The Games Gods Play, page 33
Fires of hells, I was right. He did know we were at Hephaestus’ home. I lift my chin. “I was thinking that a thief should use the skills they have.”
“To steal gifts and spy on gods. Damn it, Lyra. They could have killed you tonight.”
“That would be interfering. The Daemones wouldn’t let them.”
“Not if they deemed you to be breaking the rules, and trespassing in a god’s home is breaking the fucking rules.”
My own anger rises, matching his, and I curl my fingers around his wrist, though I don’t pull his hand away. “Boone is damned good at what he does, and tonight he wanted to get information to help me. And another thing—weren’t you the one who first suggested I use my boon”—I gesture to the menagerie hidden along my forearm—“to spy on the other champions and their patrons, the gods?”
He huffs an unamused laugh but doesn’t respond to anything I actually said. Jackass. “Does he know about your curse?”
I give him a flat look. “Yes.”
Hades’ gaze narrows, glittering at me in silvery slits. “I would always tell you any important information that might help you survive the Crucible, Lyra.”
He almost sounds…hurt…that I’d think otherwise. “I know. That’s why I had to do this. You’ve already been punished for me once.”
He pulls back a smidge like that answer surprised him. Then his fingers spread out from where he’s still cupping my neck, spearing through my hair, and my body reacts instantly to a touch that’s now familiar. Something behind his eyes changes, the heat morphing from anger to…oh wow. “You took a risk to protect me?” he demands.
I’m not ready to admit that. “I used the opportunity available. That’s all.”
He stares at me, still anchoring me to him with that one hand, as if he can plumb the depths of my mind and heart with a look.
Then his gaze slowly lowers to my lips, and I swear silver fire flares in his eyes. “He kissed you.”
72
What Scares Me The Most
Oh…my…gods… Can he see Boone’s kiss? In the mark Hades left on me with his gift? Feel it somehow, maybe?
What I want to say is that it was a kiss between friends. But there’s still enough pride inside me to stay the words. It’s none of Hades’ business who I kiss, the same way it’s none of Boone’s. Yes, I was just kissing Hades this morning, but we both know that’s all it can be.
All I am to him is a champion he hopes will win him the Crucible. That’s it.
So why am I not moving out of his grasp? Putting some distance between us? Insisting he not touch me? He would listen to me if I asked. I know he would.
Gaze never leaving mine, Hades slowly lowers his head, and everything about me, every single piece of me, focuses solely on him. On him and the swirl of desire inside me, the wanting.
I want this. Again.
Gods, I shouldn’t. But I do.
He brushes my lips with his just barely, then groans deep in his throat. His fingers curl into my scalp as he kisses me harder. Harder and hotter. This is a claiming. A plundering.
He catches me about the waist and lifts me onto the table where we eat breakfast in the mornings, parting my legs so that he can pull me up flush against his hard body, never once taking his lips from mine, and the flames at my back match the heat we’re generating together.
“This is all I was thinking about during that farce of a meeting,” Hades groans against my lips. Then kisses me again, hard. “Tasting you again. Making you light up for me.”
His lips feather across the line of my jaw to the sensitive spot behind my ear. “Because you do light up, Lyra. Stars are made of fire. Meant to burn.”
His hands are at my hips, gripping me, pulling me against his heat, even as he sucks at my neck, and I moan. I’m holding on to him and tipping my head to give him more access.
“I wanted to get back here. To do this again. To you. With you. I wanted—” He jerks his head up. He’s glaring at me now, his expression a battle of both anger and need, all of it scorching. “And then there you were, outside that window. I could feel my mark on you. My mark. And you were with him. When you are mine.”
The accusation wakes me up a little from the haze of need I plunged into so readily. I blink, then take a deep breath. “Temporarily.”
He rears back. “What?”
“Only while the Crucible lasts. Isn’t that right?”
His expression shuts down, turns dark, and the stars in the sky outside might as well be chips of ice dousing me in a chill. “I will never force you into something you don’t want,” he says in a voice that scrapes over my skin. “But make no mistake, Lyra. I want you to be mine. Not a champion. Not a thief. Not a mortal. Mine.” He snarls the word. “And no one else’s.”
He gives me one more hard, claiming kiss, and when he raises his head, Hades looks over my shoulder, directly into the flames keeping Boone away from us—flames I assumed were too high and too deep for Boone to see through—and Hades smiles.
A darkly triumphant challenge of a smile.
My own confusion, lust, need, heat, and whatever else has been poured into the cauldron of emotions roiling inside me burn away in an instant flare of anger. It was all for show. I shove Hades away from me and hop off the table.
“You want me to be yours?” I demand. “I don’t think you know what that really means. How could you? A god,” I scoff. “Your power means you get what you want, when you want, forever, but it’s made you a spoiled ass. Yours?” My voice is turning a tad shrill, and I don’t give a damn. “If you really meant that, you wouldn’t kiss me for him. To show him. You’d kiss me because you can’t not kiss me. Because I am the only thing you can see.”
I’ve had a long, long time to imagine exactly what that would feel like.
