The forest thinned as the land rose, rock jutting from the earth like broken teeth. Aella moved ahead of the western line, her breath steady, the leather cords of her harness chafing against damp skin. The night was tight around her shoulders, the moon a pale smear behind racing clouds. Every sound was too loud—the scrape of her sandal on shale, the slow inhale and exhale that seemed to echo off the walls of the narrow defile she was threading. She kept one hand on the hilt of her short sword and the other on the balance of her javelin, its weighted shaft warm where her palm wrapped it.

She paused to listen. The cicadas were silent. Her chest tightened. She dropped low, pressing her back to the rough wall of the ravine, inching forward. The defile bent left, then dropped, a funnel leading into darkness. The air there was wrong, stale and sour, threaded with the copper tang of old blood.

The first growl came from behind her.

Aella spun, instincts snapping her body into motion. Red eyes blazed up the slope, two, then four, then six, flickers of infernal light moving low and fast. The shadows detached from the rocks and became bodies—too lean, too long, rippling with wrongness. Their paws hit the ground with the wet slap of flesh over bone. Hellhounds. Corrupted by Lykaon’s curse, their fur patchy, their skin revealing black veins that pulsed like living vines.

She drew and threw in one fluid movement, the javelin leaving her hand with a sharp hiss. It struck the nearest hound in the chest. The creature yelped, staggered, and kept coming, the wound smoking around the embedded iron. Aella swore and pulled her sword free, retreating deeper into the defile to keep her sides protected. The walls narrowed. The smell hit her full force—rot and heat and sulfur.

They came as a pack, fast and precise. She slashed the first that leapt, the edge biting into its muzzle, blood hot against her wrist. It fell, snapping, and another vaulted over it, jaws clamping down on her bracer. Teeth scraped bronze and bit into the leather beneath, pressure crushing her forearm. She drove her knee into its chest and shoved, twisting her blade up under its jaw. The scream that tore from it was half animal, half something that remembered being human.

Two more were on her. One took her at the hip, its teeth piercing through the leather skirts to flesh, a fire that made her vision blur. She shouted, pure rage, and hammered the pommel into its skull until it let go. She barely registered the warmth running down her thigh; she pivoted and swiped, metal crossing slick fur. The second lunged for her throat. She ducked, felt the heat of its breath, then jammed her forearm up and shoved it off.

They were coordinated. They flowed. The narrow channel that protected her also trapped her. Her lungs burned, and her heart thudded so hard she thought the damned beasts could hear it. One circled behind her, impossibly nimble scaling a jut of stone and dropping down. Claws skittered. Aella rolled, rock biting into her shoulder, and came up with blood on her lip where she’d bitten it. She spat, a red arc on gray rock.

The pack pressed in, their growls weaving into a single low thrumming sound. Aella’s sword arm trembled. She adjusted her stance, weight on the balls of her feet, every muscle tight. She flicked her eyes up the ravine. No sisters. Too far. She was alone.

Fear sharpened everything. It made the world small, exactly the width of her blade and the reach of their jaws. She baited a snap and cut deep along a rib cage, felt the blade grind over bone. Another seized her calf. Pain exploded; her breath punched out in a hoarse cry. She brought the sword down with both hands, the blade biting into its spine. It went limp, dragging her down. She wrenched free, her leg hot and wet, her sandal slicking on stone.

A third launched itself, paws slamming into her shoulders. She smashed into the wall, skull rattling. Teeth grazed her jaw. She could smell its saliva and the rot festering in its gums. She shoved and twisted, felt the scrape of its claws down her back, the leather tearing. The edge of panic licked under her ribs. She didn’t have time to be careful. She drove the blade straight into its chest, feeling the resistance give, and kicked it off.

Her breath came ragged. Her arms ached. Blood made her fingers slippery on the hilt. She couldn’t kill them fast enough. The remaining hounds circled, patient now, tongues lolling, eyes glowing with a cruel awareness. They were waiting for her to slow, for the tremor in her muscles to become weakness.

Another pair padded into view at the mouth of the defile, sealing her in.

