Page 17 of Scion of Chaos

My belly roils as her speech continues and my possessiveness is replaced by guilt. I’ve seen Clio and her wife together in the dining hall and around campus. The other nymph is a member of the island’s security team.

Realizing there are likely even more nymphs who might be after what I have gives me an uncontrollable urge to take my semen sample and run away. But logic urges me to be sympathetic to her plight. All she wants is a child.

I sigh. “I’m sorry. If I knew how to help, I would, but I’m not sure what I can do.”

She tilts her chin to my project. “When you’re finished distilling and decanting, let me have a small taste. I can learn more by tasting than I can by smelling. I might be able to help you fill in some blanks, and it would give me better insight about the male you were with.”

“I think I can manage that.” I give her a contrite smile and she rests a hand on my upper arm, squeezing lightly in gratitude before moving on to the next student. The possessive urge dissipates in the face of my desire to understand what’s happening to me. I’m just as eager as Clio to know who the hell he is.

I stare at the dripping liquid, marveling at how much power can exist in such a small volume. It takes another hour before it’s finished, and I spend the time embellishing the sketches I started the other night, then begin a new one that evolves into a fantastical architectural drawing of a sprawling city of spires. I’m not sure where the idea originated until I recall the glass globe still stashed in my satchel that I grabbed from the tree in the courtyard several nights ago. I don’t dare pull it out to inspect it now, but I can picture the scene within the globe easily, especially because what I saw has made it onto the paper with such mindless effort I may as well have been doodling.

A shadow falls across my page, and I turn to see Clio observing with a frown. I give her a questioning look, my insides tangled with uncertainty. Is she judging me? After what she told me, I get her interest in my project, but my sketches are unrelated. At least I think so, though I’m not really sure of anything anymore.

She doesn’t comment on the sketch, though. She tilts her chin at the flask of distilled liquid, a layer of shimmering iridescent oils floating on top of the water. “You’re ready to decant.”

The scent reaches me the second I turn the tiny spigot that drains the top layer off the liquid in the flask. It perfectly mirrors the flavor when I tasted it myself after waking up the other evening. I hold my flacon beneath the spigot, excited to test the stuff to see if it works. Clio watches avidly, waiting until I’m finished. After my flacon is full, only the faintest glimmer of oil remains on the surface of the water.

“How much do you need?” I ask, holding my flacon up.

She shakes her head and gestures to the remaining liquid. “What’s left in there should have enough of a trace, if the power is as strong as I hope.”

I cap my flacon and drape the chain around my neck. I’ll go back to the cabin later to see what kind of damage I can do out of the way of the school.

Clio reaches for a clean beaker and sets it beneath the lower spigot attached to the side of the collection flask, turns the knob, and captures a few drops of the water. Her nostrils flare when she brings it up to sniff, swirling it in the vessel like she’s a sommelier about to taste a fine wine. But she doesn’t drink; instead she daintily dips a fingertip in, then touches it to the tip of her tongue.

’Fascinated, I watch her face transform. Her eyes close, and a deep crease appears between her eyebrows as she goes completely still. Then her nostrils flare again and her eyes fly open. She stares at me in shock, irises spinning whirlpools of turquoise.

“What have you done, Nemea?”

My eyes widen and I tense. “What do you mean? I just did the assignment!”

Pressure bears down within my head, growing tighter the faster her eyes spin. I scramble back, shaking my head, but she advances. Her features twist into an accusatory grimace and the pressure in my head strengthens then splits, like fingers digging into my very thoughts.

“How are you in my head?” I cry, stumbling back into another student’s workbench, causing the glass flasks and tubes to topple and crash. My classmate shrieks in dismay. I’m dimly aware of all the other students staring at us as Clio continues toward me.

“Your essence is mixed with theirs. The creature you fucked does not belong on this island. If you brought him here, you may have doomed us all.”

“But I thought youwantedhim!”

The grip she has on my mind tightens, forcing me to my knees. “It isn’t him my sisters and I seek, but the other one. There are two male essences mixed with yours. One is a prisoner. The other is his warden. Where is Pan, Nemea? What have you done with him?”

“I don’t know! I don’t remember!” I tangle my fingers into my hair, squeezing my head, desperate to push her out, to eject her groping tendrils from my mind. “Get out of my head! Get out! Get out!”

A scream rises from deep within me and my vision shatters into a kaleidoscope. Her face and swirling eyes are reflected as if on a hundred shards of a broken mirror. When the sound blasts out of me, the world shatters too.

10

Nemea

My ears ring with the discordant sounds of breaking glass and screams. Clio is on her knees a few feet away, one hand on the ground, the other reaching out to me, her face a mask of shock.

I don’t want to hurt her, but she’s hurtingme.My head throbs with the pain of her grip, my vision pulsing with each squeeze. Images flash through my mind of two of the faces from my sketchbook, but they aren’t sketches—they’re real men. One with glowing ultraviolet veins beneath his skin, another with a beard and broken horns beginning to regrow. The memory of scents and sensations glimmer around those two images. Then they disappear in a flash of pain.

I grit my teeth and push back against her grip, a rasping cry scraping out of my throat untilsomethingsurges forth from deep within, emerging like a tidal wave.

Whatever it is hits her and her entire body flies back, slamming into the wall all the way across the room.

More glass shatters, and footsteps pound across the floor as the other students flee. I collapse into sobs of relief now that Clio has released my mind. But along with her grasp, I’ve also lost sight of the memories she dredged up. I clench my eyes shut, desperately reaching for those missing hours. I have to get them back.

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