Page 68 of The Games Gods Play
“No. I was going to…” I hesitate, glancing around. Talking about praying to a different deity while in another’s temple is probably a bad idea. “I saw you.”
He lifts his head, turning slowly to look at me. “I see.” He seems to study my face. I’m not sure what he thinks he’ll find there. “So, you are here to kill me, then?”
I can’t help the knee-jerk reaction that makes me hold a hand out toward him. “No!”
Confusion flickers in eyes the color of oak. “No?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Don’t you blame me? For Isabel’s death?” He holds himself completely still. “Or maybe you consider her death lucky. One less competitor.”
I pull my shoulders back. “If that’s how you see it, then we have no need to talk.”
I spin around and am nearly to the entrance before his voice stops me. “That’s not how I see it.”
When I turn, he’s sort of hunched over and his eyes are half closed, as if that little outburst was all the energy he had left and now he’s having a hard time staying on his feet. Not for the first time, I wonder what’s up with his health. Is he sick or something? He’s spent the last hundred years in Olympus… Does their food not nourish mortals?
I consider leaving him alone to rest.
“What did you want to talk about?” he asks, opening his eyes fully.
I take a step forward. “It seems to me that you and I could—”
“Zai!” a voice shouts from somewhere outside. “Zai!”
Zai’s eyes go wide with fear. “Hide,” he hisses at me.
“What? I—”
“It’s my father. If he sees you in here with me…” He shakes his head, but the implication of dire consequences for me is easy enough to pick up.
There aren’t exactly a lot of places to disappear in here, but I squeeze myself between one of the columns and the wall and pray Mathias Aridam doesn’t come to this side of the temple. Hopefully, the flickering of the lamplight doesn’t give me away with a shadow on the wall.
I’m out of sight just as Mathias stomps into the room. “Here you are, boy. Wasting your precious energy on guilt for that woman still.”
“She had a name, Father,” Zai says. “Isabel.”
I frown at the difference in Zai’s voice from a second ago—it’s gone flat, emotionless.
“A name that is not worth learning. She’s already dead.”
Wow. Heart of gold, this one.
Zai says nothing.
“You looked like a fool out there today.” Mathias spits the words like a cobra. “Why Hermes didn’t pick one of your brothers, I will never know. Either of them would have won that Labor, not looked like a drowning rat in need of rescuing. You reflect on me.”
I picture the two young men who were with Mathias when the gods introduced us to the previous winner and his family. Tall, strapping men, so he’s probably not wrong.
Still nothing from Zai.
“Allergies,” Mathias scoffs next. “What a pathetic excuse for weakness.”
So that’s what Zai is dealing with? They must be bad to make him look so haggard.
“Everyone blames you.” Mathias doesn’t even pause for Zai to answer. “They are all saying you are the reason that woman died. What did you think you were doing?”
Felix might have been a callous father figure and boss, but—even with my curse—he would have never said words as vile as this to me.
