I hastily palm my twin knives, golden and lethal, though Nikoleta and Isidora are several seconds ahead of me. I inhale purposefully, forcing myself to focus on the fight. Nikoleta raises her hand to keep us still, and I can tell she’s remembering Lady Artemis’s instructions: Don’t let them get in my boar’s way.
“The boar might just do our job for us,” Isidora mutters, her amber eyes frowning at the spectacle of gore before us. Did Artemis truly create this?
But Isidora is right. I grip my knives hard, watching in horror as Atalanta manages to strike the boar’s front leg. With that, the boar tears through the clearing, scattering Greece’s finest warriors like a flock of chickens. Nikoleta curses under her breath and lets her hand fall. Isidora grimaces, but lowers her bow in resignation. Lady Artemis will not need our help protecting her precious monster. I never knew honor was so important to our goddess. I know I will always remember this: the men’s screams echoing through the beautiful forest, the glint of metal blades that never get a strike. This is what Artemis is capable of.
I try hard to detach. This is just a painting. Another epic story, like the ones Isidora tells around the fire. I blink and blink again, surprised at how stoic the girls beside me are. But they’ve been here far longer than me, and Nikoleta is the war god Ares’s daughter, raised in Sparta—an empire built on battle. Maybe this is their normal. Even if they’d been the ones to rescue me from Delphi all those months ago, their apathy bothers me as much as the bloodbath unfolding before us.
The group splits as the boar charges, and I watch as Atalanta and another man dive to one side. The boar swivels madly, and I cannot tell the difference between the men crouched around it—not from back here, not with all their hair dark and their tunics shredded. My stomach churns, but my gaze is pulled by a flash of gold. I jerk my head up, my knives following suit. Atalanta’s running now, diagonally toward us, so fast that I hardly register her motion. Nikoleta hisses at us to get down, and we drop to the earth, half-hidden behind thick brush. Atalanta is close to us—close enough that I think I can hear the heaving breaths ripped from her chest. I peer through the branches, my heart racing. Her back faces the approaching beast, her arms fumbling madly at her quiver. She’s separated from the group, close enough to us that I can see her fingers tremble as she yanks an arrow free. Close enough that I know she’s about to be killed.
Don’t let them get in my boar’s way.
I’m seized by a blinding, panicky anger. Why did these warriors think they could best Artemis? Why did they think they could defeat her boar?
A ferocious, encompassing fury pulls at me and makes me raise my right hand, ignore Nikoleta’s confused glance, and heave it straight at the beast’s chest. It sails with miraculous strength I hadn’t known myself capable of, veering just left of the tree Atalanta presses her back into, and thuds into the boar’s body. The boar unleashes a terrible sound and staggers backward, but the scene is so chaotic, I realize the hunters are too far away to notice my golden blade pierce the monster. Only Atalanta’s eyes are trained on the boar’s wound. I watch, terrified to breathe. Nikoleta and Isidora’s horrified reprimands echo dimly around me, but I stare as Atalanta approaches the beast slowly. I watch her reach for my knife. She wraps her fingers around it, and yanks it out hard.
Atalanta starts to look in our direction, and it’s only Nikoleta’s quick instincts that force me to duck down again. We can’t see anything now, but the silence is clear: we have ruined our goddess’s intentions. I whip my head toward Isidora and Nikoleta. They both wear expressions of shock, betrayal, and—worst of all—fear.
I heave a shuddering breath as the boar’s dying groans penetrate the sun-hazed forest.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. Too stupidly, and too late. I quickly tuck my remaining knife into its sheath, not wanting to see the glint of those golden blades ever again. The leafy canopy paints Isidora and Nikoleta’s torn faces with shadow and light, and I brace myself for their hatred. Tears spring to my eyes, sudden and painful. I have made a ruin of us all.
Isidora reaches out and grabs my shaking hands. “Kahina,” she says gently. “Why did you do that?” Just barely, I think I can sense a strained confusion, a persistent desire to understand an impossible truth. My throat closes up. Why did I do that? I glance helplessly over the top of the brush, and Nikoleta sharply follows my gaze. We both stare at Atalanta, who stands apart from the victorious clan of men circling the monster’s corpse.