An answering fury that matches my own curls his lip. His shoulders square and his chin lifts, and suddenly he is the arrogant, seething, powerful god he shows less and less around me. “You have ideas about things of which you know nothing.”
He stalks away from me. The wall of flames snuffs out the second he reaches it. As he prowls past Boone, he snaps, “Keep your fucking hands off my champion if you know what’s good for you. And return that helm before anyone figures out it’s gone. You. Not her.”
For a second, I think Boone might punch Hades in the face, but instead he rushes to my side. “You okay?”
Relief that he might not have seen anything doesn’t unknot the emotions twisting inside me like a den of writhing snakes. But I nod.
Boone glares at Hades. “You act like I’m the one who’s done something wrong here, but I’m not, and neither is Lyra.”
Hades stops, back to us, as Boone continues.
“This is your fault. There’s no reason for you to have taken her away from her life and put her in danger like this.”
He’s right. This is Hades’ fault.
And as for a reason… Hades doesn’t do anything without a specific goal in mind. For the first time since he assured me that he had reasons for picking me that he didn’t want to share, I feel that I need to know what they are. That I deserve to know.
Hades speaks over his shoulder, barely turning his head to the side. “Watch Lyra’s back in the next Labor, Boone.”
Why? So I can win for him? “I can watch my own damned back.”
Mid-step away from us, Hades whirls, glaring at me. “I know you think that, but it’s what makes you dangerous.”
I glare right back. “I am not dangerous—”
“You scare the shit out of me, Lyra.” He’s gone deadly quiet now, but not with anger. This quiet frightens me a thousand times more. This sounds like defeat. “You,” he says. “Not the other champions, not the challenges, not the gods or what they speculate about us, not even this guy. You scare me like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. And that’s saying a lot.”
Then his face contorts with a new anger—a burn I think is directed inward, at himself for admitting that. With a shake of his head, Hades disappears deeper into the house.
And I let him go.
73
Hephaestus’ Labor
We’ve been in Olympus three days. Three days without Hades. I think he must have taken himself down to the Underworld, because when I ask the satyrs, they merely shrug and say that god is not among us.
Doesn’t he know that after the Daemones took him, I was terrified I wouldn’t see him again? Disappearing on me now feels like that all over again. I understand that he’s mad at me, but I can’t handle him taking the time for an almighty sulk.
When Trinica and Amir came to us, asking to join our alliance officially, we accepted. I expected Hades to show up and argue me out of two more people to worry about, but he didn’t.
He still hasn’t.
Which means that today Boone and I got ready for my next Labor, the one we’ll go through together, without Hades here.
Clothes appeared in Boone’s room, matching mine. Only instead of the butterfly in the center of his chest, a chrysalis is embroidered on the mock neck. Boone’s own vest and tools also appeared in his room. We dressed. We ate an early dinner. And then, with the other eleven champions and their loved ones, we gathered in Hephaestus’ home.
I pretend an awe I don’t feel as we walk through, putting on a show as if I’ve never been here before. I stop when I catch sight of Dae’s pale face. He is subdued today, quiet, keeping to himself. Dex pats the champion’s shoulder, murmuring something I don’t catch, and Dae pulls away.
Dae isn’t hiding his heartbreak. I don’t think he should. Maybe seeing that will make the gods rethink the Crucible. Probably not, though. Isabel’s death didn’t.
“Are we all present?” Hephaestus asks.
None of our gods have gathered with us, which is interesting. Not that Hades is around to fucking gather.
With a satisfied nod, Hephaestus raises his hands, and, starting at the ground, a glimmering, watery line rises higher and higher. As it does, his home transforms into a different world. It’s like a mirage, slowly consuming our surroundings to reveal new ones. When the mirage line passes over our heads, it disappears in a shower of sparks like a hammer hitting heated metal, and we find ourselves within a circle of large stones in a forest so dark and empty that even the wind through the trees sounds lonely.
“Well… That was something,” Boone murmurs. I raise my eyebrows at him, and he shrugs. “I know you told me about the other Labors you’ve completed so far, and I was already in one with you, sort of. But it feels different when you’re really in it.”
“No kidding.”
Pine trees surround us. Not as tall as the redwoods in Muir, these are skinnier and shorter but dense enough to obscure the light of the sun.
At the top of the circle, thick wood posts support a horizontal stone slab to form a gateway. The lintel stone is carved with two hammers and between those, words.
be bold. be bold.
I frown. Why do those words sound familiar?
Hephaestus looks like the template for a fairy-tale woodsman, with his scruffy beard and all those muscles. He only needs a red-and-black flannel shirt, thick logger boots, and an axe to complete the picture.
I pat the back of my vest to check for my own axe.
The god crosses his arms and sets his backward feet wide, which makes him tilt away from us. “Welcome to your seventh Labor, champions, and welcome, guests.”
He says this in his quiet way, which has the group leaning toward him, trying to catch all the words.
“First, I would like to congratulate you. Having lost only one champion, you have set a record for having lost the fewest by the halfway mark of the Crucible. Well done.”
