Wither & Wound Read online

  Wither & Wound

  Mount Olympus Academy Book 3

  Kate Karyus Quinn

  Demitria Lunetta

  Marley Lynn

  Little Fish Publishing

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  THANK YOU TO OUR READERS!

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Also by the Authors

  1

  Life is weird.

  One minute you’re having a heart to heart with your sister in a sea-shore cave, discussing your plans to overthrow the Greek Gods. The next moment you’re trying to explain to an angry werewolf that you weren’t about to become a traitor…something that he’s particularly touchy about.

  Dogs are notoriously loyal animals, after all.

  Nico, currently in his human form (and only slightly less scary than his werewolf one), stands stiff with fists clenched and his one eye intensely set on my sister, Mavis.

  They have history. He loved her once. Then she tried to kill him. Now he loves me. He even sorta proposed, which was hella-awkward. It’s a long story.

  “You’re coming back to Mount Olympus Academy to stand trial for treason,” he tells her. “Will you come peacefully, or are you going to fight me?”

  Considering that the last time he tried to apprehend her, Mavis gouged his eye out, I’d like to think that my sister is going to fight. But it doesn’t seem that way. Right now, she looks like a scared little girl.

  That fear doesn’t go away when she shifts; Mavis’s cat-self is puffy, tail straight up, back arched, every hair on end. She makes a run for it, dashing for the cave entrance.

  Lightning fast, Nico grabs her by the scruff of the neck. As he holds her in the air, she writhes, hissing and spitting, taking swipes where she can. But he’s got her at arm’s length, and from the look on Nico’s face, he’s enjoying watching her struggle.

  Mavis must see it too. She sags and then slips back into human form.

  “How did you find me?” she asks, neck craned painfully.

  “I followed Edie’s scent. I’ve been keeping track of her to make sure she’s safe.” His hand is wrapped up in her hair. She’s not getting away. And she knows it.

  “That’s super creepy. You know that, right?” Mavis says. “You used to stalk me like that too.”

  “Jealousy,” he growls, “doesn’t look good on you, Emmie.”

  He focuses on me and something in his expression shifts. Softening, just slightly. “Edie. I trusted you. I introduced you to my mom. Were you just using me the whole time? Using the crazy chemistry between us to blind me with your bitch box?”

  I thought I was un-shockable after attending the gods’ idea of sex-ed classes, but for a moment I am rendered speechless.

  “Wow, still a charmer,” Mavis says dryly.

  Getting it together, I wag my finger in Nico’s face. “First of all, there was no chemistry between us. Secondly, bitch box? And finally, everyone on campus knows that I’ve got it bad for Val. He strangled me. I set him on fire. Now that is a meet cute.”

  Nico’s eye goes all big and puppy-dog on me. “We met in the desert! You saved my life. That is the ultimate meet cute.”

  “Shut up, Nico,” Mavis cuts in. “Edie, why didn’t you tell me about Val? I want to hear everything. Have you kissed? Have you done more than—ouch!”

  Nico jerks Mavis’s hair, cutting that topic short. It’s probably for the best. Now is not really the best time to get into the icy/hot kisses Val and I have shared.

  Anyway, it was kinda dumb of me to remind Nico of my on-again, off-again vampire boyfriend, especially with Mr. Zee’s new rule about no interspecies dating on campus.

  Plus, Nico’s always hated vampires. The fact that a group of them killed his mom just a few days ago probably didn’t endear them to him any further.

  But still, I never tried to seduce him. Not for fun or to get secrets out of him. I wasn’t even with the monsters when we became friends. No, far from it. Instead I’d stuck my head in the sand, refusing to see all the signs that first my flying instructor, and then my sister, had tried to show me. The gods who run Mount Olympus Academy don’t have our best interests in mind. They’re using us students as human shields in their ongoing war with the monsters. Monsters that they created as their own personal playthings eons ago and now persecute ruthlessly.

  I don’t know how to explain all that so it would get through to Nico. His mom was a fanatical believer in the gods, and she did her best to raise Nico in her image. Sometimes, I see glimmers that tell me there’s a better guy buried under all that fur and bluster. But if there truly is, he’s hiding way down deep.

  While I’m still trying to figure out my best move, Mavis jumps in.

  “I tricked Edie into coming here,” she blurts out. “She didn’t know I was working for the monsters until I told her. I tried to recruit her, but she wouldn’t join me.”

  I’m shaking my head. This is so wrong. Mavis warns me with her eyes, though. They say, Let me save you.

  I swallow. I can’t bring myself to speak out against her. As always, my big sister is the one calling the shots.

  “Edie said that I needed to turn myself in,” Mavis continues. “She said I would get a fair trial at the Academy.”

  “She deserves that,” I say. “At least.”

  Nico looks doubtful. “You were going to bring in your own sister? You know what they do to those who betray the gods, right?”

  I nod. Death, by fire or flood. Yes, I know.

