Prey and Mercy

III. Fire and Ice are Never Nice

Our seats in the stadium are already taken by the time we get there. It's unfortunate but I'm ready to stand down and find another block of sandstone to rest my thighs against. In fact, I have Idris in one hand, a brown bag spicy chips that Mathis swiped from a mortal store in the other when Milena grabs the collar of my shirt.

She swings us both around, fire flickering in her eyes.

"It's Thesis." I mutter. "We cannot do this right now."

It should be written in ancient texts, across the sky, and in blood that Milena listens to know one but herself. She takes no demands but she gives out many. I can't hate her for it because somehow she manages to take care of us, Idris and I, even when it seems like we might be the casualties of her little wars.

Idris squeezes my hand. He pulls me behind him as Milena walks forward toward the lesser ice goddess that is Thesis Abery.

"Milena, please."

We've known the Abery since our third year. She was nicer then, sweeter even. She and I would play in the academy garden, picking petals off of flowers and running from bumblebees. We created stories and wrote them in a journal we shared, giggling when no one could understand our abused latin. After Idris pushed be into a cobblestone path, simply because he was an eight year-old juvenile idiot at the time, she was the first one to shove him back and patch up my skinned knee.

Not everything lasts though. Everyone kills. The blood on Thesis's hands, the first drop, stained not just her skin but her personality, her soul. Her gift of water, she enhanced into ice and the warmth of her heart she patched over with hailstone.

I lost her after a while. It's safe to say she never looked for me.

"Move before I make your blood boil like a hot spring." Milena stands before Thesis, innocent, but daring, eyes screaming more than her lips can say. "I'm sure Mercy won't find you attractive then."

"Like I care what any of you think." Thesis fans out her dress, looks up with her big blue eyes. "Mercy's chump food for Percy Wylder. You're a flaming piece of trash. And Idris...he's attractive what can I say? Still a pubescent fool though."

Flames erupts from Milena's palms, hot and blue. I can't count on one hand how many kills it took for her flames to flicker from crimson to teal. But she wears them proudly.

Her curls fall in front of her eyes but she keeps her gaze steady. "Prepared to fight me for the seat, are you?"

Thesis balks. I can see it in the way her eyebrows fall, cheeks going pale, lip quivering. She was never as defiant as Milena, not even close. We're only lucky she sits alone; she always alone but we've just assumed that's the way she likes it.

Milena burned her luscious ivory white hair once before, I don't doubt those flashbacks aren't racing across her mind.

"I'll go. The bench is a bit brisk anyway, what a pity." She stands up, not even bothering to glance at Idris and I before striding away. Thesis leaves a thick sheet of ice across the sandstone. It leaks down to the floor, wisps of frigid air wrapping around us.

A few people leave, shoot us scowling looks. With Idris squeezing my hand I can hardly flip them off.

It goes without saying that Milena doesn't let us leave; she's determined to melt us a warm bench. I scan the crowds, searching for Harper in the meantime, perhaps to call him over, though I know he'd only consider it. The children of death are among the first crests I see, sitting together; a murder of crows. Black suits them--us. It always has. But there's something about lesser gods of death that make my stomach twist. I can't tell if it's the darkness that coils beneath their skin, a serpent that gives death like a gift or the fact that I know I'll never truly be them.