Page 198 of The Games Gods Play
I can’t stand looking at him now, at that harshly beautiful face, and drop my gaze to a spot at his feet. “You made me burn for you.” The words come out not as an accusation, but as a harsh whisper of humiliation and bone-deep hurt.
“Fuck. Lyra, listen to me—”
I shake my head. Here it comes. The pain. It’s trickling in now. I need to be far away from him when it really hits.
“I don’t want to hear what you have to say.” I raise my gaze to a spot on his chin. “I lost today.” I’m not even sure who won. Trinica, I guess, since she was out of the maze next, after Meike and Dex, who are dead.
“I know,” he says.
“I can’t win the Crucible.”
No response.
“I can’t make you king, so you don’t need me anymore.” I look down at my feet and realize—randomly—that I’m a mess. My shoes are covered in bug guts, both from killing bugs and from running through their remains. There are holes in my clothes where the spiders and the bullet ant pierced through. Blood on my shirt.
The sight is like an outward expression of what I’m starting to feel like inside.
Only pride is keeping me upright, the numbness giving way to everything I don’t want to feel. What I want to do is go curl into a little ball and fall apart. I’ll do that later. When no one can see. When no one can find me.
After the last Labor is over, I’m going to disappear forever. Forge a quiet new life somewhere else. Away from him.
Hades takes a step closer, eyes turning to molten silver. “The crown isn’t out of reach yet.”
I blink, then stare at him. For me to win, Diego would have to die. I search his face for any hint that what he’s saying bothers him at all. “And you think being an asshole is going to make me want to win?”
An emotion flickers over his features, but it’s gone too fast to catch. “Make me king, and I’ll grant you anything you ask for that is in my power to give.”
The fire he lit inside me…that’s all ashes now.
“Do you want to be back with your parents? Done.” He snaps his fingers. “Do you want to be rich? Done.” Another snap. “Rule a country? It’s yours.”
He really doesn’t know me at all to offer those things.
He never bothered to really know me, and I damn well don’t know him like I thought I did.
“I don’t want anything,” I tell him.
Don’t do this. Tell me not to kill Diego. Tell me not to put myself through it. Just to survive.
Stubbornness has him prowling closer. “Everyone wants something.”
I back up—not in fear. I can’t stand to have him near me. I don’t want him closer, where he might see the devastation laying waste to my insides. “Not from you,” I say.
There’s only the slightest pause in his steps, and then he keeps coming. “That’s pride speaking, Lyra. Get over it and take something for yourself.”
I slip two fingers in the small, zippered pocket where I keep the pearls he gave me. “Come closer, and I’m gone.”
He jerks up hard at that, fury and a sort of shocked denial whipping across those beautiful features.
And betrayal.
He feels betrayed by me? Fucking gods.
A shadow streaks by overhead, and Hades’ gaze shoots past me. Another lightning flash of emotions lashes out at me from him.
A very different kind.
Fear—metallic, urgent, sharp. It hits so hard that I gasp.