Aella swallowed, tasted iron. She thought of Otrera’s eyes pinning her in the council chamber, of the heat that had pooled low in her belly at the Queen’s command. She dragged that heat up now, turned it into fuel for her rage. “Come on,” she snarled, voice low, chest heaving. “Come and try.”

They obliged. The nearest darted in. She feinted high, then cut low, taking a foreleg. It shrieked and tumbled. The second went for her throat. She met it with the guard of her sword, metal smashing teeth. Pain lanced through her thigh as another latched on again, hauling her off balance. She fell hard, the ground knocking the breath from her lungs, the sky a blur above the slicing edge of the ravine. Jaws snapped inches from her face.

She threw up her left arm to protect her neck. Teeth sank into meat. The agony was sharp, blinding. She felt warmth flood down her wrist, slicking her palm. Instinct moved her. She thrust up with the sword hand, burying the blade to the hilt under a rib. The beast spasmed and fell on her, heavy and twitching. She bucked, desperate, but the weight pinned her at the hips. Another set of eyes loomed through the tangle of bodies, red and merciless, closing fast.

Her strength faltered. The world narrowed to breath, pain, and the hot rasp of their panting. The nearest hound gathered its haunches, jaws opening, a cave of black and needles—

Aella jerked her head aside and braced for teeth. The growl rose to a roar. The pack surged. The ravine itself seemed to close in, grinding stone and shadow, leaving her with nothing but the slick handle in her fist and the time it would take for those jaws to meet her skin.

The strike never landed. A streak of bronze cut the air above her, a curved shield flashing like a fallen star. It slammed into the lunging hound with a crack that echoed through the ravine, sending the beast spinning into the wall. In the same breath came a hiss—low, dangerous, ancient. It scraped along Aella’s skin like ice and heat together.

A figure slid between Aella and the pack with impossible speed. Bronze shimmered over lean arms and a narrow waist, lamplight skin made otherworldly by the moon and the crawl of shadows. Snakes—no, hair that moved—lifted and swayed from the woman’s crown, tongues tasting the air. The nearest hellhound skidded, whined, then froze, the ember in its eyes dimming as stone crept over its muzzle, its chest, locking it mid-snarl.

Medusa.

Her shield snapped back to her forearm as if it belonged there more than flesh. In the same motion she drew a short, hooked blade from the small of her back and met a rushing hound without a grunt of effort. She stepped inside its leap, hip brushing its ribcage, and dragged the blade across its throat. Blood fanned her shoulder and steamed, black on bronze. Her head tilted a fraction, and another beast, mid-stride, seized up with a brittle crackle, turning to gray that flaked under its own weight.

Aella’s body reacted before her mind caught up. She heaved the corpse off her hips and crawled to a knee, arm on fire, thigh slick and throbbing. Her sword felt heavy, but she raised it, teeth bared. Medusa didn’t look back at her. She didn’t need to.

The pack hesitated, torn between hunger and dread. Medusa advanced without hurry, each placement of her foot precise, silent. The snakes writhed, angling, tasting, a crown alive with attention. A hound darted in from her blind side. She moved her shield, a small shift, an opening that lured it closer. When it sprang, she pivoted, letting it overcommit, then drove her knee into its sternum. The breath whooshed from it in a wet burst. Her blade entered under its jaw and exited behind a glowing eye.

Another charged Aella, sensing weakness despite the new predator in the ravine. Aella set her feet, pain ringing in her bones, and readied a clumsy block. Bronze brushed her forearm, firm and abrupt. Medusa had closed the distance so fast Aella felt the heat of her body at her side. The Gorgon’s hand caught the hound’s muzzle mid-lunge. Fingers tightened. The sound that followed was both crack and crumble—the bone giving way, stone racing along sinew and teeth, locking its mouth around her grip. She ripped free, and the statue toppled, exploding into shards against the rock.

“Stay behind me,” she said, voice low, smooth. It was not a command shouted in battle; it was a simple statement, honed and certain. The snakes lifted, their soft hissing a chorus that vibrated in Aella’s ribs. Her gaze flicked to Aella’s bleeding thigh, then rose again, a quick assessment that made Aella’s breath stutter. Concern. Or calculation. They looked the same on her.

