Relief floods his face. He grins, and a tiny lightning bolt zings down my spine. “She’s the one,” he announces to his men. “I want her.”
Whoa. What?
Who? Me?
What for?
His warriors close in. I throw out my arms, creating a poisonous perimeter. “Back off or you’ll end up like Basil.”
“Is there a problem, Cat?” Aetos’s blue face towers above their heads. The warlord looks small in comparison, despite standing over six feet.
I shake my head. “Tell Selena we have a new gargoyle. She likes that kind of thing.” I slide a look toward Basil, trying to ignore his petrified expression and crooked teeth. His nostrils are flared, like he’s still trying to suck in air.
After sparing the human statue a quick glance, Aetos arches his eyebrows at me, picks it up, and then carries it away. Desma and he were right. I might accidentally kill someone tonight. Or not so accidentally.
Annoyance flits across the warlord’s face. “I’ve been trying to flush him out for days. Now I have no one to interrogate.”
“Some Tarvan woman wants your head in exchange for Basil’s brother’s life.” Shock vibrates through me. The words slipped out without my consent. I swear to the Gods I hadn’t even formed the thought before they were out there, hovering damningly between us. Who in the Underworld is in control of my mouth tonight, because it is not me!
The warlord’s lips part, not in surprise, but in some kind of satisfied expression I don’t understand and don’t like.
My gut clenching, I turn my hands palms up and shrug. “Soothsayer, remember?”
“You’re exactly what I think you are, aren’t you?”
The woman who divines the truth through falsehood? The most coveted diplomatic weapon in the realms? The Kingmaker?
I back my still-toxic self away, careful not to bump into anyone. I feel like the Gods are peeing on me from Mount Olympus. I was happy here. The circus was my family.
“There’s one of you every two hundred years.” The warlord stalks me through the crowd, his long strides devouring the space between us. “Kingdoms rise and fall for you. Because of you.”
His intense gray eyes are readable enough now. He’s thinking of ways to contain me, to catch and use me. He’ll expose me. He’ll put me in a cage and make me sing like a siren.
Strike that. He’ll try to make me sing like a siren. “Touch me and I’ll kill you.”
His mouth flattens. “You could try.”
If it means getting away, I’ll expose another talent in front of all these people. It doesn’t come to that, thank the Gods. I slip backward through the performers’ gate, and Cerberus steps between us, blocking the warlord’s path and making him draw up short. The hound’s enormous fangs glint in the torchlight, drops of venomous saliva hissing when they hit the ground. Three low, ominous growls shiver through the dark passageway as I quickly exit the amphitheater. Hades has a thing for Selena, and his watchdog guards her circus instead of the gates to the Underworld. Cerberus will hold the warlord back. Too bad he’ll keep Jason and my berry ice away, too.
CHAPTER 3
I wish I didn’t have to move on. Thank you for taking me in. “Oikogeneia.”
I say the word for family out loud as I write it in the ancient language of the Gods, hoping someone in the circus can read it and knows the power and promise it holds. Aetos doesn’t have that kind of schooling. Desma and Selena might, and I trust them to use the magic only if they have to. Aetos would die for me. Desma would die for me. Vasili and Selena might, too, and probably a dozen others. If they call me, there isn’t a threat in the three realms that will keep me from coming back to them.
Before I came to the circus, there was only one person I wouldn’t have been willing to kill, if it came to that, or let die for me. Now there are more than I have fingers and toes, and it makes me weak.
Family.
It irks that a word so contaminated in my mind contains such power. I gave it power and gifted it to my friends. I would kill myself before letting it cross my lips for any of my remaining blood relations.
My few belongings are packed in the old brown satchel I stole off a sleeping merchant on the Fisan coastal road eight years ago. Some clothes and a pair of old boots, a cloak, three throwing daggers, a few hair ties, a comb, and my stage cosmetics—everything I possess. I strap the circus’s bedroll and blanket to the ties at the bottom of my bag. I don’t think Selena will mind. It’s hardly theft at this point.