by Laynie Bynum
I always favored wit and cleverness over brawl.
Mica appeared behind the person sitting across from me, shaking her head. Her eyes were the size of flying saucers, the fear in them reflecting my own anxiety. But I couldn’t give in to bullies, I couldn’t let this guy waltz all over me, or he would do it again, every chance he got.
“On one condition,” I said.
Dryas laughed, as if it was hilarious that I would even dare to suggest that I wasn’t going to play his little game without any guarantees. “Tell me.”
“I’m not interested in being regarded like a monkey in a zoo, even if I defeat you or not. So, no thousand peeping toms like now. If you want to have a fight, then do it fair and square. You and me.”
I thought Dryas would reject my offer, that he was doing all this just to draw everyone’s attention, but to my surprise, he didn’t hesitate before he said, “Fair enough, Aiden. You’ve piqued my curiosity. Tonight, you, me, the Arena, and may the best fighter win.”
I gulped. My stupid, stubborn head. Why hadn’t I followed Mica’s advice and said no? Why had I let this bully coerce me into playing along with his stupid game? Even if the entire prison didn’t see me digging my own grave, surely Dryas would tell them all about it by the time the fight was done.
Stupid, stupid. My pride, my own arrogance, my refusal to back down even when it was the sensible thing to do, would be my downfall, yet again. In the same way it had been when those MMCA agents came for me at the Rijksmuseum in the Amsterdam. I always let my own arrogance get the best of me.
When I looked up and Mica’s gaze met mine, I felt like a dead woman walking.
Chapter Four
“Dryas is going to kick your butt.” Mica was sitting on her bed at the opposite side of our cell, her legs pulled to her chest. “And then he’s going to tell everyone about it.”
“Is that what he always does?” I asked. Ever since lunch was over, I had bit off more of my nails than I had off the food.
“More or less. Not to everyone. He likes to cherry-pick his victims.” Mica’s stomach grumbled loudly. By the time she had a chance to eat, nothing even remotely resembling food had been left.
“I think it’s outrageous that only the winners get to eat properly,” I fumed. “And I hate the way Dryas thinks he can just pick on people.”
“If you’d been a little more docile, he probably wouldn’t have it pushed it that far, but you just had to engage him. You always engage, you never learn to keep your head down.” Although she was upset, a hint of pride echoed in her tone as well.
“I’m not about to give in to bullies.” Even if the idea of battling Dryas in the Arena drained the blood from my limbs like a cut artery. “Tell me about this Arena. What is it?”
“It’s a platform below the prison, and before you enter, you can take your bracer off, so you can have full access to your powers.”
I stared at Mica as if she had turned into the three-headed dog and protector of the underworld, Cerberus. “You said full access to your powers.”
Mica gestured for me to come closer. I did, crawling onto her bed so that our knees touched. “What?” I whispered.
My friend glanced past me at the door of the cell, double-checking no guards were walking past. “They don’t block out our powers completely.” She lifted up the bracer around her arm.
“A long time ago, perhaps they did, but they no longer function at one hundred percent. It’s the best kept secret in this entire facility, so don’t breathe a word about it to anyone.”
“Are you the only one who knows?”
“No.” Mica’s dreadlocks bounced from side to side. “I’m sure everyone knows, except for the guards. We’re super careful to hide our powers and never use them in public.
I stared at the gemstone encrusted in the bracer, and moved my arm closer to my face to inspect it. “Is it because the stones are losing power?”
“That’s what the children of Athena think, anyway, and they’re the most intelligent of all of us, so I’m inclined to agree. They think that over time, the stones began to lose strength, and now they can no longer block all our powers.”
“And the MMCA has no idea?” A mischievous smile crept on my lips. If we could find a way to escape from here, or at least make the MMCA look like fools, then I was all in. Not because they had managed to catch me during my heist at the Rijksmuseum—I was graceful enough to admit I deserved that—but because they hunted down every supernatural who so much as dared to use their God-given powers (in this case, literally) without the MMCA’s permission.
