I glance toward Hades. His expression is stony. No help from that area. I say nothing, and Demeter, chest heaving with the emotions she’s unable to control—a mother visibly heartbroken—walks away.
Great. I am going to be even more popular here than I am in the den. I can already tell. At least they mostly ignored me there. And at this rate, I’ll be competing with no gifts to help me and twelve gods, and their champions, all rooting for my demise.
Forcing my head back in the game, I finally get to the small glass flower shaped like a rose Zai stared at earlier and fight to control my expression as elation flutters through my chest. A symbol is etched into the bottom of the glass. A bow and arrow. This is the token meant for Artemis’ champion.
I set it down quietly and keep going like nothing happened.
At least now I know what I’m looking for—the one with Hades’ symbol.
Gong. “Twenty-five minutes,” Zeles calls.
Forget hiding what I’m doing. I rush now.
Suddenly, Hermes disappears. I mean poof, no longer there. So does Zai a second later, and a little bell rings.
“I guess he found his token,” Ares’ champion comments in a distinct Canadian accent. Between the Shirley Temple pin curls on her head and––I squint to make it out––“babygirl” necklace at her throat, Neve Bouchard looks nothing like I expected from her patron god. I know better than to let my guard down around her.
The rest of the champions turn even more frantic at the proof that our tokens can be found. I pause and take in the tightness of their faces, the fumbling of their fingers, the worry pinching their eyes.
We are, all of us, just trying to survive this.
And damned if there’s anything I can’t stand more than an unlevel playing field. I’ve been living with exactly that my entire life, thanks to Zeus.
I glance at Hades, who is now propping up the stone wall far from the rest of us as he watches me. When I catch his eye, he frowns.
What I’m about to do is really going to piss him off.
Gong. “Twenty minutes.”
Damn it.
I’m doing it anyway.
14
No Good Deed
With zero hesitation, I walk back to the glass rose and pick it up, waving it in the air. “Which of you is Artemis’ champion again?”
A man about my age looks up from a pile across the platform. I recognize him from Boone’s phone screen, though he’s more put-together now. He has the classic, clean-cut looks I only see on TV shows and movies and is dressed in a dark-green suit embroidered to match the moons and arrows decorating his patroness’s armor. When our gazes meet, he walks toward me, saying, “That’s me. Why?”
Only his lips and the sound don’t quite match up.
Which is when it strikes me that Hermes, who among other things is the god of languages, must be translating so that we can understand each other. But he didn’t do that for Spanish. Except I speak Spanish. Languages are one of the things thieves are taught from the start and one of the areas in which I excel. Still, that translation is a handy little trick.
I hold up the rose so he can see the goddess’s symbol etched in the bottom, and his jaw drops. “Why would you help me—”
“Just take it.” The second I place it in his hand, Artemis disappears and her champion follows.
“Hey!” Dionysus, his cherubic face sort of purpling, a lock of his golden hair falling over his forehead, waves at the Daemones like they should intervene. “She can’t do that.”
Zeles glances at me, then shrugs. “It is not against the rules for the champions to help one another.”
Excellent. I take a deep breath and raise my voice. “Look for your god’s or goddess’s symbol on the bottom of an item.”
There is a frenzied dash to check all the things around us. I really should have waited to give away the trick until after I found mine. I turn to do the same and collide with Hades’ glare. He smolders at me, and I mean that in the truest sense of the word. I’m surprised flames aren’t rising off his head. I shrug, and he looks to the heavens as if other gods might have an idea of how to deal with me.
Another champion disappears with their patron. Then another. And another gong clangs.
“Where is it?” I’m whispering to myself now, picking up and setting down item after item after—
“Lyra Keres.”
I look up to come face-to-face with Ares, and I feel the blood drain from my cheeks. The god of war, with his deep-auburn hair, pallid skin, and shocking dark eye, looks battle ready in fearsome armor of black gold with a vulture across the breastplate, its wings outspread, mimicking the black metal wings that stretch out behind him. His helm also looks like wings and covers half his face, including the eye he lost during the Anaxian Wars. A wound given to him by Athena, or so the legends say.
In his hand, he holds a tiny bowl of obsidian glass. He tips it so that I can see the bident and scepter etched on the bottom. I hold out a shaking hand to receive it.
“In case you feel like being helpful to everyone again,” he says in a voice that could make a mountain tremble in its wake, “remember this.”
He hurls the bowl to the ground.
“No!” I shout and lunge for it.
But I miss, splaying out on the marble floor, hitting hard enough to knock the wind out of me as my token shatters into a thousand pieces.
“No, no, no, no…” I reach out in desperation to touch one of the glass shards, hoping it will be enough, but I don’t disappear. I’m still crumpled at Ares’ feet, and the realization of what I’ve just done to myself feels as if he took the spear strapped to his back and impaled me with it.
