Page 38 of The Games Gods Play
We’re getting off topic. I jerk my hand up to show him the tiara. “Tell me these pearls aren’t what I think they are.”
He glances at the tiara, then goes back to making his smoothie. “They are.”
“Why would you—” I stop, then start again. “What possible reason could you—”
“They might help you.” He says this as casually as if he’s listing off the foods in the fridge.
I lower the tiara to my side. “You already gave me my two gifts. You’re not allowed to give more.”
“I gave you the tiara before the Daemones said I could no longer help you, and it’s not a gift. It’s clothing.”
That’s a flimsy loophole if I’ve ever heard one, and thieves are good at loopholes.
I frown. “So the pearls can help me?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“If I don’t tell you, then it’s definitely not a gift. Just a mystery you figured out on your own.”
I stare at him, something finally sinking in with me that should have much sooner. “You know all the loopholes. Don’t you?”
His eyes crinkle at the corners, though his lips don’t lift. “I decline to answer on the grounds that my words might incriminate me.” Then he turns the blender on, filling the kitchen with noise.
In other words, he does.
I drop onto a stool at the large island, across from where he’s standing. “But…these are Persephone’s,” I point out the second the blender stops.
He doesn’t react to her name like I semi-expect—get all scowly, broody, don’t say her name or else, and so forth. Instead, he shrugs. “They can’t help her now.”
Help her? Legend says he used them to trap her in the Underworld with him, not help her. Right? A thousand questions circle in my head like dogs chasing their tails. But I don’t utter a single one. For once. It’s none of my business.
“They are yours now,” he says.
Mine. My pearls that do something that used to help Persephone. What did the stories say about hers? I mean, to start with, they were pomegranate seeds. “Do I eat them?”
His eyebrows lift slowly in…is that reluctantly impressed from the god of death? “I can’t tell you,” he says.
So, yes, I eat them.
“I thought only four were left.”
He shakes his head. “Mortals always get details wrong.”
No surprise there.
I try to think. “Persephone’s pomegranate seeds kept her in the Underworld.” I’m talking to myself now, turning the tiara this way and that. “Or…maybe they took her there? And I’m protected in the Underworld.” That has to be it?
I glance directly into silver-bright eyes studying me in a manner that makes me want to look away. He’s too intense. Too…him.
“Am I close?” I ask.
“You’re definitely quick, but you’ll have to wait and find out.”
I battle back the warmth of a blush. “Why do I need protection?”
He shrugs. “You seem to gravitate toward danger.” His pause hangs in the air.
