7. Leni

Before the first onyx candle—because black is much too trite for use with the Gods—was lit in His Majesty King Kadmos’s remembrance, Yaya ran. Rinsed off her war paint— Chanel Rogue—laid down her mightiest weapon—a tricolor pen—and delivered the harrowing truth to the family heads: We are doomed. Return home. Savor the time you have left.

At least, that’s what I think she would’ve said. Something ominous and precipitant, threatening, a little bitchy. I like to imagine she was one big bowl of gleaming marbles back then. Succinct and rational and fearless.

The opposite of the female who raised me. More strategic crusader and less stuffs-metal-chopsticks-into-outlets. Still, she did her best. Rubbing those last two technicolor marbles together to teach me centuries of wisdom.

Intense, write-this-down-now scraps of gold nugget knowledge, including: Never brush your hair before your teeth; yogurt keeps; and purple is not, and never will be, pink.

All information was subject to change. Erasable pens only.

The only Yaya gem that never changed: Better fucked in here, than fucked out there.

She’d tap the center of her forehead when she said it, burrowing into her cheetah robe and wraparound sunglasses the way a fat squirrel tucks in for hibernation. That’s kind of what we did. Bunkering down in our home on the water. It was cute in a Leaning Piza way. Crumbling roof, creaky floors, windows painted shut. We never traveled or entertained, we never acknowledged the realm beyond us.

Yaya took a long walk off a short pier when Draven came to collect me.

Surprise. In between burning books and chugging Petite Sirah, my agoraphobe, childphobe father had approved my marriage in exchange for one lump sum. An arrangement formed before I’d even been born.

Shaking in my glitter puppy rainboots, I threw up Welch’s all over Draven’s pristine camel leather car interior and he put a matching purple spill across my cheek. I was eight.

My motto since then: Better alone. I’ve not once faltered, never once revised or revisited the words tattooed on my sternum, until this exact moment.

“It’s back, isn’t it? Does it hurt?”

Cross won’t look at me. “I’m fine.”

“I have eyes.” And ears, and a nose. If a deaf bat were hanging off the order here sign, they’d ask, you good, bro?

Cross has the same look Yaya would get when her body threatened to overwhelm her mind: frustrated, angry, helpless. A ringer for the one flashed at me after our kiss became a crappy blood ritual. Seconds before an invisible Mac truck flattened him to the pavement.

I knew you were dangerous.

Sweet Hera, he’d sounded proud. Impressed. Enchanted. I’d floated.

“I’m fine,” he insists, pressing his palm to his ribs.

“Oh right, you’re fine.” Air quotes and sarcasm muddle with the scent of bleach and coffee grounds. “Forgive me for forgetting the universal truth—everyone’s totally fine when they say they are. Especially when they double down on it.” I’m glaring, bunching together my rapidly degrading blood-soaked napkin. “Just try to swing backwards when you pass out because I won’t be catching you this time.”

“I won’t pass out.”

Gods, we’re both liars. “Please?” I ask, heart sinking with familiar feelings of helplessness. “Let me help you.”

He’s short fused. Black. Bullets and bombs. “Nothing can be done.” Final.

“Plenty can be done. Stop being myopic and depressing. Focus on something happy.”

He lets out a bitter, scraping laugh. “Fuck no.”

I fight back the urge to flinch. Steel myself. The little girl Yaya knew would crumple if she were here now. If she’d had the day I had. The years.

Yaya had deserved help, not a terrified kid microwaving marshmallows for round two of sugar soup dining. I can’t help her now, but I can fix this. “Imagine a babbling brook, placid blue waters, a stream seamlessly joining a river.”

Cross’s supernova eyes glimmer with … annoyance. Amusement? “Excellent. I’m ready to provide a urine sample.”

“Perfect,” I quip, not one to be out sassed. “Job done. Pay me what you owe me.”

“You should teach a class.” He shifts forward, setting elbows onto his knees, invading my space to draw a wayward tress of azure between his fingers. “Can professors have blue hair?”

What’s his obsession with my hair? I press my lips together to prevent a smile from spreading. “It’d boost attendance.” Check out the freak!

He nods, dark eyes clinging to my mouth. “A temporary boon, but grades would suffer.”

