Wither & Wound

by Demitria Lunetta

  Metis leans forward. “What is it you want?”

  “I want to see my sister. I want to talk with her and find out what she thinks about all this.”

  I hold my breath afraid she’ll say no. But instead the concern melts from her face. “Is that all? Good lord, I thought you were going to demand immortality.” Metis laughs. “Yes, yes. I’ll arrange for you to sneak into her cell. Come back after breakfast.”

  I stand, and a shaky laugh escapes me. “That’s it, then? I can see her tonight?”

  “Didn’t I just say so?” She pulls some papers closer and bends to them. “Close the door on your way out, won’t you?”

  “Thank you,” I say softly as I close the door behind me.

  Later, as I make my way back to Metis, I run into Greg. “Edie.” He stops me, studies me. “Cassie wouldn't tell me what is going on but I know something is up. I want to help.”

  I shake my head. “You can't help, Greg."

  He starts to protest but I brush past him. I hate leaving him in the dark, but it’s safer for him. When I push my way into Metis’s office I’m surprised to find Fern there as well. She gives me a little wave as Metis hustles us down the hall to her lab.

  “Fern tells me the two of you are friends,” she says to me. “That’s good. It will make this all a bit more comfortable, I’m sure.”

  “Make what more comfortable?” I ask.

  Fern looks at me and shrugs. So she’s in the dark as well.

  Metis doesn’t answer until we’re in the lab with the door closed and securely locked. Then moving toward a giant cauldron at the center of the room, she answers, “You’ll need to switch faces, of course. It’s really quite simple. Fern has access to your sister and you do not.”

  “Oh.” Fern’s hands go to her cheeks, like she’s protecting her face from whatever this process is going to be.

  “Um…does it hurt?” I ask.

  “Well,” Metis says, tossing a piece of dried leaf into the cauldron. “It will essentially reshape your facial structure so…yes. Come here, dear,” she says, smiling sweetly at Fern, who gulps.

  “You don’t have to,” I say, quickly.

  “Oh, it won’t hurt her,” Metis says, smiling. “You, on the other hand…”

  Metis submerges a dipper in the cauldron, and pours a steaming, bright pink liquid into a flask. Handing it to Fern, she instructs her. “Take a mouthful, swish it around, then spit back into the cup.”

  Ewwww. I mean, I like Fern a lot, but I didn’t know backwash was going to be part of the deal. Still, when Metis hands the flask over to me, the foaming liquid smells pleasant, like bubble gum.

  “Bottoms up,” I say, nodding to Fern before draining it down.

  It pools in my belly, warm and heavy. I belch, and a bit of colorful mist exits my lips. “Excuse me,” I say, bringing my hand to my mouth. But under my fingers I can feel my face shifting, moving…stretching.

  “Ouch,” I cry, my hands now traveling over my whole face, where I can feel my hairline rearranging itself, my cheeks tightening, my eye sockets shrinking. It feels like my skin should be torn open but it’s not; it only rolls under my fingers as the bones beneath my face travel.

  The pain drives me to my knees, and my hair falls across my face…but it’s not my hair. It’s Fern’s long and straight locks. I think I’m about to pass out—or maybe even puke—when it’s over. Shuddering, I climb to my feet, and Fern gasps, her hands once more going to her own face.

  “Whoa,” I say, when I glance into the mirror.

  I’m not there. It’s Fern’s lips matching my words, even if it’s not her voice.

  “I’ve never seen it done before,” Fern says, coming over to me, running her hands wonderingly through my hair.

  “It’s a terribly complicated spell,” Metis says, with a sniff. “I’ve had graduates attempt it, only to turn themselves into a pile of arms and legs. Took forever to sort that out. I never was sure we got the pieces put in entirely the right places. You humans all look so funny on the inside.”

  She slaps her knee, once again amused at something rather hideous.

  “Well, hurry along,” she motions me forward with both hands. “That spell will only last so long. Fern, stay here with me so no one spots you together. Besides, I need help organizing the fingernail clippings from this year’s crop of healers.”

