plants his feet like I’m an enemy, long wild hair caught in a failing braid. “You have to eat. And drink, and Zeke needs to check your vitals.”

Zeke played triage doctor once in the Civil War and thinks vital checks involve limb counts. I roll my eyes. “Since when do I need—”

“Since her.” Atlas doesn’t mask his disdain. “Since I your stitches broke again. Since you’re fucking bleeding out. Again. Since you—”

“It’s not on purpose.” My voice is rusty and catches in my throat. I’m sweating bullets, a headache is playing give the brain a pulse behind my eyes. I clench my gift, dig my nails into black smoke. “You think I like being weak and vulnerable? That I want to be a fucking liability for us? Do you think I don’t know what happens if I stray too far? Don’t realize who must pay for it?”

“It’s not about that,” Atlas insists, notching up the collar of his shirt to cover his twin bands. “I’d wear all of your tattoos today and always if it meant you were free. You know that. I sacrifice everything for—”

“Leave.” Talking to him is like spitting salt on a fresh wound.

He betrayed me. He threw Leni to the sharks.

To a monster.

I’mher monster.

Glaring furiously at me, Lev paces, wrath as palpable as the darkness pooling in the corners of the room, crawling up the walls. He wants to yell at me, to remind me of every time Atlas has stood up for us.

As if I don’t remember. As if I can’t see that our leader’s every heartbeat is for the guard.

I use his native Russian to inform him, “Atlas stepped over the line this time.”

Lev holds back his retort, grits his teeth, responds in English, clipped, hurt. “I’ll send dinner. Eat.” After a moment’s hesitation, his attention flashes to Leni. “Both of you.”

An olive branch.

They shuffle out of the room, and a long rumble of relief vibrates through my body. I can barely sit upright, legs still bound to the bedframe, still bleeding, head still foggy with pain, but there’s blue beside me.

The exact shade I’ve dreamt about.

The med bay was considered oversight when we purchased the estate. Happened back when Luke thought he was working for a group of Army Rangers who’d made enemies in special investigations. Back then, Atlas believed the circle of trust didn’t include dudes off Craigslist offering wet work with expert efficiency.

It’s Luke’s domain now. The series of clinical interconnected rooms, crushed with rows of beds, medical equipment. He’s made it his own. A massive TV hangs on the wall, its sound system designed to blow out eardrums. Orange and white bottles are dotted between firearms and explosives beneath a Duke basketball poster. Damp laundry hangs off a wicker privacy screen.

The empty spots on the sprawling wall of cabinets is a testament to our increasing struggle with the curse, needles and thread and bandages we never used to need.

I don’t know what to say to Leni, but apparently asking “Are you hungry?” isn’t right.

It makes her heave with a sob, makes her bury her beautiful face in her hands.

She’s stunning. Frosty eyes swollen and bloodshot. Cerulean hair in clusters at her shoulders, bangs swept aside. Dingy gray lace drapes haphazardly around her waist. A long poofy skirt swallows her legs, torn and sooty, a grisly train drawn into a knot at her feet, tangled with dead leaves and sticks.

“Your wedding.” My stomach fills with cement. Failure carves my name into it. “I’m too late. I wasn’t quick enough.”

I feel the blood drain from my face. Heavy, crushing weight slams into my chest and stretches to the edges of my sanity, shoves. My elbow buckles, hits the metal rod my arms still locked to. I curse and rip free, relishing the lacerations it leaves on my forearm. What I deserve.

Leni sniffles, wiping her cheeks, white lashes sagging. “No. I’m not married. It’s a punishment. A reminder that I’m only his bride. Nothing else.”

My feet remain strapped to the bed, but I’m undeterred as I reach for her.

“Ten days,” she whispers, watching my fingers interlace with hers.

“Twelve days, six hours, and fourteen minutes.” Assuming Luke changed his clock for daylight savings.

“Ten days of pain,” she mutters in a low, furious voice, hair falling forward, eyes turning into an ice-storm. “How are you … how can you …”

“I deserved it,” I tell her. “I deserved worse. A hundred times worse for every breath of your suffering.”

“What suffering? I was stuffed in a room and dressed up like a doll. You were tortured. You …” She picks up the chains like they’re corpses, meek and horrified. “How?”

She was caged?

My stomach ties into knots. “I’m going to kill Draven, no matter what it takes. I vow it, Leni. I’ll find a way. Whatever decrepit corner of the realm he thinks will hide him, I’ll raze it. I’ll—”

Fresh pain lashes through me and I jerk against the restraints, hiss through clenched teeth.