“None whatsoever.” Mica returned my smile with one of her own. “But refrain from using your powers as much as you can. We don’t want them to get suspicious.”
“Okay, sure.”
“Anyway, do you have any idea how you’re going to fight Dryas without looking like a complete tool tonight?” My best friend asked, changing the subject. “I’m guessing he’s the best fighter in the entire prison.”
“I was thinking about using some portals to escape him, freeze time, the normal yadda yadda.”
Mica’s hair plummeted against my shoulder. “That might work on the mages, but this is the son of Ares we’re talking about. He’ll be confused at first, sure, a little taken aback by your powers, but he’ll recover fast and then you’re toast.”
“Well, how do the other people fight in here who have powers similar to mine?” I asked, staring at Mica curiously.
“Uhm.” Mica licked her lips. “To be honest, there’s no one here with powers like yours. No one with the ability to manipulate time.”
“Huh.” The thought was unnerving. When Mica explained what this place was, I figured I would blend in with a group, like she did with Keres, Tristan and the twins. A family of my own, my half-siblings descended from the same god or goddess. But if no one had powers like mine…
“You don’t think.. What if I don’t belong with any of them?” My voice broke halfway the sentence, and I had to swallow the tears forming in my throat.
For a moment, I had believed I would find out more about who I was, but if I didn’t belong with anyone, then I was back at square one.
“Hey, hey.” Mica put an arm around my shoulders, pulling me close. “I didn’t say that. Your powers are… strange. Even for the standards of this prison. But that doesn’t mean you don’t belong anywhere. You should socialize a bit, get to know the different groups, see if you resonate with any of them. There are some people here who are alone—they don’t have other siblings—but they do belong to a group. Take the underworld group for example.”
“You mean the children of Hades and Persephone, and whoever else’s offspring the others were?”
“Yes,” Mica replied. “There are gods who aren’t represented here at all. Nyx, the goddess of night, for example. Hermes, the messenger of the gods, just to name a few. If you’re a child of any of those gods, that doesn’t mean you won’t be accepted anywhere. And worst case scenario, you still have me.”
I smiled at her gratefully, and let her hug me. I had missed her so much when the MMCA had taken her away. Mica knew how to cheer me up when no one else could.
“You’ve sure learned a lot about the Greek gods and goddesses,” I told her when she let go of me.
“Well, I figure since I’m related to one, I should know all about my extended family.”
“So, we’re all related? That’s a little… creepy, though. Dating anyone here is out of the question then, I presume.”
“No, no. It’s not like that,” Mica said quickly. “I wouldn’t date anyone who is a fellow descendant of Aphrodite, but everyone else is fair game. The gods weren’t related by blood, not like humans are. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Hmm…So, since you rattled off that reply like you practiced it before, who are you dating?” I gave Mica a knowing smile and poked her in the ribs. “Come on, you know you can’t keep secrets from me.”
“I’m not dating a
nyone.”
I wiggled my eyebrows, and Mica burst out laughing. “I’m serious. I’m not dating anyone yet. I do have my eyes set on someone, but we’ll see how that turns out, but I want you to know that it’s not yuck or weird, it’s not like it is with humans. Gods are related not by blood, but because they’re made from the same substance. Stardust.”
“Gods are made from stardust?” That surprised me almost even more than what Mica had shared with me so far.
“Yes. A complicated process. Apparently there was this one god who started it all, Chronos. He created Zeus, Hades and Poseidon from stardust. Zeus eventually rebelled against him and dethroned him, and Chronos joined the titans. They once succeeded, also with the help of Hades, to throw Zeus off his throne, but then Zeus’ son, Hercules, a demi-god just like us, helped to reinstall Zeus as the rightful king of the gods.”
“Complicated family history, but also an excellent way for you to change the subject.” I got up from the bed and dusted off my pants. “Who’s the guy—or girl, I don’t judge—that you’re interested in?”
