The forest pressed close around me, dense and watchful, the air damp with loam and the resinous bite of pine. I moved where the undergrowth whispered lowest and the moonlight broke into scattered coins across the moss. Ahead, the vanguard’s rhythmic march had already softened into distance. I had slipped from the western line with a nod to the scout captain, and then farther, testing the edge of what would be considered initiative and what would be called a mistake. My breath stayed light, controlled. Every step was a decision. Every prickle along my spine felt like a hand guiding me forward.

The stories of the Manticore said you knew when it was near by the silence it dragged behind it, a sudden emptiness where insects should sing. The woods around me were not silent. A nightjar trilled. A fox barked twice, far off. The wind drew through the needles and made a soft hush, like the sound of a thousand blades being slid from their sheaths. I slowed. If the beast had come this way, it had not disturbed much. No broken branches. No strange spines buried in bark. I crouched, fingers brushing the dark soil. Cold damp seeped into my skin.

I straightened, scanning the trees. A pulse moved through the dark—faint, like a heartbeat beneath a breastplate. Not sound. Light. I caught it again between two trunks, a pale wash that glowed and then dimmed. My fingers tightened around my spear. I knew the routes. There was no trail to the north that matched the scouting reports, no path to the ravine where the Manticore supposedly laired. But there was this. It made no sense and yet it pulled at me. I angled toward it, the leather of my armor creaking softly as I slipped through a copse of young firs.

The glow strengthened with each step until the trees thinned and the ground opened into a clearing I had never seen on any map. It was perfect, a circle carved into the forest, the grass unnaturally lush, each blade painted with silver by the light that rose from the earth itself. It was not moonlight; the sky was shrouded by clouds. This radiance had no source I could name. It felt like standing too close to a forge and finding the heat was cool.

I paused at the fringe, half-hidden behind a beech whose leaves trembled though the air was still. My heart hammered in that place low in my ribs where fear and excitement become the same thing. There were footprints in the grass, pressed deep and recent. Human. No at-last familiar, clawed pattern to match a lion’s forepaws or a scorpion’s tail dragging a cruel line. My mouth went dry.

A figure stood at the center of the light, cloaked, hood up, her back to me. The cloak was dark, but it drank the glow and softened at the edges so she looked like she had been sketched there and might be erased if I blinked. She was still. Too still. No animal fidgeting. No shifting of weight. The stillness of a statue.

I slid my feet apart, lowering my center. I set the butt of my spear carefully on the ground and raised the point, lining the gleaming tip with the space between her shoulders. The urge to call out warred with every instinct I had to remain unseen. The Amazons are shadows until we strike. But I had been placed in the path of the storm, and storms were not quiet things.

“Turn,” I said, low, command threaded through the murmur. My voice barely disturbed the leaves, yet it seemed to travel cleanly to the center of the clearing.

She obeyed as if the word were a rope. Slowly, she turned. The hood did not shift. I caught the pale line of a chin, the suggestion of a mouth. The light rose and fell again, as if taking a breath with her. My grip tightened. I should have called for my sisters, signaled with the reed whistle at my belt. Instead, I stepped into the clearing.

The sensation was immediate. The shining grass brushed my calves like a cool tongue. The air thickened, soft against my skin, a caress I hadn’t been prepared for. Every hair on my arms lifted. My nipples hardened against the leather, and heat flared through me, sudden and electric. I swallowed it down and kept moving, spear steady, each step measured.

“Are you the lure?” I asked. “Or the hunter?”

Her chin tilted at the sound of my voice. I saw a small smile curve beneath the hood. It was not cruel. It was the smile someone wears when they have waited a long time and the waiting is finally over. I felt it like a pressure behind my breastbone.

“Closer,” she said softly.

The word ran over my skin and made me ache. I took another step because I wanted to and because I didn’t know how not to.

She lifted her hands, slow and deliberate, and pushed the hood back. The glow struck the planes of her face and turned them to something I could not readily name—beauty tempered by sorrow, strength that felt anchored in centuries. Her hair did not fall in glossy waves; it was bound back beneath a band of dark metal etched with sigils that pricked at my eyes when I tried to read them. Even bound, the shapes beneath writhed as if alive, a subtle undulation that sent a shiver through me.