Leni hurries to press against me, dropping into a repetitive chant, speaking of smoke and rebirth and vengeance, as if she’s possessed by the Oracle of Delphi. Eerie monotone, weaving tales of kings and Gods. Shit I don’t care about.

She’s smells of honeysuckle, faint, a whisper under the wood smoke. Her fingers brush my arm, soft, comforting. My pulse picks up and there’s an overeager leap in my chest. I strangle the pain, shove it to the back of my mind, and kiss her.

We both taste of blood and salt and tears as we yank into each other. Pulling and pushing. I can’t believe I almost lost her.

She pulls back too soon and my ankles hammers its restraints, frantic to reach her.

“Get me the key to these,” I beg, feverish, crazed. An addict relapsing. “They’re in the second cabinet. Between the rolls of tape. Red tags.”

She doesn’t move, white lashes heavy with tears, cheeks and nose a ruddy pink.

I tuck back her hair, caress lingering on the curve of her ear. “What’s wrong? Are you going to be sick?” Did I scare her?

Her eyes remain shadowed, expression flat. “No,” she murmurs, pulling away. Out of my reach. “I don’t think I should unlock you. Not until I’m sure you won’t harm yourself again.”

“Leni, I’m—” I cut off the fine fallback, replace it with, “better.”

“Better? Gods. Cross. Look at you. You look like Draven’s handiwork. Atlas is right. You’re killing yourself.“

My chest contracts with a sharp spasm. Emotion roughens my voice. “Atlas sold you out. He’s delusional. He’s out of line.”

“He was trying to keep you safe. Who could’ve known this would happen?” She gestures at the bed, at me, like I’m a body beaten past recognition.

I did. I knew this would happen. The pain.

From the moment I saw her leap fearlessly into the raging Baltic, I knew her leaving would eviscerate me.

“He hurt you and you’re defending him?” I don’t mean to growl.

“I punched him,” she says, gaze darting to me for my reaction, for me to recoil or gasp. Scold.

There’s blood in my smile. “That’s my girl.”

Her pupils dilate slightly, my lover of compliments. Too starved of them. She gets a disarming, rather pleased expression when she adds, “Twice.”

“Overachiever.”

A whisper of a curl on her sweet lips. “He had it coming,” she defends. “But I did it for me. For you, I’ll probably thank him.”

My hackles immediately rise. Over my dead body.

“Do you know,” she asks, seriously, “what I would give for someone to protect me? Even just once? Before I was born, my grandmother sold my hand, my virtue, to Kadmos. Killed herself rather than help me. My father pushed me to go. The ones blood bound to protect me didn’t. Wouldn’t.” Her chin wobbles, a glassy sheen overtakes her eyes. “Atlas made a difficult decision to protect you. At my expense, yes, but I understand why. He chose your health and safety, and now I have to. Not because I want to, but because you need me to.”

My sweet, fractured pyro. “Leni, I’m fine, I promise.”

“You’re a wreck!” she shouts, ticking off her proof with both hands. “You’ve lost more blood than a punctured body bag. You’re bruised, broken bones, open wounds, you’ve lost weight, your eyes.” She cuts herself off, tears streaking down her cheeks, drops to a whisper. “Your beautiful eyes are red and black. Your mouth …” Gentle fingers graze the center of my lips, spread warmth to the edges. “I wish you’d stop wrecking your mouth. You require protection more than anyone, because you don’t value yourself. You push too hard, take on too much.”

“I’ll heal. I’m immortal.” I clasp her fingers in my hand and press them back against my lips, roll my tongue against them. “I’ll heal,” I rasp. “The pain is gone. I won’t let anything more happen. I just can’t focus when you’re around, that’s all.”

“Then I should leave.”

“No!” I roar, heart crashing violently against my ribs. “Don’t. Please. Unchain me so I can beg.”

“This is not healthy, Cross. I am not good for you.”

She is. Gods, she is. She has no fucking idea how good.

“You are,” I voice. “I can’t concentrate when you’re here because I want to kiss you and I want to kill Draven and I … I want to hold an umbrella over you to the beach so you don’t burn and peel chocolate hearts for you, and ply you with food. And when you’re not here, it’s … impossible. I’m overrun with thoughts of where you are, if you’re hurt, what you’re doing, who you’re chasing. At least when I can see you, I can wrangle it. Somewhat rein in the scorching power you have over me.”

There. Laid out. Plain as Zeus is King of Gods. The misery of my new existence. Without her, it’s pain, and with her, it’s teetering on the edge of it.

There’s a slight pause, filled with just her breathing and her glare.

