Page 101 of The Games Gods Play
“What?” he asks.
I chuckle. “It’s okay. I made peace with it a long time ago.”
Mostly. Although lately I’ve started wondering what my parents would do if I showed up after winning, my curse removed. Would they finally love me? Accept me? Or at least give me a place to stay while I figure out a new life?
“Is that why you hum?” Amir asks next. “Is that part of your training?”
I shake my head. “Actually, they tried to train me not to do that. They teach us to work in silence. Noise, even soft noise, could give away my position.”
As if a mouse heard me, there’s another rustle off to our right. We all peer into the growing darkness. It’s difficult to see now that we’re this far down. When no monsters and no one from the other team appears, he keeps going, returning to his questions. “So do you do it when you’re scared or something?”
“No.” Hades is probably, wherever he is, watching this and yelling at me to stop telling them stuff right now. “I do it when I’m focused.”
But I should really try harder to control it. It is a tell, and that could get me in trouble in these Labors.
At a flicker of shadow, we all look up just as Zai lands to take a turn pulling the pallet. “As far as I can tell, no one is close,” he says. “Keep alert, though.”
The last bit makes all of us straighten a tad.
I study Zai surreptitiously, not wanting to seem like I’m mothering him. He’s wheezing a little. I beckon him closer. “How are you doing?”
He flicks a glance at the others and tugs his collar up, which tells me he doesn’t want them to know.
“I have my inhaler,” he whispers back. “And I brought an EpiPen for if things get really bad. Left zippered pocket on my pants.”
I nod, and he grabs the left cart pole, lean muscles straining as he takes Meike’s place.
It’s quiet for a while as we go, but eventually Meike breaks the silence. “So…it’s clear Dex wants to win this thing. I’m sure he has reasons. Are any of you hoping to win? Maybe you have family needing a blessing?”
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.