My mouth parted. My spear point dipped a fraction, a movement so small it would have gone unnoticed by anyone not looking for it. She was not a villager, not a witch in the night markets of Mykonos. She was something the old women spoke of over fires drunk on mead, while the youngest pretended not to listen and listened anyway.

I felt the name form in my mouth like a secret I had known all my life without speaking. It tasted of iron and salt.

“Medusa,” I whispered. The light surged once, as if in answer. Her eyes, hidden behind lashes too thick and dark for a mortal woman, lifted to mine and held.

For a heartbeat I forgot to breathe. The band across her brow held tight the restless shapes that wanted to unfurl, the metal gleaming dully with runes that seemed to drink the light. Beneath it, faint movements pulsed as if each serpent breathed in time with her. The fact of her—this woman from the old, cruel stories—stood inches from me, and none of it fit cleanly in my mind.

“You expected claws and stinger,” she said, voice low and even. “You came to kill something. And here I am.”

“You lured us,” I said. I meant for it to sound like an accusation. It came out almost like a question.

Her mouth softened. “I lured you,” she corrected, eyes steady. “Just you.”

My pulse stumbled. The clearing felt closer, the air thicker. I adjusted my grip on the spear to hide the tremor that ran through my hand. Up close, the details of her face were wrong for a monster. There were faint lines at the corners of her eyes. A small scar lifted the edge of one brow. Her lips were full and unpainted. When she took a breath, I saw the slow rise of her chest beneath the cloak, the suggestion of strong shoulders hidden in cloth.

“Do not look directly—” I began, but she lifted a hand, palm open.

“I will not harm you,” she said. “Not unless you force me.”

“Force you?” My mouth felt dry. “You think I can force you?”

“You do not know what you can do,” she answered, and there was a thread of something like tenderness in it that rattled me.

I swallowed hard and stepped close enough that the tip of my spear could touch the band at her brow if I leaned. The sigils hummed against my skin without even making contact. The movement beneath it quickened, an eager stirring, and she flinched, the first break in her composure.

“May I?” I asked before I understood I meant to say it. My free hand lifted, palm up, inches from the band.

Her eyes searched my face. “Careful,” she said, the word a warning and a plea.

I eased my fingers forward until they hovered above the cool metal. The air between us carried her warmth, a clean, salt-washed scent that made something low in my belly tighten. I should have asked questions. I should have kept my distance. Instead, my fingertips found the edge of the band and traced it, following the line along her temple to where it was secured behind her ear. The skin there was soft. She shivered under my touch, a small, involuntary tremor that answered the one traveling down my spine.

“Athena’s craft,” she said, voice unsteady for the first time. “Twisted back on itself. It binds what I am, narrows it to a point. So I can choose.”

“Choose what?”

“Who I look at. Who I turn to stone. Who I do not.” Her eyes held mine, unblinking, a challenge and a promise.

Heat crawled across my throat and pooled between my legs, an ache that surprised me with its insistence. I was aware of every inch of my own body—the stretch of leather over my breasts, the chafe of the strap across my waist, the pulse low and heavy. I dared myself to hold her gaze and did, watching the subtle dilation of her pupils, the way she shifted closer, so close that the front of her cloak brushed my thighs.

“Why me?” I asked, voice gone quiet.

“Because you walk toward danger,” she said. “Because your queen put you in the storm and you smiled at the thunder. Because I needed someone who would listen even with a blade in their hand.” Her eyes flicked to my spear, then back. “And because when you stepped into my circle, you felt it too.”

Her honesty hit me harder than any blow. My hand moved of its own will, sliding from the band to her cheek. I cupped it, testing the reality of her. Her skin was warm, smooth under my palm. She leaned into it like a woman starved for contact. Her lips parted. When I brushed my thumb across the corner of her mouth, she let out a breath that touched my wrist and made me tremble.

“Careful,” she murmured again, but she did not pull away.

“I’m not afraid,” I said. It was almost true.

She reached up slowly, giving me time to stop her, and wrapped her fingers around my wrist. Her touch was firm, grounding. Her thumb stroked the inside of my arm, finding the place where my pulse beat fast. The sensation skittered hot through me. She drew my hand down, away from the band, away from what could not be undone, and pressed my palm flat over her sternum beneath the fall of her cloak. I felt the steady thud of her heartbeat, strong and mortal against my skin.

“Believe this,” she said quietly. “I brought you here to speak. Not to kill.”

