Page 156 of The Games Gods Play
Breathe.
He didn’t share this part of taking that painting with the gods the other night, and at the time I thought he was just making fun of me, but now the memory might haunt me for the rest of my life. “I took it for you, Lyra-Loo-Hoo. Won’t it look pretty on your bedroom wall?” Was he trying to be my friend even then? How had he known that I secretly coveted the beauty of that scene? I never shared that with anyone. Then he pointed at another one he’d taken, too. “That one, we can fence.” Not that I believed him, and not that Felix let him keep anything.
Oh gods. I did this. He’s dead because of me. My humming alerted the automaton inside that room and…
“Lyra.” Hades’ voice has taken on a thread of worry.
“I don’t want to let it out,” I tell him, my voice as small as I feel.
“Why?”
“If I sit here and cry, if I give in to it, I don’t know if I’ll ever get up again.” And that’s not me. I’m the person who gets shit done, who never stops moving, who figures out a solution to the problem in front of me, because they never stop coming, and then the next and the next until one day all the problems will be solved.
Only I can’t solve this one.
Hades’ arms tighten around me, and we sit in silence. I don’t know how long. He doesn’t push me to let go again, and the memories are coming faster now. I can’t make them stop.
It’s like discovering the fabric of my past was sewn into a tapestry that I couldn’t see until I stepped back. A thousand different moments that I disregarded or wrote off because of my curse.
A thousand missed opportunities.
My mind goes all the way back to the scrawny kid who showed up when I was eleven and Boone was thirteen, all elbows and knees but with hints of the man he’d become. He took one look at me, grinned, and said I was too small to be a thief and maybe the Order should throw me back.
Gods, he’s such a tease.
Was.
Sorrow grips my heart and squeezes hard.
Boone was such a tease.
Not anymore.
How would things be different if I hadn’t put up the walls he said I built around myself? If I’d tried harder?
We’ll never know now.
Boone is dead.
I can see his face as he falls off the tower.
It keeps cropping up between all the other memories, hitting harder every time. He never looked away. He watched me until the very end.
He didn’t die fast enough. Not right away. He felt those spikes—
Why can’t I stop reliving all this? I need to stop. I need to shut it down.
Oh gods…
“Boone.” His name whispers from my lips.
I curl into Hades, gripping his shirt, squeezing my eyes shut.
“I’m sorry,” Hades murmurs. “I’m sorry.” He runs a soothing hand over my hair. “I’m sorry.”
His words are like a ribbon of warmth wrapping around my heart, not taking away the pain but soothing it, gentling it. It slows the memories I don’t want to relive.
I stay tucked in against him. “Can you find B—”