“Lady Artemis . . .” Nikoleta coughs. I look to her, and watch as her gaze shifts from the golden-haired girl to me. Something odd glints in her eyes.
“. . . Will kill us?” Isidora offers. Nikoleta swats her friend’s shoulder—but she doesn’t argue. Panic swells up again. I stare at the hands that betrayed me, dark as the thick dust beneath us. They won’t stop shaking, even though Isidora grips them hard. Nikoleta avoids my gaze with surprising efficiency, given our close proximity. She focuses on the broken beast in the clearing ahead, her dark eyes peeling over the scene again and again. Atalanta’s braid has fallen out just slightly, a thin strand brushing against her tanned cheek. She looks shocked—a fraction of how I feel, but she holds my knife so casually that even I start to believe it’s hers. We’re too far to discern their words, but I watch her face morph into something cold. Calculated. With no trace of fear in her eyes, she faces the men surrounding her. I can’t make out the words she speaks, and I don’t need to. She’s taken credit for my strike.
But the jeering lilt of one of the men’s voices makes me freeze. I’m in enough trouble already, but I dare to stare over the brush. I squint hard, and for an instant, I forget that I’ve just risked my own livelihood to save the life of a lying thief. I forget that Atalanta just ruined me, because now I can discern the men, and I wish I couldn’t. It’s been years, but it’s him. My cousin—my kidnapper, I correct myself—stands with his arms crossed, staring at Atalanta with obvious resentment.
I let Isidora’s hands fall as bitterness blooms from my core. Terror follows just as fast, and I duck back down. I stare at the two huntresses crouching beside me, the dirt already browning our white tunics. This is the first time I’ve seen any huntress with fear in her eyes. Behind them, Atalanta’s shoulders are tossed back, her lips twisted in a haughty sneer. Hippomenes tilts his head, and the memory of his sickening green eyes rushes back. My stomach pits.
I shouldn’t have saved Atalanta. I shouldn’t have done this mission at all.
CHAPTER THREE
Atalanta
I cross my arms once I reach Meleager’s side and roll my shoulders back. My legs plant themselves firmly into the blood-soaked earth, and I jerk my chin up. I do everything I can to seem undaunted, unfazed, and utterly composed. Only I can feel how my fingers still tremble. I press them tighter into my body and make myself look at the fallen boar.
Even heaped over on its side, the Calydonian Boar’s body still reaches my eyeline. I have to stare at its bloodied midsection for a few moments just to make sure it isn’t still breathing. Meleager nudges my shoulder with his, and I glance up to him. His mouth is half-upturned in the closest thing to a smile he’d dare to show me in front of the others. Guilt slams into me, and I quickly turn back to the monster at our feet.
The shadows have lengthened and stretched themselves across us. The boar is dead, just like King Oeneus, Meleager’s father, wanted. But something tells me we’ve barely eliminated the evils lurking in between these trees—the foreign feeling of the knife in my hands is a palpable reminder of that. I prefer to at least be able to see my prey.
The men fidget slightly, casting wary glances among themselves. Too many of those suspicious gazes land on me. I’d thought, somewhat naively, that slaying the monster would be the most difficult task for this hunt. But now we have to deal with how to split up the rewards, the spoils, and the honor. Among four renowned warriors and one seventeen-year-old girl. This should
go smoothly.
Meleager clears his throat, somewhat awkwardly. “We know the rules, don’t we?” The men stare back at him like statues. He clears his throat again, and runs his hands through his dark curls. There is no easy way for him to say this. “First blood gets the best spoils.”
Silence settles, and I grip my knife harder, wondering if I’ll have another fight to deal with. Laertes turns to Peleus with a worried glance. Hippomenes keeps his eyes focused on the boar, and they glitter with a contempt that scares me. The towering oak branches above us paint him in patches of shadow and light. Hippomenes’s glare says plenty, but his thin lips stay clamped shut. Tension threads its way through his strong jawline.