  “If she’s found guilty they’ll burn or drown her,” Nico says. Still holding tight to Mavis’s hair, he gives her a shake. “I can end it more quickly, here and now.”

  Sick rises in my throat. I know how easily Nico could snap her neck. Or use his teeth to rip it out.

  I take a deep breath before speaking again. I can’t let my voice tremble right now. “You think the gods will thank you for sparing them their vengeance? Taking away the bloodshed that belongs to them? I’m with the Academy, and Mr. Zee. You know he’d want to witness a traitor’s death.”

  Probably with a glass of ambrosia in his hand and a giant box of popcorn in his lap.

  Nico wants to believe me. I can see it on his face. Of course he does, otherwise he’s been tricked twice. Otherwise he has to turn his love for me into loathing, like he did with Mavis. I watch his fingers flexing around her throat, and imagine them on my own.

  “Nico,” Mavis says, her voice small and tight under his hand. “The monsters who tortured you were a splinter cell. I was not working with them; I would never have left you at their mercy. I just wanted to get away. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “You took my eye!” Nico spits, and Mavis goes a little gray as her oxygen is cut off.

  I want to scream. Or burn him to cinders. Or put my hands around his throat and see how he likes it.

  But I can’t do any of that. One step wrong and Mavis will be dead.

  My heart hammers in my chest as I c
ross toward the two of them, keeping his focus on me. Slowly, carefully, I rest my hand over his. I hope he doesn’t notice the slight tremble.

  Beneath my palm, I can feel his pulse beating frantically; confused, panicked. Under that is Mavis’s own pulse; thready and scared.

  For a moment it seems absurd. None of us want to be here like this. We’re just kids. Before I came to MOA, I went to a regular school. A boy decided to start a bunch of rumors about me and it spread all over social media. I thought my life was over.

  That all seems so petty now.

  “Nico, how about this? Let’s bring her in,” I give his hand a reassuring squeeze. “You and me. Together.”

  His eye lights up at the thought, but the confusion is still there. “You really had no idea that your sister was Emmie, the traitor?”

  “No.” And it’s not even a lie. Give or take a week.

  I just found out that Emmie—the infamous student traitor—and my sister were the same person. “I thought Mavis was missing, maybe dead.” I start to cry; the tears come easily.

  I’ve lost my parents…Dad to a monster, jealous of my mother’s love for him. And my mother to amnesia that she brought on herself when she could no longer handle the pain of losing so many people she loved.

  Mom’s found a new life, here on this island. And a new love, complete with a newborn baby. A replacement family in Greece to wipe away a lifetime of running from the gods and hiding the children she’d helped abduct from Mount Olympus Academy—me and Mavis.

  “I want to make this right,” I say, looking at Mavis. I hope she understands I’m speaking to her. I won’t let her die. Not when I just found her again. “I’ll even testify at her trial.”

  He snorts out a laugh. “We won’t need your testimony to sentence her to death. Everyone knows what Emmie…Mavis did.”

  “Think about it,” I say, my hand tightening over his. “One of our own teachers—my flying instructor—was a traitor in our midst. Campus is split in the middle after what happened with…”

  His gaze darkens and I realize this was the wrong tactic.

  Probably best not to mention our most recent mission, which ended with his mother attempting to slaughter an innocent baby monster. A vampire student—and the girl my boyfriend was supposed to marry—stepped in to stop the murder of the baby manticore. She died for it, at the hands of Maddox Tralano, Nico’s mother.

  Quickly I recalibrate. “If all the students had just followed your orders, none of that bad stuff would’ve happened at all.” Nico nods, obviously liking this alternate version of history. Technically Nico was leading the mission, but his mother hijacked leadership right from the start. “Nico, you have a chance to draw campus together again. Unite the students. What better way than a public trial and execution?”

  I slide my eyes to Mavis, silently apologizing for making her death an entertainment event. She gives a half shrug, as if to say What can you do?

  He tilts his head, considers. “I like that. I like that a lot. You and me together.” His hand relaxes on Mavis neck, not letting her go, but it’s a start. “I’ll lead and you’ll be there for strong back-up. The students will be inspired and we’ll get Mount Olympus Academy back on track.”

  “Yes, exactly,” I prompt.

  He grins, fierce and gleeful all at once. If he didn’t have my sister’s neck in his hand, I’d almost be tempted to smile too. “Let’s do it. Let’s bring her back and have Zee decide.”

  I almost collapse, I’m so relieved.

  “But first…” He takes out a knife with his free hand and I go tense once more.

  “Nico, wait!” I say, but he shakes me off easily. Mavis’s wide eyes stare into mine as Nico pushes her head until she’s down on her knees.

  Tracing the blade of the knife down her cheek, he growls. “First, let’s make us even.”

  Oh gods. He’s going to take her eye.

  2

  I freeze.

  It’s not the first time.

  I froze in the hall last semester at the Spring Fling. I stood stock still just long enough for Darcy—a kind mermaid that my best friend was crushing on—to lose his head. The resulting spray of blood made me jump into action. But I was too late to save him.