  Only too glad to leave, I slip out the door. I knew that fingernail clippings and hair play a big part in some of the healing arts, but I mostly try not to think too much about everything my witch friends go through to practice their skill.

  I slip across campus, reminding myself that I don’t have to stick to the shadows. I’m not Edie anymore. I’m Fern, and Fern has the night shift. Checking in on a prisoner would be entirely routine. A shifter guard—one I’ve spotted before in Nico’s training pack—gives me a nod but doesn’t meet my eyes. Fern draws no remark from him, so I move forward, remembering the instructions she had given me.

  Mavis is being kept in the dungeon. The smell of damp stones and mildew grows heavier as I descend, the walls on either side of the twisting stone staircase getting wetter. There’s a light below, sconces lining the hall of the deepest level. I come to the bottom, the smoke from the fires making my eyes water. Which is all for the better, I’m already tearing up at the thought of Mavis being kept down here.

  “Here for the cat bitch?” another guard asks. There’s two flanking the staircase, both of them decent-sized. I want to strike out at them, shift into a dragon and ash their asses right now. But that wouldn’t get Mavis out of her cell, or the magic collar from her neck. Killing them would just put two more bodies on my count, and I’m dedicated to not raising that any higher.

  I simply nod, turning to the right, where Fern told me Mavis was being kept in the very last cell. The guard’s voices fade as I make my way, the flickering light of the sconces barely lighting a path for me.

  “Fern?” Mavis’s voice is dull, scratchy, like she’s had a sore throat her whole life. Of course, it probably feels that way—all the screams…

  I shake my head. “No, it’s me, Edie.”

  “What?” Mavis comes to the bars, her hands closing around them, the chains clinking together. “How?”

  There’s hope in her voice, but also suspicion. Mavis wasn’t an excellent spy for no reason.

  “Why do fish live in salt water?” she asks, prompting me with the joke from her latest note. Like all the others, they’re from our dad’s never-ending treasure trove of middle school principal jokes. He used to read them over the morning announcements every day, making the kids laugh. Although it was usually at him, not the joke.

  “Because pepper makes them sneeze,” I say. And relief floods my sister’s face. She reaches through the bars, running her fingers over my cheekbones.

  “Fern looks good on you,” she says.

  “Don’t tell Marguerite,” I shoot back, and she smiles through her tears.

  “Edie, what are you doing down here? That spell can’t last forever. It’s not worth risking your—”

  “Mr. Zee is my father,” I tell her, and her smile immediately falls. “Did Fern tell you—?”

  “The prophecy, yes, of course. Zee is worried that some long-lost bastard child is going to come along and kill him.” Mavis laughs, but there’s no mirth in it. “Edie…”

  “There’s more,” I say, talking fast. She’s right, I won’t look like Fern forever, and this is supposed to be a quick medical checkup, not a heart to heart. The guards at the end of the hall will get curious if I take too long.

  “Cassie had a vision, a prophecy from long ago about three parts of a weapon that Metis had Hephaestus forge in order to kill Zeus, after he left her. Nothing like a scorned woman, I guess.”

  Mavis’s hands are fists now, clenched tightly on the bars of her cell. “And?”

  “Those three parts…they’re at the three different academies. I found the hilt of a sword, behind” —I swallow thickly�
�“behind my mother’s portrait in the Hall of the Dead.”

  “And the other two?”

  I nod my head. “Metis knows where the one at Amazon Academy is. I haven’t looked yet for the one at Underworld Academy. I don’t know if I want to.” I gulp, knowing my sister won’t like what I’m going to say next. “Mavis, I don’t think I can kill anyone.”

  “What?” Mavis pulls away from the bars. “You did a pretty good job at the Spring Fling.”

  “Yes, but…” I struggle, looking for words. “When I’m a dragon it’s easier. I’m myself, but also something else entirely. An animal with a much less nuanced view of justice. Killing just makes sense when I’ve shifted.”

  Mavis nods. She knows what I mean about becoming an animal; I’ve seen her lick her own rear end clean in cat form.

  “But you don’t think you can when you’re human,” Mavis finishes for me. “And you have to be human to wield a sword.”