The remaining hounds went feral. They swarmed together, a last, desperate press. Medusa met them like water meeting rock, yielding and then striking. Aella watched the economy of it, the refusal to waste motion. A turn of the wrist opened a belly. A narrow angle of her jaw—just enough for one beast to catch her eyes—stole the fight from another as gray consumed it, its paws scraping stone as it tried to flee its sudden weight. Medusa didn’t bother to finish those; she moved on to the living, efficient and merciless.

One broke through, a black streak at Aella’s left. She twisted, too slow, and raised her sword too late. A strong hand caught her harness at the chest and pulled. Her spine met Medusa’s side, a wall of hard muscle and heat. The hound’s teeth snapped on empty air where her throat had been. Medusa’s blade speared up through its open mouth. It was dead before it hit the ground, slack weight sliding off the steel with a wet sound.

Aella sucked in a breath that trembled. The copper taste of fear was still sharp. Her thigh screamed. She could feel blood trickling under her skirts, sticking fabric to skin. Medusa shifted, still close enough that Aella could feel the twitch of the snakes brushing her temple, their scales cool and curious against sweat-damp hair. She didn’t flinch. The hiss softened, almost insistent, and Aella’s heartbeat found a new rhythm under it—not calm, never that—but controlled.

The last two hounds circled, desperate and clever. One feinted, the other lunged for Medusa’s legs. She jumped, not high but precise, letting the jaws pass under her. She landed with her weight on its spine and drove her blade down between the vertebrae. As the second committed to its lunge, she looked at it fully. The creature stumbled midair, stone rippling over its face. It crashed to the ground inches from Aella’s boot and shattered.

Silence dropped, broken only by Aella’s ragged breathing and the faint scrape of stone flakes settling. The smell of sulfur thinned, replaced by iron and dust. Medusa stood very still, listening to a world that did not exist for anyone else. When she turned, the snakes quieted, folding back, some curling around her throat like living jewelry. Her eyes found Aella’s and held, green ringed in gold, bright even in moonlight.

“You bleed,” she said. It wasn’t a question. She stepped closer, the curve of her shield grazing Aella’s arm, the brush intentional, steadying. Her fingers, cool and sure, slid along Aella’s forearm, just above the bite. Aella hissed, more from the spike of awareness than the pain. Medusa’s thumb pressed, halting the worst of it. The smell of her—clean metal, wild grass, something older—cut through blood and rot.

Aella swallowed. The tremor in her hands had nothing to do with exhaustion now. “I had it handled,” she managed, voice rough.

One corner of Medusa’s mouth moved. Not a smile. The idea of one. Her gaze went past Aella’s shoulder to the ravine mouth, then back. “Of course,” she said softly. She leaned in, her breath ghosting over Aella’s cheek as she slid the strap of a small satchel from across her chest. The contact sent a hot line through Aella’s belly. “Hold still.” She knelt, the movement smooth, unhurried amid the corpses and dust, and reached for Aella’s thigh. Aella tensed and did not move. Medusa’s hand was cool when it pressed around the punctures, the pressure efficient, life asserting itself in the press of fingers and the slow, steady hiss that curled from her lips as if coaxing a wound to close.

The paste she smoothed over the bite stung, then cooled, a shock of relief. Aella watched the sure set of Medusa’s mouth, the way her lashes lowered as she focused, the minute flex of tendons in her wrist. The snakes stilled as if listening. Aella couldn’t force herself to look away.

“You move like someone who expects the ground to vanish,” Medusa murmured, wrapping a narrow strip of linen around Aella’s thigh. “Too much weight on the lead leg. It makes you fast, but it makes you a gift to anything that has learned patience.”

Aella bristled. “You’ve been watching Amazons fight for a long time, then?” The words came out more breath than challenge—Medusa’s fingers were close to the sensitive inner muscle, and every brush left heat behind.

“Long enough,” Medusa said. She tied off the bandage and rose, not stepping back. They were close enough that Aella could count the faint, pale freckles along Medusa’s collarbone, track a bead of blood spattered there that hadn’t dried. “I’ve been tracking Lykaon’s packmasters since they crept near my coast.” Her eyes flicked over Aella’s shoulder, assessing the shadows, the angles of escape, then returned. “They sniff at every boundary, foul every spring they can reach. If they find my sanctuary, everything I’ve kept safe is ash.”