I feel the men’s eyes on me like a millstone, but I let my arms hang by my sides, and wrap my fingers as steadily as I can manage around the golden knife’s hilt. I close the distance between myself and the boar, concentrating hard on walking with poise and confidence. I don’t let my fingers shake. I hold the knife firmly, but casually, hoping it will seem like my own. But I have never excelled at close-distance fighting; I can outrun anything, and much prefer to take down my prey from a decent distance with my arrows.
I lower myself onto my knees, the warm dirt soft under my skin. The boar’s head seems even more imposing now that it’s dead; it’s unmoving, and now I can see just how pointed its tusks are. Its lifeless, black eyes glower into mine. I raise the knife and place the blade’s sharpest edge along the base of its neck, just like I’d been taught by . . .
I blink hard, and chase away the memory.
The knife’s hilt feels too foreign and unfamiliar to handle. Its curves don’t fit my hand. Hippomenes begins to laugh—a soft, sinister sound. “You expect us to believe you slew this beast when you cannot even take its hide?”
Rage tears through me, sudden and swift, and I’m up to my feet in an instant. My knife is soaked in blood, and it takes all my restraint to not shove it against his throat. Hippomenes was always against me, even before Meleager invited me along.
His smirk maddens me with its condescension. Before I can fire back, Meleager launches himself between us. Hippomenes is a good few inches taller than the prince, but we both know Meleager is our superior. Meleager believed me so completely, so readily. And now he’s stepping between my knife and a descendant of Poseidon to defend the lies I wove.
“How about you just take a tusk, then?” Meleager asks me.
Laertes raises his hand. “I’d like the other one. I did the bulk of the sword fighting, you know.”
Peleus, his blue eyes rolling, waves him aside. “You just want pretty spoils to show your little boy.”
“Maybe I do!” Laertes shouts back, but he’s hiding a grin. Ugly words don’t always mean ugly feelings. It’s something about these men I’m still getting used to. “Odysseus could keep it once he’s older.”
I can tell their bickering is only beginning, so I kneel back down, wrestling the boar’s enormous hide closer to me. I set to work sawing off the right tusk. It’s unsettling to keep the spoils of a monster I never touched. But if it makes them look at me without all their ridiculous disdain and faithlessness, I will gladly haul the entire beast’s body back to King Oeneus’s palace.
In the same spot, Meleager decides to set up camp for the night. The sun vanishes by the time I can finally break off my tusk, and none of us are eager to embark on the days-long trek back to the palace. Even if that means sleeping under the shadows of the boar’s dead body.
Peleus has already nodded off, curled up beneath a throng of olive trees. Meleager heaves himself up to his feet with a groan. Hippomenes glances up at him with thinly veiled annoyance.
“I should make a fire for us,” Meleager says, his eyes already locked on the darkness between the trees. “I’ll fetch some wood.”
“I’ll go with you,” I add, hauling myself up after him.
Hippomenes gives Laertes another pointed look, and I wonder if I’ve made a fool of us both. But Meleager’s face lights up, and his lips certainly look beautiful in that smile, wide and effortless.
I follow him, his silhouette a welcome presence against the elusiveness in these trees. I keep hold of the knife. Its owner is out here somewhere. Through the dark, I barely see Meleager falter and turn back to me.
“You did so well,” he says, keeping his voice soft so the others won’t hear. “I knew I was right to ask you along.”
“Thank you,” I whisper. My pride swells, even though I know I don’t deserve it. Stars and moonlight cut through the leaves above, washing us in jagged lines of silver glow. I remember the moment I’d first run into him—literally—in the woods outside of the king’s palace. He’d been the first person I’d spoken to in a long time, and it took me several tries just to string together a coherent sentence for him. His soul-cutting eyes and princely status hadn’t helped.
But he’d made it so easy. I’d found myself learning to make conversation again. To trust a man again. And he’d found himself with the fastest runner he’d ever heard of, and the most precise archer he’d ever dreamt of.