“I’ll introduce you to him later, but only if you promise not to act weird about it.”
“Weird?” I wiggled my eyebrows again. “How could I ever be weird?”
“Crazy you.” Mica threw a pillow at me, which I caught mid-flight. Maybe this prison wasn’t that bad after all, except for the strange hierarchy during lunch. Being reunited with Mica made me realize how much I had missed her.
“Anyway, I guess I should go socialize. See if there’s anyone that could be my long-lost siblings. Do you know of a good place to start?”
“Maybe with the muses,” Mica suggested. “You are a pretty good singer.”
“I doubt ‘pretty good’ qualifies to make one a muse,” I said while I walked toward the exit of our cell.
“One of the muses, Clio, is the muse of history.” Mica yawned, a tear escaping from her eyes. “By the gods, I’m exhausted. Anyway, Clio could tie in with your ability to manipulate time.”
“Uhu.” It sounded a bit far-fetched to me, but I guess it couldn’t hurt to try. “And I’m bound to find Apollo’s brethren in the craft room?”
“Most likely spot.” Mica leaned back on her bed, crossing her arms behind her head and using them as a makeshift pillow. Bags crowded under her eyes, and she looked as exhausted as a hundred-year-old grandma who had just ran a marathon.
“You should get some sleep,” I told her while I walked out the door. “Seriously.”
“Don’t worry about me.” Mica already had her eyes closed, dozing away. “You better worry about yourself and…”
She was already asleep, not even capable of finishing her sentence.
“Thank the gods,” a voice said from behind me. “I thought she’d never shut up.”
Chapter Five
I gasped and turned around, almost bumping into the chest of the guy standing a millimeter behind me. I blinked in surprise. Black hair, midnight-colored eyes…
Charon, the son of Hades.
His mysterious smile made a creepy sensation roll up my spine.
“Did you put her to sleep?” I asked. “How?”
“Not me. Hypnos here.” Charon jerked his thumb at the smaller guy standing behind him. Hypnos looked like a living skeleton, a mix of a scarecrow and a zombie, grey-skinned, sleep-deprived, flesh pulled so tight his cheekbones looked like blades ripping through his skin.
I swallowed hard, slightly taken aback by Hypnos’ appearance, and by the sudden arrival of the underworld gang in the cell I shared with Mica.
“Hypnos can put anyone to sleep. It doesn’t hurt, and it keeps them out of the way.” Charon further explained. “We wanted to take the opportunity to welcome you here.”
“By putting my friend in an artificial sleep?” I shook my head in disbelief. Did no one here have any manners? First, I met the biggest, most arrogant idiot this side of the meridian, and now I was face-to-face with a guy who obviously thought it was okay to put my best friend in a magically induced coma just to have a talk with me one on one—or two, if you counted Hypnos. “Yeah, that isn’t going to fly,” I said. “Wake her up, now.”
Charon chuckled, not in the least impressed by my demand. “You’re feisty, I’ll give you that. And I liked how you told Dryas off during lunch, but no one in this prison, or the outside world for that matter, tells me what to do.”
“No one in this prison, or anywhere else outside of it, puts my best friend to sleep without her permission.” I tried to sound as threatening as he did, which Charon apparently found hilarious.
“You either have powers strong enough to floor us all, or you just have the biggest guts in the history of the universe,” he said, “but no matter what it is, I like it. Let’s talk.”
Before I could protest, he had wrapped his arm around my shoulder and was pulling me along. “My money is on the latter, but feel free to prove me wrong by completely annihilating Dryas tonight.”
“What’s it to you if I defeat Dryas or not?” I twisted like a worm on a hook, but Charon only increased his grip on my shoulder.
“For starters, it would be drop-dead funny.” Charon led me to a hallway Mica hadn’t shown to me yet, at the left side of the common room. “Dryas thinks he’s the best fighter of all of us, and if someone defeats him in the Arena, especially if that someone is a puny, tiny girl like yourself—no offense—his ego will be crushed, and it’s about time.”