“Your sanctuary.” Aella steadied herself with a breath that dragged against the cold air. “That’s why you’re here. Not for us.”

“For me,” Medusa agreed without apology. “For the things that live because I want them to live. For the silence under the olive trees. For girls who wander too near the cliffs and need someone terrible to frighten away what would take them.” Something in her face softened, then sharpened. “And now for you.”

Aella’s spine straightened. “For me?”

Medusa’s gaze cut down and then up again, unhurried. Her eyes lingered where blood dampened the edge of Aella’s skirt, at the arch where the harness crossed her chest, at the exposed line of throat where her helmet had shifted. It wasn’t crude. It was intent. The snakes tilted, matching the scrutiny, tasting the sweat on Aella’s skin. “You were not on my path,” she said. “But I saw you two nights ago, on the ridge beyond the river. You came alone to scout. You stood too long where the moon could paint you.” Her voice gentled. “Lykaon’s things are learning to look up. They would have seen you, if I hadn’t seen you first.”

Anger rose to meet the heat that flushed Aella’s face. “You’ve been following me.”

“I’ve been following them,” Medusa corrected. “And making certain you didn’t bleed out in the dark and become a warning for others.” Her shoulder brushed Aella’s as she turned, gathering a discarded spear and snapping the head free with a swift twist. She drove it into a crack in the rock, dislodging a small cascade of stone that buried a still-twitching paw. “You do not like the thought of being watched.”

“I don’t like being handled,” Aella said, though she hadn’t moved away from that deliberate nearness. She could feel the warmth of Medusa’s body even through the chill, an anchoring heat that felt dangerous to need. Her hand lifted before she thought better of it. She caught the edge of Medusa’s bracer and pushed it away from her arm, just to see if she could. The leather gave; the woman did not.

Medusa’s gaze dropped to where Aella’s fingers pressed into her. Her mouth parted, the smallest breath in. When she looked up, something unguarded flickered behind the gold. “Noted,” she said. She didn’t step back.

Aella tried to find the ground again. “So. You protect your sanctuary. And me. Why?”

Medusa’s hand came up slowly, her palm hovering just shy of Aella’s jaw, waiting. Aella didn’t move. The cool of Medusa’s skin slid along her cheek and down to the pulse at her throat. Her thumb rested over that frantic beat, as if taking its measure. “Because you don’t bow,” she said. “Because you smell like iron and summer rain. Because you fight like you are angry at the world for telling you what you are allowed to be.” The confession was simple, edged with something older than desire. “Because when I saw you, I remembered what it was to want to keep something instead of only keeping it away.”

Aella’s chest tightened. She swallowed. The thumb pressed, not to choke, just to remind her of the space between them, the space Medusa allowed her to choose. “That sounds personal.”

“It is,” Medusa said. The snakes brushed Aella’s ear, feather-light, curious. Aella shivered. Medusa’s mouth curved again, that almost-smile that felt like a secret shared. “And inconvenient.”

The ravine’s wind shifted, carrying distant hooves, the faint ping of stone. Aella dragged in a steadying breath. Her thigh throbbed; the bandage held. She realized with a start that Medusa’s hand had slipped from her throat and settled lower, palm flat over the center of her sternum, feeling the rise and fall, the sweat, the warmth. Aella didn’t push it away.

“You’ll come to camp with me,” Aella said. The decision surprised her with how solid it felt. “Queen Otrera needs to hear what you know about Lykaon.”

Medusa lifted her hand, leaving the ghost of heat behind. “I will go.” She stepped back finally, gathering her shield, sliding the curved weight along her forearm with practiced ease. “But know this, Aella of the Amazons: I did not pull you from teeth tonight for your queen. I did it for me. And I will do it again.” Her eyes held Aella’s, unblinking. “If that makes you suspicious, keep that blade ready. If it makes you something else—” Her gaze fell to Aella’s mouth, lingered, returned to her eyes. “Decide later. When you are not bleeding.”

