We all pause, staring at her. Does she think we’re going to become friends?
She blinks right back at us. “I can go first, if it helps. I have a roommate I’ve lived with for years. My best friend. But we’re happy with what we have.” She shrugs. “So I have no interest in winning.”
“No other family?” I ask.
Her eyes get a faraway glaze, and I know she’s not seeing me anymore but memories. “My parents are gone, and I was an only child.” Her smile makes my heart ache just a little.
“I’m sorry,” Zai offers.
“Me too,” I say.
Trinica moves closer to squeeze Meike’s hand. “I’ve also lost my parents, and I’ve been divorced for ages. My ex and I are amicable. We were good co-parents, but our son is grown now, so I don’t see much of the ex anymore. But my son, Derek, is getting married.” She smiles to herself as she glances up at the dark, poison-ivy-covered ceiling. “I’d love to win.” Trinica’s smile widens to a grin. “I’d want to use my boon for the grandbabies.”
“What about you, Amir?” Trinica asks.
He goes back to hacking at underbrush, and we all take that cue to continue pushing forward. “My parents are both alive, but we’ve never been close.” Amir says this so matter-of-factly, if I hadn’t been looking right at him, I would have missed the droop to his shoulders. Nannies and boarding schools. He must’ve been—
“That sounds lonely,” Zai says, stealing the word right out of my head.
If anyone would understand being lonely among family, it’s him.
“I wouldn’t mind winning if it means a fresh start,” Amir says without addressing Zai. “I don’t think my family cares one way or the other.”
It’s suddenly sunk in even deeper that these champions the gods and goddesses have picked aren’t just fighters in the same ring. They are real.
Real people with hopes and dreams and loved ones…lives they’ve been stolen away from. We are—all of us—just trying to get home alive.
Well, maybe not Dex.
We must all reach the same thinking because we grow silent, other than the huffs and puffs of the people dragging the pallet and the tinks of glass on glass made by the bottles of vodka. A vaguely less dark circle ahead of us—the other doline—is getting closer. And I’m suddenly hopeful that we’ll make it out of here.
“My turn,” Amir says a minute later.
Almost like an omen, the second we set the pallet down to take a breath and swap out, darkness consumes the cave.
Night has fallen.
Something off to my right rustles.
“What was that?” Amir whispers.
“Just a small cave toad or a mouse or something,” I say. And I hope I’m right. In the distance, I see a small glow moving ahead of us. Diego?
He shines it around, but the only thing I can see is a single vine of poison ivy draped across a nearby rock.
I didn’t realize there were any parts of it this close to us.
Amir hands Trinica his phone and takes over from me. I’m taking a single step to move ahead of them when something snags at my foot and I lurch sideways. I try to stop myself, but the ground here is all loose rocks, and I tumble end over end away from the others.
Right into a patch of ivy that feels like it closes over me, clinging like spiderwebs.
Fiery pain immediately explodes all over my body.
And, somewhere ahead of us, someone starts screaming.
52
It’s The Catch That Will Kill Us
I fight to be free like a wild thing, but I can’t get out of the vines. It’s like the more I struggle, the more they cling. The pain is blooming all over, even under my clothes.
Vaguely, I’m aware that whoever is screaming ahead of us cuts off. Now only my cries as I struggle fill the cavern.
It feels like forever. Minutes before someone grabs me by the ankles and drags me away using more haste than care, rocks scraping up my back. The vines still grab at me even as we go, and I think I hear Zai swear. But finally we come to a stop. No more vines. I almost don’t care because I’m too busy going fetal. My throat is closing over, my breath coming in painful wheezes.
Not enough air.
I’m not getting enough air down my throat. Like it’s suddenly ten sizes too small.
Panic sets in, and I look frantically around my team, my gaze landing on Zai and holding.
“Oh my gods,” Trinica mumbles. “It’s killing her.”
I sound like I’m barking with every attempted breath, my head starting to swim.
Meike’s beside me in a flash, dumping vodka over me, and the pain eases…but not enough. I was in the vines too long, I think.