The light bled into a softer glow, as if the clearing itself exhaled. My spear felt suddenly heavy, a thing that belonged to a different moment. I eased it back, lowering the tip until it pointed at the ground.

“That is your choice,” I said, feeling the hitch in my own breath. “But if you lied—”

“I know,” she said. A small, almost wry smile touched her lips. “I have seen Amazons fight. I would not lie to you and expect to live.”

Her fingers remained around my wrist, her chest lifting under my palm. The closeness of her unraveled me in slow strands. I stepped nearer, shoulder brushing the fabric at her shoulder, the scent of her flooding my senses. Her gaze dropped to my mouth and rose again. The tiny serpents beneath the band stirred, restless and curious, a ripple that tugged at the roots of my hair.

“Then speak,” I said. “And keep your eyes on me.”

She did. And for a long breath we stood there, the air between us tight with something both dangerous and unbearably gentle, the first words not yet spoken and everything already changed.

“The Manticore,” she said at last, her voice steadying, “was a story I needed you to follow. A scent trail for hunters who would come. I wanted you.”

My grip on her shifted. The beat under my palm thudded harder. “You set it loose?” I asked, heat rising in my chest. “You let it tear through fields to bait us?”

“No,” she answered, immediate and fierce. “I planted rumors. I guided panic. I steered your scouts away from where the true threat feeds. The Manticore you hunt is real. But not here. Not tonight.” She searched my face. “I would not throw the innocent to teeth to get your attention.”

I hated how much relief washed through me. “Words,” I said, because I was supposed to be hard with suspicion. My hand did not leave her chest. I liked the feel of her there, real and alive.

“You feel me breathing,” she said, almost gently. “So listen. There is a demigod stirring monsters in their graves. Lykaon. He twists them, makes them savage beyond their natures, then looses them where wounds will be deepest. Your queen’s attention is a blade he would like to turn. I need you to know who sharpens it.”

I swallowed, each word slotting into a net that tightened around everything I thought I knew. “And your gaze?” I asked. The question came out hushed. “The curse?”

Her mouth flattened for a second. “It is not a lantern that burns whatever it touches,” she said. “It is a blade. I choose where to set the edge. Athena bound it after the world learned to fear my face. She made me a mirror to her cruelty. I learned to bend what she made to my will.” She lifted her free hand, slow, and touched the band. The small bodies beneath it eased, as if soothed. “I can open my eyes and not turn you to stone. I can look at you and keep you soft and warm and breathing.” She dipped her head, closer. “Do you believe me?”

The question trembled between us. I studied the line of her throat, the hollow at its base, the way a tiny pulse fluttered there. My hand slid to the side, over her collarbone, my thumb grazing skin where her cloak gaped. The texture of her—smooth, living, fine hairs lifting under my touch—dragged a low ache through my belly. I wanted to trust her and I wanted to test every boundary she had drawn.

“You could prove it,” I said, my voice rougher than I meant it to be.

Her eyes darkened. “I am proving it,” she whispered. “I am looking at you now.”

A shiver raced over me. I realized I had been staring into the shadow of her lashes, not daring to stand in the full weight of her gaze. I lifted my chin and let her have me. Her pupils widened as if she had stepped into me and found more than she expected. Nothing in me hardened into stone. Instead, everything softened and flooded at once—breasts tight against my cuirass, stomach fluttering, a deep wet heat between my thighs that made standing very still feel like a confession.

My breath left me in a small sound. Her fingers tightened on my wrist, not to restrain, but to anchor. “See?” she said softly.

My free hand slid down, found her waist under the cloak, the curve of it strong and womanly. I tugged her a fraction closer. The front of her robe brushed my thigh, and the friction made my nerves jump. “You wanted me,” I said, a challenge and a truth. “Not my sisters. Not my queen.”

“I wanted the one who would walk into light that frightened her and refuse to look away,” she said. “I wanted the one who would touch me like this and know I was not a story.” Her gaze dropped to my mouth again, lingered. “May I?”

The question knocked something loose in me. I leaned in first, closing the distance. Her lips were warm and soft, then firm when I pressed. She made a low sound that I felt in my palm where it lay over her heart. The kiss was deliberate, not frantic, but it fed something that had been starving in both of us. When her tongue touched mine, careful at first, my whole body answered. I opened to her and she deepened it, angling my jaw with gentle fingers. The band at her brow thrummed like a held note, and the tiny serpents beneath it stirred, curious, a friction that tugged at my scalp as if some part of me reached toward them.