Aella’s breath came short. She sheathed her sword with a jerk that felt too loud in the quiet. “Try to keep up,” she said, and hated the way her voice softened around it.

Medusa’s laugh was low, pleased. She moved to Aella’s uninjured side without being asked, a shadow and a shield. As they started toward the ravine mouth, her fingers brushed Aella’s lower back, steadying her step over loose stone. The touch was practical. It burned. Aella didn’t shrug it off. She didn’t look back either. She let the Gorgon pace beside her, the hissing crown whispering like leaves, the weight of that gaze hot between her shoulder blades, promising trouble she found herself walking toward.

They climbed out of the defile slowly, the slope slick with scree and blackened paw prints. The moon rode low; it put a cold edge on everything, even the warmth that still pulsed where Medusa’s hand had steadied her. Aella’s leg ached, but she refused to limp where the Gorgon could see. The bandage held tight, a strip of white against brown skin, and she pretended it didn’t feel like a mark Medusa had left on her.

“Your scouts are near,” Medusa said after a time. Her head tipped, listening to a night that felt empty to Aella. “To the east, two ridgelines. They’re impatient.”

“They’re protective,” Aella corrected. “They’ll string you up by your hair if you look at them wrong.”

Medusa’s mouth curved. “I don’t have much hair to spare.”

The snakes rustled, and Aella swallowed a laugh she did not want to give. She couldn’t trust the way ease tried to creep in, the way banter dulled the instinct that had saved her since she was old enough to draw a bow. Medusa had appeared in a blur of bronze and teeth and saved her life. That did not make her safe.

The path narrowed. Rock brushed Aella’s shoulder; on her other side, Medusa paced like a second wall. When her balance wavered, that low, sure hand was there again at her lower back, fingers splayed. It was practical. It made Aella’s skin heat and her mouth go dry.

“You could have left me,” Aella said finally, because the thought kept circling. “After you dispatched them. No one would have known.”

Medusa’s glance slid over her, quick. “I would have.”

“That why you hovered?” Aella kept her eyes on the dark cut of the trail. “Watching me at the ridge. At the river.”

“I watched because your queen sent you alone where a pack could corner you,” Medusa said, a thread of disapproval in it, almost soft. “And because you stand where the moon can see you when you think no one else will.” Her voice dropped. “And because I liked it.”

Aella felt that low. She bit the inside of her cheek until the sharp taste cooled her. “You liked seeing me careless?” The word scraped.

“I liked seeing you,” Medusa said simply. “Careless is not a word I would choose. Hungry, maybe.” Her shoulder brushed Aella’s; not an accident. “For something you haven’t decided to name.”

Aella’s laugh was short. “You think you can read me.”

“I think I’ve had a long time to learn people who carry a sword like it’s part of their spine,” Medusa said. “And who go quiet when they should ask for help.”

They reached the top. The world opened: stony hills rolling toward the black line of the forest, a seam of river-light far beyond. To the south, the faintest ember-flare—campfires banked low. Home, if anything still felt like that after the things that had stalked her tonight.

Aella raised two fingers and gave the soft whistle that belonged to her cohort. Medusa’s head tilted at the sound; the snakes lifted, tasting the air. Aella waited. The answer came from the rocks—a whisper, then a figure easing from shadow. Loxo, all height and angles, bow already drawn but held low. Her eyes cut to Medusa and went hard.

“Down, Loxo,” Aella said. “She’s with me.”

“With you,” Loxo echoed, flat. She didn’t lower the bow.

Medusa didn’t flinch at the arrow’s point. She seemed almost bored, which somehow made Aella want to step closer to her rather than farther away from danger.

“Stand down,” Aella said again, sharper. “We’re returning to camp. Announce us. And send for a runner to the Queen.”

Loxo’s jaw worked. She lowered the bow an inch, then another, not taking her gaze from Medusa. “If she breathes wrong, I put a shaft through her throat.”

“You’ll have to be faster than me,” Medusa said, mild.

