He glances away, and I realize that we aren’t close enough for me to know that. I’m giving myself away a bit, except he already knows about my feelings from Chance.
Boone gets up off the bed, and I’m not sure why, but I get up, too, and walk him to the door of the bedroom.
“I’ll check if it’s all clear,” I tell him.
It feels like the world flipped upside down and started spinning backward—him in my room, the risk he took to help me tonight.
I reach for the doorknob, but he gets there first, stopping me. “Something else?” I ask.
He searches my gaze, but differently now, like he’s trying to find a secret in my eyes. He hitches his chin as if he’s silently laughing to himself. Or maybe at himself, because his expression is solemn.
“You’ve always thought I hated you. That we all did,” he says.
“I…” Someone put me out of my misery. “Not hated…exactly.”
“I know I’m right. Don’t bother denying it.”
I slowly close my mouth, and he nods, again to himself. He turns the knob and sticks his head into the hall, taking a good look, then pulls back inside. “For the record, we didn’t hate you.”
I twist my lips around the tears clogging my throat and around the words that would tell him why I already know that. The thing I figured out a long time ago about my curse is that it doesn’t make people hate me, it just makes them…not choose me.
But not after the Crucible. Not if I win.
And it hits me for the first time that maybe with the curse lifted I have a shot with Boone. It’s strange that I didn’t think of it before. Then again, I was dealing with some shit.
“See you in a month,” he says and offers me that signature cocky pirate grin before slipping away.
I close the door and lean against it, my head dropping back with a soft thump.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
Boone coming here cleared the fog of denial I’ve existed in since the moment Hades called my name. Or maybe it’s the fact that he was concerned enough to bring me all these things that finally has me thinking straighter.
Either way, the truth I’ve been avoiding until right this second is now crystal clear, flashing in neon lights in front of my face. Inescapable.
There’s no way I can get out of playing in the Crucible.
I’m really going to have to do this.
And now I have a stake in the game.
22
There Is Nothing Normal About This
I feel more than see Hades walk into the kitchen the next morning, and I know he’s staring based on the way the back of my neck prickles. A long, drawn-out study. Just as my stomach starts to clench, he speaks. “What, exactly, are you wearing?”
It turns out Hades’ voice is growly in the mornings, and a little bit grumpy. And the fact that the terror-inducing god is not a morning person is…kind of cute. There’s no stopping the shiver that whispers over my skin. I chalk that up to the fact that I barely slept last night, and now exhaustion is dragging at me like extra gravity.
I glance down at myself, then go back to the eggs I’m scrambling. “The uniform I was provided.”
The two-piece athletic set of movable, breathable material showed up in my room at the butt-crack of dawn. Simple pants and a long-sleeve shirt with a mock collar—sports clothes. I’m trying very, very hard to pretend it’s for comfort and not for running for my life.
Hades’ name is stamped across the front in yellow block lettering, looking cheaply made and a little bit like a prison-issued jumpsuit. It is gray, like an ugly gray that makes my skin look sallow. Gray is also not one of the four colors that went with the virtues we’re supposed to be divided into.
“Is mine this color because you have no virtue?” The question pops out before I can filter for a god’s ego. I realized late last night he’d never really answered my earlier question.
“Was that supposed to be funny?”
A little bit. I shrug.
I can hear his confident steps before he comes into my field of view, standing next to me at the counter in a pair of low-slung jeans and a light-blue T-shirt. “I value something different than the others.”
Having a curious nature really sucks sometimes. “What?”
“Survival.”
Oh.
Something else we have in common, only a different kind of surprise has my eyebrows winging up. “You’re a god. Immortal. Survival seems built in.”
“Surviving isn’t just not dying.” His voice roughens.
If anyone can relate to that, it’s me. “You’re right. It’s not.”
“Anyway…” he continues and waves at my clothing. “Not this.” His voice takes on a smoother edge that I’m starting to identify as irritation.