Has he been to college? Or are we both extrapolating on an overheard phone call between an NYU Assyriology undergrad and his disappointed mother in the Spirit check-in line?

If he has, I guarantee there’s a pamphlet somewhere with his face on the cover. Curls tousled, soft warm brown over those sky-black eyes. A leather tome experiencing size dysmorphia in those broad, warrior’s hands. Throw a park bench in the background, a clocktower riddled with non-native ivy. Keep the expression he has right now. Lips slightly hitched, darkened eyes. Tormented and also somehow amused. Our students are mysterious and hot.

You can’t keep him.

The thought squirms under my skin, adding pressure as it stretches.

He’s looking at me, waiting patiently. I’m certain he knows how long I’ve been peeling the border of a sloppy Texas state flag sticker stuck to the couch leg. Like he hit the timer when he finished talking, eager for my rebuttal. Moves and countermoves.

I look away from him, back to the sticker. “We’ll run an experiment after you finish your lecture on ‘Bleeding out: not just for mortals.’”

“Christ.” The word is an amazed laugh. “You’re good.” He drags a hand down his face, messy, tired. “You’re too good.”

A slight shiver followed by a burst of heat floods my cheeks. “Oh yeah? Can I join the Kingsguard?” I’m joking, but he shuts it down with the cut of a knife.

“Don’t. You shouldn’t … Don’t use that term.” He stares at some midpoint between me and his feet. “Don’t call me it either.”

I stand, chastised, toss my garbage in the bin. Ignore the thin trail of blood leaking down my sleeve, fusing my arm to my coat. Retreat to the windows and pretend smog-gray is my favorite color. “Alright. Just Cross then.”

“Not that either.”

My brow arches. “Thought homicidal silhouette was too mouthy.”

“You did your research.” His voice is low, challenging. “ I’m sure you have plenty of names for me.”

Too many. Killer. Traitor. Villain. Maniac. Sociopath. Every vile word I’ve ever screamed into a pillow about Draven has been hurled at Cross.

I don’t want to call him any of those things. They don’t fit right.

“Just tell me what to call you.”

“Ah. You’re not as brave as you want to seem.” He’s cold. Ice. Fun’s over. Thanks for playing.

My reflection frowns.

He unfurls to his full height, sucking up every peal of light from the room, green numbers on the microwave, red timer on the coffee pot, even the glow of the streetlamps outside dim. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid to cast a couple deserving words at a killer.”

Not at a killer who defended me, who kissed me, who complimented me. I keep quiet.

“Abomination,” he murmurs, rough voice coming from behind me. “That’s my favorite. The corrupted blood of a mortal given eternal life.”

He wants to scare me, but actions speak louder. “Doesn’t roll off the tongue. Besides I think it’s pretty.”

“Pretty?”

“Your blood. It’s … vibrant. As bright as the heart of a fire, and runny like juice from a fresh cherry. Makes me crave a strawberry lollipop.” Few things don’t. Crystallized sugar: inject it into my veins.

Before Cross, I’d never seen such red. True immortals only have ichor flowing through them. Silver and viscous. Poisonous. The rest of us, descendants of the Gods, have both, making our blood pinkish and shimmery, a cutesy imitation.

“Do you enjoy seeing me bleed, Leni?” he asks, voice a little hoarse.

“Of course, I don’t.”

“So it just makes you … hungry?” His hungry is not cannibalism hungry, it’s craving hungry. Urges and indulgences and impulses.

No. Definitely no, would’ve been my answer before he kissed me with a split lip, before he devoured me, pinned me beneath him, rolled his hips into me, before a hot, mounting sensation flooded my lower belly. I close my eyes. “How’d you know I was following you?”

He lets out a chuckle from deep in his throat.

The hair on my nape rises. I’ve no idea where he is, but I can feel the rapture of his gaze down my body in the rumble of his, “C’mon.”

I smooth my puffer, despite being dirty and wet, it still seems to glow. “This doesn’t count. I planned this for the meet and greet.”

“Of course,” he teases. “The plan.”

“How did you really know? I did everything by the book. Newspaper shields, umbrella blocks. I made up aliases. I wore disguises.” Saying it aloud wipes the smile from my face. Scuttling around streets, eavesdropping, clumsy accents. It’s Yaya. It’s crazy. This isn’t play with your senile great-great-great grandmother.