Loxo scowled. Aella cut her a look that warned of consequences later and started forward. Medusa fell into step at her side as if the challenge had never been raised. Aella didn’t miss the way the Amazon’s eyes tracked the snakes, the way Loxo’s fingers flexed on the bowstring. It would be worse in camp. Rows of tents. Scores of sisters with blades and grief and stories about the monster on the cliffs. Aella’s stomach tightened. She was bringing fire into dry reeds and hoping the wind stayed calm.

They moved through low scrub toward the camp’s edge. The earth smelled like sage and old ash. The quiet stretched, filled with the soft slide of leather, the faintest chime from Medusa’s harness. Aella’s senses prickled with awareness of the woman beside her, how she took up space without pushing, how her presence seemed to change the shape of the night.

“You know Queen Otrera will test you,” Aella said. “Her word will be law.”

Medusa’s profile was clean, almost severe against the pale sky. “I respect laws made by women who earned them. I don’t kneel for any law that makes me smaller.”

Aella huffed a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “You’ll get along poorly, then.”

“I thought that’s why you wanted me there.”

Aella glanced up at her before she could stop herself. Medusa’s gaze was already there, waiting, open in a way that made Aella’s chest ache. She wanted to look away. She didn’t.

The camp perimeter rose out of the dark, stakes and leather walls throwing angled shadows. The sentries saw them and shouted; the sound spread like a ripple, the way danger ripples. Torches sprang to life. Figures materialized, bows, spears, bare arms glinting. Aella lifted her chin and felt the eyes like heat.

“She comes under my protection,” Aella called before the first bowstring could be pulled tight. “By order of Queen Otrera, she will speak.”

“That order was given?” someone demanded.

“It is given now,” Aella snapped. “Stand down.”

There was a tense beat where she felt the hinge of it: authority, trust, fear. Then the front ranks eased, weapons lowering a fraction without ever truly pointing at the dirt. Aella didn’t blame them. She could feel the pulse in her throat, quick and strong. It had beaten under Medusa’s thumb not long ago. She hated that she missed the weight of that hand.

Medusa stepped closer, enough that Aella could feel her again, a line of heat along her arm. Aella didn’t move away. Medusa’s breath brushed her ear as she dipped her head, voice for her alone. “If you wish me to stay behind you, I will. If you wish me at your side, I am there.”

“You do as I say,” Aella said, and the words trembled in a way she hoped no one else heard.

“Yes,” Medusa said, and there was no mockery in it. Only that unnerving steadiness. “Until you ask me not to.”

Aella’s body betrayed her, a small, traitorous shiver. She set her jaw and stepped through the line of her sisters, their eyes cutting, their mouths tight. Medusa’s presence pressed against her back without touching, as if she were shadow and armor both. The camp swallowed them, the smoke and leather and familiar clatter suddenly strange.

Aella sent Loxo with a jerk of her chin. “Wake the Queen.” Loxo sprinted, vanishing into the maze of tents.

They stopped near the central fire, banked but warm. Medusa turned to face her fully. The torchlight painted her skin in bronze and gold; her eyes caught it and held it, brighter than flame. For a heartbeat, the camp noise fell away. Aella felt too seen. Too known. It made her reckless.

“Don’t mistake this for trust,” Aella said, low. “You don’t own me. You don’t get to touch me and think that buys you anything.”

Medusa’s gaze dropped to Aella’s mouth and returned, a slow, deliberate sweep. “I don’t own you,” she agreed. “I don’t buy. I don’t bargain for what I want. I ask.”

Aella’s breath snagged. “And if I say no?”

Medusa’s mouth quirked, the almost-smile, the one that had become a secret between them in the span of an hour. “Then I stand where you put me, and I wait.”

Footsteps approached, purposeful. The Queen’s retinue, their metal and discipline, the gravity that rearranged everything around it. Aella’s heart knocked hard once, twice. It was the same beat as before, fast and certain, loud in her throat. She held Medusa’s gaze for one last second and felt the danger of it settle into her bones. Rescued by a greater peril, and choosing to lead it into the center of her life anyway.

“Don’t move,” she said, pointless order and promise both, then turned as the flap to the command tent swept back and Queen Otrera stepped into the torchlight.