I stepped into her fully, thighs brushing, chest to chest. The leather of my armor scraped softly, and she drew in a breath at the contact, as if the constraint of it excited her. Her hand slipped under the edge of my cuirass, finding bare skin at my waist. Her palm was hot. The touch made me gasp into her mouth. Every nerve there sparked. My hips tilted without my permission, seeking more of that heat, the ache between my legs heavy and insistent.

She broke the kiss with a small, reluctant sound, pressing her forehead to mine. “I have control,” she said, breath fanning my lips. “Over my eyes. Over this.” Her hand at my waist flexed, thumb stroking the side of my belly, a promise and a test. “But we should speak before we lose the path.”

I wanted to drag her back down, to chase the edge we had found until it melted into something that would make me forget my name. Duty coiled tight and stubborn instead. I nodded, though my breathing didn’t settle. “Tell me how to find him,” I said. “Tell me why Lykaon needs us divided.”

Her mouth, swollen now, curved. She kept her hand where it was, a steady brand on my skin. “Because together you are harder to break,” she said. “Because he thinks fear will blind you to the ally in front of you.” She drew back enough to meet my gaze full on again. The green in her eyes was deep and clear and did not turn me to stone. “I will guide you to his rot. I will show you where it blooms in the soil, where it eats the minds of beasts. But you must go back to your camp and tell your queen that the Manticore is not the wound. It is the bandage he wants you to tear.”

I licked my swollen lip, tasted her there, and forced my voice steady. “She won’t believe you.”

“She will not have to,” Medusa said. “She only has to believe you.” Her thumb stroked my skin again, slow, as if reminding me I had a body and choices to make with it. “And if she refuses, then we will find another way.”

The clearing seemed to listen as we breathed. I let my hand fall from her chest, fingers dragging over the line of her breast through the cloak, a touch I should not have taken and didn’t regret. Her breath hitched, a small, helpless sound that answered something in me.

“Show me what you can show me now,” I said, voice gone low. “Proof. A sign I can carry back that is more than a tale and a kiss.”

Her smile was brief and real. She lifted her hand from my waist and reached past me, palm open to the dim air. The glow around us bent, threads of it drawing to her skin as if the light itself obeyed. The sigils on her band warmed under my gaze, and the movement beneath it settled, attentive.

“Watch,” she said. “And keep your eyes on me.”

Light beaded across her palm, gathering like dew, then braided itself into a thin thread that stretched toward the earth. She guided it with her fingers until it sank into the soil at our feet. The clearing answered. The ground shivered and a small patch of moss blackened, veins of darkness spidering outward in a pattern that made my stomach clench. The air cooled, the scent turning sour for a heartbeat before the light pulsed and retreated, searing the rot back into dormancy. The black remained, a warning burned into green.

“This is the trace he leaves,” she said, voice low. “Lykaon’s touch. It blooms near water and under old roots. It makes prey smell like enemies and monsters smell like storms.”

I knelt, my fingers hovering over the darkened moss. Cold bled up from it, wrong and hungry. “You said demigod,” I murmured, glancing up. “He is not just a hunter?”

“He was a king once,” she said. “A son of a god who learned to love the taste of fear. He cannot make life, so he spoils it. He bargains with old things. He promises them teeth and rage, then shackles them with his will.” Her gaze flicked to my mouth again and back. “He wants you to waste yourselves on the surface of his plans.”

I stood and closed the distance between us, the need to feel something living erasing the chill of the rot. I took her face in my hands, and for a breath we only breathed each other. “You brought me here to see this,” I said. “But also to ask for more.”

She didn’t prevaricate. “I want an alliance,” she said, plain and steady. “With you. With your queen. With your sisters who would rather cut me down than hear me. I want a vow forged in necessity, not softness. He will come for my sanctuary when he is done testing himself on your shields. I have kept my island safe with wards and warnings, but this time the sea won’t be enough.”

It should have made me bristle—the audacity of a monster asking for the loyalty of Amazons. Instead, I felt the surety of her honesty like a hand sliding up my spine. “You think we can do it together,” I said. The word together thrummed through me, anchored by the memory of her mouth on mine. “You and I.”