“Draven will come after you,” she finally says. “That’s why I picked you, Cross. Because I thought you might be the only male alive capable of surviving the crown’s wrath. Because he’ll kill whoever touches me. He’s not logical, he’s unhinged. He’ll view you as an enemy. He’ll hunt you.”

Her words stun me into silence. She chose me to be her first because I’m nobody. Draven said so himself, spat it at me. The nobody I yearned to be in London, the nobody I’ve loathed for centuries, is exactly who she needs.

Fuck the Fates and their cruel tapestry. “He can try, Leni.”

She’s about to say something, rip me apart or stitch me together, when Luke enters on the echo of a hard knock. He balances plates on his arms, announcing, “Pizza. Ramen. Freezer frost mint chip and skittles. Bon appétit.”

He slides the samplings on a plastic rolling tray and bangs it against the side of my broken bed. Plants his hands on his hips. Grins. Beams. “I’m Luke.”

“Luke?” Leni asks, staring at him like an apparition.

He is a lot. For a mortal. As wide and tall as Heracles, black hair trimmed short, a wash of dark stubble, deep eyes, a charming smile.

Leni soaks in the collar of his Notre Dame t-shirt, checks his wrists and tries to x-ray through the ankles of his jeans. Turns to me. “Luke? I didn’t read about a Luke.”

“He’s my—”

Luke snorts. “If I hear manservant, I will personally make Drake pry your toenails off. I don’t care if the curse got you or not.”

“I was going to say friend.”

He flashes straight white teeth and a dimple. “Mortal, muggle, beefcake, demolitions expert, and thanks to a single mother, overly doting friend and chef extraordinaire. Be nice to me, or I’ll change the Netflix password.”

Leni blinks. Stares. “You’re human.”

Doesn’t phase Luke. “Yes. What are you?”

Her eyebrows slam down. “If I tell you, I’m complicit in breaking Argos’s law, aren’t I? Aren’t you?” she directs at me. “Mortals are to be kept in the dark or subjected to the punishment of Gods.”

Luke flashes me a curious expression, as if asking where I found this girl. I shrug at him. Can’t help my Leni’s a smartie. “She’s mine. That’s all you need to know.”

“Yours,” Luke echoes, hazel eyes dancing with bright green streaks. “What a claim.”

Leni gapes at him, clearly offended by our failure to follow rules.

I can’t help it. I laugh, tilt my head and say coolly, “Thanks for the food, now isn’t Meda somewhere, needing her laces tied?”

Shoveling a handful of yellow skittles in his mouth, Luke gives me the bird. “Just like that. Streaming privileges revoked. Eat,” he orders, tongue neon. “Finish it all, yeah? You look like I used to. Skinny kid gunning for a fight.”

He’s out the door fast as he’s entered, snatching his lucky coat from its hook.

“You’re openly breaking Argos law,” Leni hisses. “Are you aware of how they discipline lawbreakers? They hang them from Mytikos peak. The vultures there have spare tires.”

I shrug. “The Argos and their vengeance don’t even make the top ten fears of mine.”

Rolling her eyes, she turns to leave and five of those fears ignite. Broil me.

My throat dries, panic receding, as she swipes a red key from its hook. Slowly, careful of the sores and cuts, she undoes the chain on my ankle, shaking her head at the blotchy, mutilated skin beneath.

My sharp inhale of pain breaks between us as she removes a broken needle from my arm.

“Fluids,” I explain. It’s what I heard them say, yell at each other before they ran out of needles. Before they realized the curse would snap them apart, as if to say, ah ah, no helping.

She looks on the verge of tears, and it’s an agony worse than any physical torment.

I lie. “It doesn’t hurt.” Unsteady, I stand, legs shuddering, sore muscles spasming. I force myself to focus on the information she fed into my ear, briefly blitzing the curse from my blood so that I can see Leni the way she deserves to be seen. Wholly, all at once.

Rushing to my side, her hands crush my hips to provide support. The sidelong look she slants me is heavy with warning. Do not push too hard.

My pride takes a hit for the sake of her hands on me. I lean into her, lightly pressing my forehead to hers, relishing in blue and honeysuckle and the hot press of her fingertips.

“I want to shower,” I announce, dropping my head into the curve of her neck, inhaling. Holding it, embracing the bolt of potent desire that rushes through me.

Leni shivers against me, fingers clutching my shirt, nails scraping skin.

I take advantage of her lapse to kiss her. Light, fleeting, a drop when I crave a mouthful. “Let’s get clean, eat, and then rest.” Another kiss. Another. “And then,” I brush her hair back, hold her frost eyes with mine. “Then I’m going to be very, very gentle with you, Leni.”