  “Well, I mean yeah, there’s that,” I say, surprised that she’s still not getting the point. “But also...I don’t think I really want to kill Zee.”

  “Why the Hades not?” Mavis asks, her voice rising high enough that I shush her while glancing back down the hall toward the guards. “Edie.” She drops her voice, but emotion throbs in every word. “He might be your father, biologically, but he’s the real monster here, not the ones we’ve been fighting for years.”

  “We’re not even really doing that anymore—” I start, but Mavis interrupts me.

  “Do you know the things he’s ordered?” she asks. “The lives ended just because he didn’t like someone’s comment at dinner? And that’s if you say the wrong thing. You can also be the wrong thing. Just wait. He’ll kill all the Moggies before he’s done.”

  I nod. I know she’s right.

  Now, she can’t resist slipping back into all-knowing big-sister mode.

  “Dad told me about MOA when I turned eighteen,” she says.

  “Yes, Mavis. I know,” I control the urge to roll my eyes. But just barely. It’s amazing that she’s behind bars, suffering, trapped, on the verge of death—and yet, Mavis can still push my buttons. “Dad told you first. We’ve covered this already.”

  “Right, but he didn’t tell me everything. I knew we were shifters, but that was all. I vowed to come back here and do everything I could to free the students from being used as human shields for the gods.”

  Her voice is low, but intense. And her eyes nearly spark with passion for her cause. Clearly, life behind bars has only increased her desire to stop the gods. And I don’t think at this point that it’s all about justice for the monsters—or the students. It’s pretty clear that for Mavis, her cause is now more personal than ever.

  I don’t understand why I don’t feel the same way. After Dad and Grandma died, I was all about vengeance.

  Or maybe that was just the handy excuse I needed to come here. If I’m honest with myself, what I really wanted was to find out why Dad died. As if that would bring him back. Instead, it sometimes feels like the more I learn, the further away I get from him.

  But it’s not like I have some fantasy of Mr. Zee becoming my new dad. Of wiping away my tears or walking me down the aisle someday or shit like that. He’s obviously horrible. Epically horrible.

  And yet...aren’t the Greeks famous for stories about mistaken parentage? It always leads to killing, which pretty quickly gets ugly and messy in a way that can chop the family tree down until only a stump is left. Those are the tragedies. And I’d prefer to move into the comedy portion of my life sometime soon.

  I don’t say any of this to Mavis, of course. I’m still trying to sort it all out for myself.

  “Edie, if you can’t do this, then find a way to get me out of here, and I’ll get that sword and put it right through Mr. Zee’s black heart,” Mavis says, breaking into my thoughts.

  I raise my head, unsure which part of this to tackle first.

  “You can’t do it, Mavis. You’re not Zeus’s bastard child,” I tell her. “My mom was a student—Adrianna Aspostolos. She had a thing with Mr. Zee.” I clench my fists, remembering what I saw. Then I look up at Mavis. This is the part I’ve been dreading sharing with her. “Your mom was a student too. Her name was Bella Demopolous. You look a lot like her. But the thing is...Mr. Zee isn’t your father. We’re not sisters. We’re not even related.”

  I’m crying now, the last word coming out as a sob. I stifle it with my hand, my fingers closing over the unfamiliar contours of Fern’s lips.

  But Mavis’s face has gone hard, the glitter in her eyes is now a cold flicker. “And who is my father?”

  “Hermes,” I whisper, and she backs away from the bars, into the shadow of her cell.

  “That son of a bitch,” she says, and I can hear tears in her voice. I give her a moment, wiping my own cheeks dry.

  “Besides,” I go on, hoping to build my case. “Themis says that if Mr. Zee dies, nobody will have control over the minor gods. There’ll be all sorts of natural disasters and stuff. Like, end of the world scenario.”

  There’s a huff from the shadows. “Bullshit. Have you seen the state Zeus is in right now? He couldn’t control a flock of sheep, let alone all the other gods. That’s just propaganda. A rumor I bet Zee started to protect himself.”

  I’m quiet, mulling that over.