My throat tightens. I still see Isabel’s horror- and pain-filled eyes when I go to sleep at night, and I’m not sure Dae appreciates his grandmother being excluded from the list of losses, judging from the way his lips thin and he looks away.
I don’t know what Hephaestus expected. Cheering or clapping, maybe. We all stare back at him silently. That doesn’t seem to faze him, though. “Today, you and your partner will compete solely on time and time alone.”
That’s a new twist, at least.
“It’s a staggered start. The course won’t allow the champions to interfere with each other.”
“An obstacle course?” Boone whispers at me. “Easy.”
“You didn’t see the last one.” After Artemis’, I can’t say I’m all that eager to face another. Although Boone doesn’t know about the burn. He hasn’t seen the silvery scarring on my arm.
He shoots me a cocky grin. “I’ll get you through it.”
I roll my eyes.
“This is not an obstacle course.” Hephaestus stares at the two of us sternly.
I do my best to look suitably chastised.
“You will find your way through these woods to a tower,” the god continues. “Inside, on the first level, you will find one of my automatons. You must defeat it to move to the next level, where another automaton will be waiting for you. Each is different. Some, you will fight. Some will require other skills.”
“Sounds like a movie I saw one time,” Boone leans over to whisper to me.
Hephaestus shoots us another admonishing look.
“Shhhh,” I hiss. “Always getting me in trouble.”
“Not me,” he says. “That’s you. Trouble magnet.” He waves his hand, indicating where we are and what we’re doing.
“Do I need to separate you two?” Hephaestus demands, voice all things fed up.
I clear my throat. “He’ll be quiet now.”
“Always blaming me,” Boone whispers. Then straightens at Hephaestus’ stony glare.
The god finally looks away. “When you defeat one level, the door to the next level will automatically open. The best time wins.”
Boone meets my eyes and winks in that confident, cocky way, but I don’t return his smile. There’s more to this. There’s always a twist.
“When a team has progressed sufficiently, the next team will be allowed to start. If you are unable to complete the course within the four hours allotted to each team, you don’t die,” Hephaestus says. “You’re simply disqualified from the Labor.”
Well, at least death isn’t an extra incentive this time. See, I knew I liked this god.
“The levels are deadly enough as it is,” he tacks on.
Never mind. I take it back.
“Two heads are always better than one, of course, but you do have a choice,” Hephaestus adds. “The champion and their guest can collaborate and compete as a team, or the champion can go it alone.”
Every person in the circle shifts on their feet, already turning toward each other, questions in their eyes. The levels are deadly enough as it is.
Hephaestus looks at Dae, expression softening. “You have no choice, Kim Dae-hyeon, I’m afraid. You must compete alone.”
Dae gives a jerking nod.
Murmuring rises among us, but Hephaestus holds up a hand. “You may discuss your choice in a moment. First, a final reminder. All you have to do is make it to the top fastest. How you do that, regardless of the challenge you face at each level, is up to you. But you cannot progress from one level to the next without defeating or outsmarting each level. And as an added challenge, your gifts will not work beyond the course, so you cannot go around it, either.” He lowers his hand. “Now, make your decisions. The first pair will start in five minutes.”
I turn to Boone, mouth already open with points and arguments I’ve been composing in my head, but he puts a finger to my lips. “Don’t even consider going alone.”
74
Two Roads Diverged In A Wood
I scowl over Boone’s finger, tempted to bite it. Instead, I pull away. “We don’t have to both take the risk,” I point out.
“No.”
I glare. “Don’t be stubborn.”
He snorts. “Said the most stubborn pot in existence to the most equally stubborn kettle. Besides, I told you I’ve always wanted to work with you.”
I let out a sharp breath. That was a low blow just to give me warm fuzzies and get me to agree, and he knows it.
“You could save yourself. I’d feel better—”
“If something happened to you, how would that make me feel? Especially when I’m good at shit like this.”
Now he’s appealing to my logical, clerk side. He’s definitely not going to let this go. “Fine. Put your life on the line. See if I care.”
Boone’s slow grin makes my stomach flutter. Just a little. Not like Hades, but still, when Boone chooses to be charming, he’s hard to resist.
Hephaestus holds up a hand, signaling for quiet. “First up is Amir, starting with his guest, Zeenat.”
But Amir and the woman we’ve all learned was his nanny are arguing. She’s small but mighty, and I can tell she still expects Amir to listen to her the way he did as a child.
“Amir?” Hephaestus demands.
“No, ayah,” Amir snaps with a swift glance in the god’s direction. “I will not listen to you. Not this time. I didn’t save you in the last Labor to lose you now. I—” His voice chokes a little, and he looks away, swallowing hard. “I couldn’t take it.”
Zeenat searches the face of the boy she’s known and obviously loved since infancy, then reaches out and pats his hand. “All right. I will wait.”
Relief hunches his shoulders, and Amir bends over to give her a hug. “Thank you. I’ll do better if I’m not worried about you.”
“Always such a kind heart, my Amir.”
He smiles. The arrogant boy who at first I thought was used to getting his own way in everything has turned out to be someone else entirely. With a kiss on Zeenat’s cheek, he leaves her and walks through the gate and into the woods.