This is I’m-alone-in-the-dark-with-an-assassin-and-a-loaded-gun.

“Yes, I do recall a hat and glasses at some point.” He’s smiling. I hear it.

My cheeks flush with mortification. “So you knew the whole time?”

Silence. Pitch black silence. My frustration bubbles to the surface. “Why didn’t you say anything? If someone was stalking me, I would …”

“You would what?” I jolt at the closeness of his voice. The whisper that surrounds me like warm smoke. “What would you do if you were being hunted?”

“I’d …” I stop, drop my forehead to the cool glass window

I’d move in with them. I’d do what I was sold for. I’d obey the rules and lie to myself that it’ll all work out until one day I implode.

I open my eyes. “I’d find you.”

It’s so dark, I can’t see my irises. The small red dot of the coffee maker flickers on the glass.

An arm weaves around my waist. I don’t jump, I relax, crane my neck back, bathing in the heat. Cross’s face is drawn, eyes narrowed. “Close your eyes,” he orders, low, commanding, almost too quiet to hear. “Keep them closed.”

The air around us crackles wildly with his power, the tendrils of black I saw in the ring have returned, roiling and crazed. The set of his jaw, the firm hand on my hip are trained. Military.

Is he trying to make me forget him again? “No, you—”

His hand covers my mouth, calluses rough against my lips. “Yes,” he hisses, using a tone that’s commanded creatures to death. He pulls me tighter to him, like he’s trying to hide my entire body in the cradle of his. He probably could. I wrap my fingers over the tense muscle of his arm, holding on as his warmth seeps into me. It’s like standing against a hot stone.

The red dot blinks away. Coffee’s on.

“Don’t worry,” Cross murmurs, the words vibrate through my skin. “I’ll catch you this time.”

I’m not falling? I jerk in his hold, wondering what’s gotten into him.

A noise sounds behind us, metal rolling on tile like a loose quarter.

His breath is hot against my neck, muscles taut against me. “Don’t move.”

The runaway quarter starts to hiss, something smells sweet and hazy. A bang erupts from the far end of the store, trailed by a glittering crack. The window splinters in front of me, cracks spidering out from a thumb sized hole three inches left of my head. A gunshot?

Is someone shooting at us?

My stomach drops through the floor.

The question, the fear, the realization that the quarter is a smoke grenade don’t form fully before Cross throws us through the window. He twists so his shoulder punches the glass, and we crash into the street.

Air shoots out of my lungs, and I groan, sprawled on top of him. I scramble to roll off and my heart stops. The world is on fire.

Chaos everywhere. Bright. Loud. Suffocating.

A building high inferno bathes the pavement in tortured orange and red. Creatures swarm the road in a crazed panic. Running, slumping over, breathing through bunched up cloths. Someone’s shouting. Others are too.

The acrid stench of burning assaults my senses. The noise shoves needles into my ears.

Cross’s power was like being in a sensory deprivation tank, and I’d grown used to it, to hearing his breaths, feeling only his warmth, existing in a realm of just us two.

I wipe the stinging smoke from my eyes and stagger to my knees. Horror gnaws at my chest. Bile rams up my throat.

Cross yanks me to stand by the biceps, grip tight and demanding. My muscles are wet sand bags as he pulls me forward, urging me down the street, away from the blaze.

“Save it for later,” he grits, glancing behind us, either not seeing the wreckage or peering through it, searching for danger. “Keep walking.”

I try. A thousand things are registering, jamming up my senses until all I can hear is blood beating in my eardrums.

I sway, unsteady waves of nausea knocking my feet from under me. My knees buckle and my arms burn when Cross refuses to let me fall.

“I did it,” I rasp, losing grip of his hand, stumbling. Concrete shreds my stocking, tears a line up my calf. I buckle into it, curl around myself like a lifeless sad sack, the confession shooting out of me, “It wasn’t supposed to … it was a distraction.”

“Survive first. Regret later,” Cross orders, unfeeling, looming above me with an edge of detachment.

Did he not hear me? “This is my fault.”

Cross mutters something at the dreary gray sky. It sounds very possibly like leave her or unbelievable. Which I translate to the same damn thing.