Her hands found my hips, light at first, then firmer when I didn’t pull away. “I know we can,” she said. “He underestimates what binds women who choose each other. He thinks you will not listen to me because of what I am. He thinks I will not lower my head to walk under your banners. He does not understand pride that kneels by choice.”

Heat curled low in me at the way she held me there, not trapping, not pleading, but offering. I tipped my head and kissed her again. This time I took my time, tracing her lower lip with my tongue before coaxing her mouth open. She yielded with a quiet sound that seared straight down my body. I slid my hands into her hairline where the band pressed, careful and reverent. The faint movement beneath it answered me, a pulse against my fingertips that made me shiver.

Her fingers skimmed under my cuirass again, up the narrow ladder of muscle at my side, stopping just below my ribs. The heat of her palm spread, grounding and igniting all at once. I pressed closer, the line of her thigh fitting between mine, the seam of my trousers suddenly intolerable against the damp ache there. My breath quickened. She tasted like salt and something sweet I couldn’t name.

“I should hate you,” I whispered against her mouth. “For the stories. For the fear.”

“Then hate me while you take what you want,” she murmured, and kissed the corner of my mouth, my jaw, the pulse under my ear. “But listen.”

I did, teeth catching my lower lip as she spoke against my skin and I felt each word in the places she touched. “Lykaon keeps a corrupted spring beyond the northern ridge. He feeds it with blood and old prayers. He draws beasts to drink and twists them from the inside. I can unbind some of it. You can hold the ground while I work. But we will need speed and secrecy. Not a war band. A knife.”

“A small group,” I managed, dragging air into lungs that wanted to use themselves for other purposes. She licked a path down the tendon of my throat and I swallowed a groan. “Scouts. Fighters who won’t balk at fighting beside you.”

“And a promise,” she said, pulling back enough to look at me. Her eyes were open, fully, and still I stood soft and shaking and whole. “If I stand with you, you stand with me. When we cut away his rot from your forests, you will come to my island. We will mend the wards he would break. I cannot do it alone anymore.”

The sharpness of her need tugged at something in me that had nothing to do with duty. I stroked my thumbs along her jaw, memorizing the shape. “You’re asking for trust,” I said. “Yours and mine bound together.”

“I am,” she said. Her hand slid lower, settling at the small of my back, fingers splayed. I arched into it without thinking, the line of my body answering her like it had been waiting. “And I am offering mine first.”

I kissed her again for that, slow and deep, until my knees went weak and I had to brace a hand on her shoulder to stay standing. When I pulled away, my lips felt swollen, my breath unsteady. “I will bring your proposal to my queen,” I said. “I will tell her about the spring, about the moss, about the way the air tastes wrong near his work.”

“And if she refuses?” Medusa asked, searching my face, her touch gentle now, easing off the pressure she’d kept on my body but not quite letting me go.

“Then I choose anyway,” I said, surprising both of us with the certainty in it. I pressed my forehead to hers. “But let me try the path that risks fewer lives.”

She nodded, a careful exhale brushing my lips. “Take this,” she said, and slid her hand from my back to the thong around her neck. A small polished stone hung there, veined darkly like storm-cloud trapped in glass. She slipped it free and curled my fingers around it. It was warm from her skin, humming faintly. “Hold it to the ground where you suspect his touch. It will answer. Your queen will feel it in her bones.”

I tucked it into the inner seam of my cuirass, where it rested against my breastbone like a secret. “You ask for an alliance,” I said softly. “You have one. If not with my queen yet, then with me.”

Something loosened in her face at that, something tired and fierce and lonely. She bent and pressed her mouth to mine one more time—sweet, brief, devastating. “Go,” she said against my lips. “Before I make poor choices and keep you.”

“You already made one,” I said, unable to stop the small, shaky smile. “You wanted me.”

Her eyes warmed, and she toyed once with the laces at my side, a promise she didn’t pull. “I still do,” she said. “Bring me your answer. Bring me yourself.”

I stepped back, the night air cool against the places she had touched, the ache between my thighs a steady reminder of everything we hadn’t done. I lifted my spear, weighing it anew. The patch of blackened moss lay between us like a brand. I met her gaze one last time and did not flinch. “We will cut this out,” I said. “Together.”

She inclined her head. “Together.”