Page 152 of The Games Gods Play
Please let them all survive this.
Selfishly, I don’t think I can watch the loss that Dae went through only a few days ago all over again.
The wait gets worse with every team that’s called. My heart won’t quit tripping over itself. Not for me but for Boone. And for the others. There is no signal when anyone finishes, no way to know if they made it to the top alive.
“Lyra,” Hephaestus says. “You’re up.”
That was fast. Trinica was only called a few minutes ago. It was much longer between teams with the prior rounds. But then, it makes sense, I suppose. She told us her blessing from Hephaestus was invention, the ability to see and understand mechanisms. Like automatons. Her patron certainly gifted his champion a leg up for his Labor. A small smile plays around his mouth, so I know I’m right.
Boone swings around to face me and holds out his hand. “Ready, Lyra-Loo-Hoo?”
I’ve wanted to be on his team for years. Years of watching others get to work jobs with him while I sat back and handled the paperwork.
But I didn’t want it like this.
I have to at least try one more time. “You could wait for me—”
“Nope.” He starts walking, tugging me along behind him until we’re through the gate and can’t turn back.
All that’s around us is the stillness of the forest broken by the occasional whisper of the wind through the pine needles. I take deep breaths and try to tame my heart, try to find a calm I can’t quite reach. We don’t have to win. We just have to make it through alive.
A turn in the path takes us into a deeper section of the woods. Not gloomy but almost enchanting, filled with fireflies that flit around us. And soon, we come to another gate. This one leads onto a drawbridge suspended over a dark-watered moat surrounding a single castle-like tower with a crenellated top.
Like the first gate, the lintel stone has carvings. Hephaestus’ hammers again, and new words.
be bold. be bold.
but not too bold.
“Well…” Boone says. “That’s ominous.”
They’re not words of encouragement—they’re a warning. And the last warning carved into stone didn’t go so well.
As we stare at the words, I remember where I know them from. One of our pledges once nicked a book of Celtic fairytales that we passed around. There was a story about a man who murdered women in his castle, and his fiancée discovered this horrible truth. She learned it because she was curious about the castle he talked about but never showed her and went looking for it on her own.
In the end, curiosity saved her life.
At least, that’s how I always interpreted it. I think that’s why I remember it. It also means that I’m not surprised at the words carved over the tower door itself when we get across the moat.
be bold. be bold.
but not too bold.
lest your heart’s blood should run cold.
“Cheerful,” Boone mutters. But his humor has dropped away, and he’s in full get-shit-done mode.
I pause with my hand on the old-fashioned door lever and look up, inspecting the stone tower. I don’t see windows or slits or anything from this side to indicate how many levels there are. “What do you think?” I ask. “Seven or eight stories?”
“Sounds about right to me.”
Seven or eight levels to survive. But even if we don’t make it to the top in time, we don’t die. That’s something, at least.
The lever creaks in protest when I press down, and together, Boone and I step inside.
75
Win, Lose, Or Die