Then he bends down to one knee in front of me, projecting every bit the warrior he is. Strong, capable, formidable. There’s a gun in his hand, he’s checking it over like I would an old manuscript. Meticulous. Covetous. It’s not the oily black one I stole from him. This is shiny and silver and belongs on a spaceship. Did he pick it up or have it this whole time?

Is he going to shoot me with it?

Guns are so loud.

They probably hurt so fucking much.

“I first saw you in the hotel lobby,” he says, his voice low, not as distant, not as severe, reminding me of an innocuous night, early, calm. A few stars. He presses the gun against my shoulder, cold metal and feather down. “You had bandages here”—the muzzle drifts to my sternum—“and here. And I couldn’t see it, but the way you were angled, I bet there was a big one running down your spine.”

Bandages over my tattoos. Freshly inked.

The end of the gun stays glued to my chest, compressing pink puffer, crinkling a hidden bow. “The next time I saw you, I convinced myself it was a coincidence. You couldn’t take your eyes off the sea, as if it were feeding you life’s answers.”

I swallow, mumble, “I lived on the Olympic coast.” Before Draven stuffed me in the desert.

Cross nudges the gun to my chin, tipping me back to meet his stormy gaze. He’s chewing his lip again, studying me. just like he had before he kissed me. His voice curls around me rich and dark, like the best bitter dessert, “I convinced myself it was me following you.”

The gun slips, swings on his middle finger like a key chain and his fingers wander to my hair. It’s damp and knotted and smokey, but under his caress it’s silk. “It made more sense to me. That I would follow you.”

Questions populate in odd places in my head. Heated, shadowy, unfamiliar corners. My skin feels too tight under his undivided attention.

“Then, in the teahouse on Oleviste,” he says before I utter a word. “I caught you. Boots with the laces undone, a fresh white bandage crawling up your ankle. You were reading the arts section in the local paper, but you don’t speak Estonian.”

I followed him to ten in the last week, but I know the exact shop he’s talking about. Stuffy drop down ceilings, stained glass, a pre-war register. “So you think,” I return, tired of being underestimated.

“You don’t,” he purrs, like he’s paid enough attention to not wonder about me, but to know. “You ordered the chai with your fingers and when Katrin asked iced or hot, you gave her a thumbs up. Very American.”

Latent frustration bubbles under my skin, hating that he’s right. I’d been trying to order the gingerbread latte, extra whip cream. “Katrin mumbles.”

“Hmm.” He lets go of a dark blue tendril, tongue sneaking out to wet his lips.

“And since when does a thumbs up mean ice cold?” I ask, grasping onto that annoyance. Six Euros. “Chilled milk and leaf water. I had to shock it with stevia and …”

I stamp my mouth shut. Almost laugh.

I’m on the ground, nuzzling dirt and ice, inhaling smoke, a gunshot ringing in my ear. Still, it’s sitting there on the edge of my tongue. A laugh.

“You’re good at it too,” I say, accuse, a bit too sharp. Good at rescuing me from my own mind. Bringing me to a happy place.

His dark gaze lingers on me, probing for a sign of the breakdown that he’s shoved to next week. His lip curls and he bites it. Smirks. “Took a class, barely listened.” Just watched is unspoken. It’s right here, on the line between us.

He was always watching me. Aware of me.

“I …” thank you. You’re looking for thank you, Leni.

“I knew what you were immediately.”

I shut my mouth.

Something hard and metal presses into my palm. A knife. Sturdy, warm hands wrap my trembling fingers to clasp the curved hilt. “Intelligent,” he clarifies. “Dangerously intelligent to the degree of reckless, of thinking you can outmaneuver any problem with invincibility.”

It’s an insult, surely. One I like. More than I should, and it doubles the guilt in my stomach. “And you’re still giving me a knife?”

“Why do you think I’m keeping the gun?”

“Rude.” But fair.

“Breathe,” he commands as he turns my wrist to keep me from slicing my coat. “Separate what’s happening from what you’re feeling because this has to get a lot messier before it gets better.”

Messy. A spring of nausea buds in my stomach.

He sighs, attention darting between me and the street. “Just … close your eyes and focus on your breathing.” A line of teeth dig into his lip, and pull angrily, like he doesn’t want to say this next part. “If you just keep breathing, I promise I’ll take care of the rest.”