“Offense taken.” I glanced over my shoulder, realizing Hypnos was no longer following us. And although Hypnos reminded me of a ghoul who had just risen from the grave, I rather had him tagging along than be in a dark corridor on my own with the son of Hades—especially with what Mica had told me about everyone’s powers still working up to some degree, despite the bracers.
Dryas was terrifying because of his strength and his arrogance. Charon was terrifying for myriad other reasons, none of which I could explain. So far, he hadn’t really threatened me or done anything bad toward me, but my intuition told me to run, and goosebumps chilled my arms. Charon was like a viper; you knew he was dangerous, even if he hadn’t attacked you yet.
“Secondly,” Charon continued while leading me further down the hallway, “If you defeat him, that tells me your powers are more impressive than I thought at first glance. Perhaps impressive enough to make you one of us.”
“A child of one of the underworld gods?” I hadn’t entertained the possibility yet, and I didn’t know enough about all the Greek gods of the underworld to judge whether or not any of them had anything to do with time.
“There’s something about you.” Charon stopped walking, and moved in front of me, which somehow terrified me a thousand times more. “Something dark. Dangerous. But I can’t exactly pinpoint what it is.”
Dark and dangerous didn’t exactly sound like me, but I wasn’t about to contradict the son of the god who ruled the underworld.
“What are your powers, then? If you think I’m one of you, then perhaps my powers are similar to one of yours.”
Charon let out a dry laugh. “You want me to explain what I can and can’t do, but you share nothing about your powers. Why don’t you start by telling me what you’re capable of?”
When hell freezes over.
“You’re the one who thinks I’m a possible asset for your team,” I reminded him. “So, convince me.”
A steely gleam appeared in his eyes. “Convince you? You ought to be grateful if even consider you.”
I licked my lips, nervousness kicking in. I glanced over my shoulder—we were at least six meters from the common room.
Part of me wanted to snap my fingers and make a run for it, but on the other hand, my only advantage was that no one knew my powers yet.
Mica still hadn’t told me the full extent of what happened during the Trials, but I had gathered enough to figure out that the different groups competed against one another, and that the group that ended up as the winner, was the one who got the dibs
on the food rations for the entire week. My best option was the element of surprise, and not tell anyone about my powers until the Trials. It would only work once, of course, but that was better than nothing at all.
“Oh come on,” I said, deciding to try a different approach. “I’m just curious. If you’re the son of Hades, then your powers must be impressive, which makes me wonder why you and your fellow underworld demi-gods didn’t win the Trials last week.”
Charon scoffed. “Win, against the horde of Ares and Artemis, in cohorts with the son of Zeus?”
“Why don’t you join an alliance then, as well? Maybe with the children of Apollo or Poseidon?”
“We work alone.”
Still, based on the order used during lunch, working alone they had ended up second, above the children of Poseidon and Athena who had struck up an alliance of their own. Considering their manpower was much larger, it made me all the more curious what powers exactly the underworld demi-gods possessed.
“Okay then.” I shrugged. “It’s all the same to me, but if everyone else teamed up together, defeating Dryas and his gang would be a piece of cake. Just saying.”
“You have no idea how this place really works,” Charon said with a condescending smile. “Half of us would rather starve than work together.”
I shrugged, trying to bring the topic back to what I really wanted to know. “Anyway, weren’t you about to tell me about your powers?”
“No, but if you insist, I can show you a few tricks.” The terrifying smile on Charon’s face made my stomach twist. Why did I always have to run my mouth?
Charon leaned closer to me, pushing me against the wall. We were covered in the shadows of the hallway, and I spotted Hypnos standing guard at the end of the hall—so, that was where the ghoul was, on the lookout in case any of the actual jailors came our way.
I gulped. They had planned this: not just putting Mica to sleep, but also keeping me cornered here, on my own.
What in the name of the gods were they planning to do to me?