  “Edie.” Mavis’s voice comes from the darkness, heavy and cold. “You have to do this. You have to kill Zeus. Do it for your mother. Do it for the Moggies. Do it for me.”

  “I can’t,” I tell her, shaking my head. “I just can’t.”

  Mavis steps back into the light, her sleeves pushed up past her elbows. “Tell me that again,” she says, holding her arms out. I can see burn marks, old and new, scarring and scabs lining the soft inner flesh of her arms.

  She lifts her hair, turning in a circle so that I can see the bruise around her neck, evidence that she’d been hanged…but not for long enough to kill her. Just torture her. Her ruined voice makes a sudden, horrible sense, and I reach for her through the bars.

  “No,” she ducks past my reach, and her tone isn’t the older sister I know. It’s something deeper, and harder. It belongs to the person who could dig out Nico’s eye and leave him for dead.

  “You have to do this, Edie,” she says, pulling back into the dark once more. “He’s already ordered my death.”

  “You’ll get a trial—”

  “Oh yes,” she laughs, a scratchy, horrible sound. “A trial that he will preside over. He wants me dead. And if you do nothing—soon, I will be.”

  I back away trying to avoid her words. But they find me. The hit me like an arrow to the heart.

  “Are we no longer sisters? Is that it? Mr. Zee is your blood now. So what does that make me?”

  “Mavis, no,” I protest, tears now falling in earnest. “Of course, we’re still sisters. Always. Forever.”

  Mavis says nothing for a long moment. She just studies me, as if weighing my words. “If I’m still your sister, prove it.” She reaches through the bars and grabs my shirt, pulling me close. With her breathe warm on my face, she whispers the truth.

  “You kill Zeus, or you kill me.”

  13

  “Oh my gods,” Cassie says an hour later, her arms around me as I cry on the floor of her dorm room. “That’s horrible.”

  “I know,” I say, wiping my eyes—returned to their rightful shape and color now that Metis’s spell has worn off. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Cassie’s mouth goes into a thin line. “Wrong. You know exactly what to do. We have to get the rest of the weapon pieces. You said yourself, you don’t have to kill Mr. Zee. Just get him to step down and agree to let Mavis go.”

  I wipe my nose. Everything Cassie says seems to make sense, here in her warm, brightly lit room. The dungeons got to me in the small amount of time I was there, making everything seem bleak, all my choices bad ones.

  No wonder Mavis seemed so different. She’s been down there a
long time. The whole being tortured thing probably hasn’t helped her attitude either.

  “So…” Cassie reaches under her bed, producing the Seer Stone.

  “No,” I say, emphatically shaking my head. “You said—”

  “That I didn’t like how it made me feel, and what it made me see,” Cassie says. “It’s still true, I don’t. But you know what else I don’t like? Everything that is happening to my best friend. I can’t just sit here and hold you while you cry, Edie. I have to do something.”

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” Cassie says, but her voice has lost some of its conviction. Even so, she closes her fist around the stone.

  Immediately, her mouth drops open, and her eyes roll back.

  “Wait!” I shout. I hadn’t meant for her to do it right away. But she’s already gone, in a trance. I thread my fingers with hers, holding both her hands tight. A small sigh escapes her, and a familiar voice comes out of her mouth, one I haven’t heard since that terrible day of the tsunami.

  “If you touch my granddaughter, I’ll tear you to pieces!” It’s the voice of my grandmother, a harpy in disguise who gave up her life to protect me. She died in an elevator fall on the same day my dad was swept out to sea.

  This isn’t the prophecy I need. This is something else.

  “Cassie!” I cry, shaking her. The stone rolls from her hand, and her mouth snaps shut, eyes rolling to the front. She sags against my shoulder, barely able to keep herself upright.

  “You shouldn’t have touched me,” she says weakly. “I saw a flash of something—but then you grabbed my hands and it was…I could hear you, Edie. I could hear you yelling. There was the ocean, and a great face made of water. Levi, just like you always said. He took your Dad and you…”

  Her eyes clear for a second, focus on me. She puts her hands on both sides of my face. “You were so scared! I’m so sorry you had to see that. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”