  I can’t let that happen again, can’t stand here while Nico extracts my sister’s eye. It can’t be yet another thing I fail at.

  Luckily, I don’t have to.

  “Really, Nico?” Mavis asks, her voice suddenly strong and firm.

  This is a tone I know well. One that told me to get my homework done and set the table, warned me that my hair was too greasy to go out in public and that my shorts were too short.

  This is big sister tone, and nobody argues with it. Apparently not even a werewolf intent on revenge. The blade in Nico’s hand stops short of Mavis’s eye.

  “Eye for an eye?” Mavis taunts him. “Not very original. All this time I thought you’d be planning something spectacular to get back at me. But this? Pfftt.”

  She actually blows a raspberry at him, her hair fanning out from her mouth. “I’m so disappointed in you, Nico.”

  Wait. That last bit didn’t sound like my sister. That sounded like Maddox Tralano,Nico’s mother. And Nico almost never went against what his mom said. For the most part, she owned him.

  “I mean, if something is worth doing, you’ve got to do it right,” Mavis goes on, straightening her neck as Nico’s grip loosens. “You weren’t raised to half-ass anything, were you?”

  “No,” Nico agrees, drawing the knife back from my sister’s face. “I wasn’t. You make a good point, traitor. I’ll ask the gods for special compensation before your execution, a chance to even the score between us. After what you put me through, it will have to be creative.”

  I relax slightly, relieved that I won’t have to stand witness to my sister being maimed in a dark, Grecian cave. But it’s a short-lived reprieve, and a glint shows in Nico’s eye as he leans closer to Mavis.

  “After all,” he says. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

  I fly back to Mount Olympus Academy with an angry werewolf on my back and a sleepy cat in my clutches.

  Mavis put everything she had left into convincing Nico to maybe not try out his surgical skills on her face. After her boost of adrenaline wore off, she was clearly running on fumes. Once we reach campus, Nico will be the least of her problems and Mavis will need all the strength she can muster.

  Dragon Air (that’s me) doesn’t have first class seats, but I wanted to make Mavis as comfortable as possible. If she could get a bit of sleep her chances of surviving this disaster will be greatly improved. Like all cats, her preference is to be snuggled up and warm, so I suggested I carry her in her blanket.

  Nico wasn’t as supportive of my leniency, but I was his ride home, after all.

  Mavis wrapped herself tightly in the blanket and I carefully picked her up, cocooning her within my curled talons. I held out my other claw to Nico, but the alpha-hole jumped on my back instead. I gritted my teeth and promised myself that if the words “giddy up” came out of his mouth, there would be fire coming out of mine. Thankfully, once perched on top of me, he mostly kept quiet, although once we reached altitude I could’ve sworn I heard, “Whoo-hoo! I’m king of the world!”

  My thoughts are a mess as we cross the ocean. The mighty power that goes along with being a dragon is not always tempered by my human side. After the carnage I caused at the Spring Fling, I realized I was a killing machine—and pretty much nothing or no one could stop me.

  Except myself.

  If I wanted to, I could shake Nico right now, toss him into the ocean and see if he still feels like the king of the world as he doggie-paddles to some godsforsaken island. I could save our skins by drowning him. The logistics of killing Nico would be easy.

  And if the world revolved only around logic, I definitely should.

  But…feelings are a thing. Unfortunately.

  I’ve seen Nico be a decent perso
n. Seen him rein in some of his darker impulses simply because Cassie—my friend and the seer who saved him from the monster stronghold—asked him to. I’d seen him hesitate to attack the baby manticore even though Nico’s mother ordered its death. And, most importantly, I’d met his mother.

  Even though she was dead, Maddox still held a lot of power over her son, and always had. I don’t think Nico had much of a chance to grow up into a loving, caring person. Maddox raised him to hate and to fight, yet there were still glimmers of a good guy underneath the hard veneer. Maybe with his mother’s influence gone, that side of Nico could be encouraged.

  I spot the coastline of Florida. As I descend over the swamp that holds the lotus stream and Mount Olympus Academy, the clouds break around us and Mavis squirms in my grip as she wakes up, aware that we’re approaching our destination—and her imprisonment. Below us, students swarm on the campus green, pointing as I come closer, circling to lower altitude.

  Nico leaps from my back in wolf form, landing easily on all fours. It’s a relief to have him off my back. For the moment at least.

  Identifying Jordan, Cassie, Fern, Marguerite, and Greg in a group, I land beside them, quickly shifting into human form, though Mavis prefers to remain a cat. She curls in my arms, her tail tucked around her nose as if she is suddenly shy.

  “Hey kitty kitty,” Jordan says, petting her. “I didn’t know we could take off-campus trips to the pet store.” He says, apparently not identifying Mavis as a shifter. “I would’ve had you bring me back a puppy.”

  “Oh, no,” Fern says, a horrified look on her face.