It hadn’t surprised me to find out he was the prince of Calydon, helping his father find those who might slay an unslayable monster. He’d let me follow him into the city, and when we strode into the palace—all soaring towers and marble pillars—he quickly befriended the legendary Laertes of Ithaca, the quick-witted Peleus of Phthia, and somewhat unfortunately, the ruthless pirate Hippomenes, whose only redeeming quality was direct ancestry to one of our most powerful gods, the divine controller of oceans and earthquakes. When he introduced himself as the grandson of Poseidon, Meleager couldn’t say no.
After acquiring Tydeus, he’d shocked me by turning around and inviting me along. He’d promised riches, wealth, and fame. I’d latched onto the last prize. Money and treasure could be given and stolen, but reputation? That had to be earned and worked for. And this mission was my chance to get it.
“You slew the Calydonian Boar,” Meleager says, shaking his head. It bounces his dark curls in a delightful movement.
“You don’t have to keep reminding me,” I retort. I yank a mostly dead branch from a tree on my left, though I’m fairly certain we both know firewood isn’t on our minds.
“Atalanta!” Meleager laughs softly, and walks closer to me—too close. I lean back instinctively, and he quickly raises his hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s okay.” I close my eyes and shove out a breath. “I’m okay.”
“Are you certain?”
I glance up at him, but my eyes only make it as far as his lips. Maybe subconsciously, I realize I’m moving slightly toward him. He doesn’t move a muscle, forward or backward. His dark eyes take on the moon’s silver light, and then I’m so close that I can feel his breath against my parted lips.
Something primal tells me to close the distance. To put my mouth over his. I brace my hands on his shoulders, but I can’t make myself move any farther. And I know he won’t, unless I tell him it’s all right.
I want him to, almost desperately, but I know even now that I would ask myself every day for the rest of my life: am I actually good? Did he invite me for my talents or my beauty? Did he believe in me, or did he want me to think he did?
This time, I say, “I’m sorry.”
He smiles sadly, like I’ve delivered a blow he’d seen coming. It still doesn’t answer any of my questions. “I’ll bring in the rest of the firewood,” Meleager says.
I nod silently, then remove my hands from his shoulders. I retrace our steps alone, until I return to camp. Nobody says or does anything to acknowledge my return, unless Hippomenes’s perpetual glare at me counts. The silvery light paints him cold and distant.
I lower myself to the dirt as far from him as I can and pull out the shawl I keep in my quiver. Too aware of his eyes on me the whole time, I spread it out and smooth out every
wrinkle. I slowly lean down into it, the fabric the only thing separating my head from the earth below.
I’d hoped that finally getting the sleep we all needed so desperately would help ease the tension. But before my eyes even adjust to the bright morning sun peeking through the trees, a heavy strain takes hold of my limbs. Hippomenes glares across the heap of ashes that used to be a fire, as if his eyes haven’t closed at all.
I push myself onto my elbows and do my best to ignore him. My legs protest, stiff and sore, but I make myself stand. Even though Peleus and Laertes still slumber, I won’t have anyone thinking I’m lazy. The weak light of morning strains through the trees, and I blink hard, scanning our surroundings. I need water, and my stomach is tearing itself apart.
“Sleep well?”
I fight a smile at the sound of Meleager’s voice, and shrug at him over my shoulder. He stands just behind me, remarkably refreshed, with a new sage-colored tunic draping across his shoulders.
“And yourself?”
He answers by tossing me his canteen, and I readily drink as many sips as I deem appropriate. And then a few more. The water slides down easily, smooth and crisp. I glance at him as I drink. His dark eyes roam the forest floor, and his hands are clenched.
“Bad dreams?” I whisper. He cuts his gaze to mine, and I’m almost sorry I asked. He struggles with them often—too often—but he hates to acknowledge it. Meleager nods once and drops my gaze. He steps forward, past me, well into the circle of men. Hippomenes’s green eyes alternate between me and the prince.
Outrun the Wind Page 2
