Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters

by Emily Roberson

  “You didn’t have to do this,” I say.

  He turns toward me and grabs my shoulders. “Ariadne, this thing that you are thinking of having is a fling. Gods know you deserve one, but that’s what this is. Summer loving. You do not get to have a future with the prince of Athens. He’s not going to be your boyfriend. I hate to be your tough-love friend here, but that’s the truth.”

  “I don’t want him to be my boyfriend!” I say.

  Icarus raises his eyebrow.

  “I don’t, but I do like him. You know that. Why did you let him volunteer?” I ask.

  He squeezes my shoulders.

  “You misunderstand things, Ariadne. He was going to ask your dad to volunteer no matter what I did. He was getting on the show. If you think about it, I’m helping you. I was able to use him to swap out the Acalle/Heracles plotline that you asked me to leave out. We had a whole narrative thread to replace—their meeting, fighting, Heracles coaching, sneaking around—and this fills all those holes.”

  “I don’t care about the Acalle/Heracles plotline,” I shout.

  The car pulls to a stop.

  “If you didn’t care about it, why did you ask to end it?”

  “I was trying to be nice,” I say through gritted teeth, following him out of the car.

  “Well, that is your problem in a nutshell,” he says.

  “Icarus, what have you agreed to? What is Theseus going to do?”

  He shrugs. “Follow me up to the control room and I’ll show you. I have to look over the footage anyway.”

  Together we ride the elevator up to the 161st floor, Icarus’s foot tapping with impatience the whole way, while I force myself not to visualize every bad thing that could come of this. Theseus dead in the maze. My brother dead in the maze. Both of them, dead in the maze.

  Once we both get through the retinal scanner, Icarus calls up the video from earlier today.

  Daddy is sitting at his desk chair in his office on the forty-ninth floor, looking at some papers.

  “Your Majesty, Icarus and Theseus here to see you,” Daddy’s secretary’s voice comes in over the intercom.

  “Send them in,” Daddy says.

  Icarus and Theseus come in.

  “Have a seat,” Daddy says.

  Icarus and Theseus sit down in the two chairs in front of Daddy’s desk.

  They are smaller than Daddy’s chair, so the boys look diminished across from Daddy.

  Daddy turns to Theseus. “Icarus tells me you have an idea.”

  “Sure, sure,” Theseus says, rubbing his palms on his pant legs like he’s nervous, like he’s drying off the sweat. “I want to go into the maze. I want to have a chance against the Minotaur.”

  “Really?” Daddy says, leaning forward. He’s interested. “Then why didn’t you go through qualifications and training in Athens?”

  “I wanted to enter, but my dad wouldn’t let me.” Theseus sounds like an aggrieved teenager. “It wasn’t fair. I mean, I was the one to kill the Crommyonian Sow. I am the slayer of the Cretan Bull. I’m the person who single-handedly cleared the pirates from our coast.”

  I cannot get over how much he doesn’t sound like himself.

  He sounds cocky. Callow. Why?

  “I want to be the Hero of Athens,” and the capitalization of that title is clear in his words. “How can I be the hero if someone else is the one to kill the Minotaur?”

  Daddy turns to Icarus. “What about the sponsors, Icarus, what would they have to say about this?”

  Icarus laughs. “The sponsors? They’d be in Elysium. I mean, seriously, sir, we’ve been dying for something to add zing to our ratings. That’s why we were talking about that Heracles/Acalle business, but this, this would be huge. The bump in ratings will be … We’d be talking seasons four or five kind of numbers, I think.”

  “I don’t want four or five numbers, Icarus, I want season one numbers,” Daddy growls.

  “Sure, sure,” Icarus says, “depending on what number Theseus draws, how much engagement we can get, whatever happens with other competitors, we could maybe see something in that general area.”

  Daddy turns back to Theseus.

  “What about your father? What will he have to say about this?”

  Theseus looks stubborn. “He won’t like it,” he says. “He won’t like it at all, but it will be fine.”

  Daddy’s gloating smirk is hidden, but I know it is there. He loves that Aegeus won’t like this. It will be another chance for Daddy to punish the king of Athens for Androgeous’s death.

  “What about the extra kid?” Daddy asks. “The one you would be replacing? Have you talked about this with the competitors?”

  Theseus shifts in his chair. “I haven’t mentioned this to anyone but Icarus. I had to keep it secret.”

  Was he about to tell me when we were running? When he asked me to help him? Or was he going to tell me something else?

  “So they couldn’t talk you out of it?” Daddy asks.

  Theseus grimaces. “A little,” he says. “Plus, I didn’t want to embarrass myself if you said no.”

  “I was thinking that Theseus could replace the lowest-scoring competitor,” Icarus says.

  “Have you looked at him?” Theseus says. “He’s terrified. I don’t think he’s going to mind hanging out and eating the catering instead of going into the maze.”

  “It’s a good idea,” Daddy says. He glances at the priests in the corner. “What would the gods say, do you think?”

  The older priest looks thoughtful. “It is a valid question for debate. The gods demanded only that the competitors be the bravest and most beautiful of Athens. It is up to you to determine who those are through the qualifications. If you were to try to substitute someone cowardly or unattractive, I would fear the wrath of the gods…”

  “Clearly, that is not true of Theseus,” Icarus says, the annoyance clear in his voice. “Look at him.”

  Theseus looks embarrassed.

  “There is no denying that the prince of Athens is a hero, and quite attractive,” the priest intones. “The gods would have no problems with this plan.”

  “We have to keep it as secret as possible,” Theseus says. “That way my dad can’t forbid it. I would never want to disobey a direct order from my father.”

  “Of course not, of course not,” Daddy says. “No one but those of us in this room will know the plan until it is about to begin. Is that possible, Icarus?”

  “Totally,” Icarus says. “I’m running the staging. That won’t be a problem.”

  The buzzer goes off on Daddy’s desk.

  “Sir, you have a visitor,” his secretary says.

  Daddy looks annoyed.

  “I get a lot of visitors,” Daddy says. “Who is it?”

  “The Keeper of the Maze,” she says, and I see a guilty look on Icarus’s face. Theseus’s face shows nothing.

  “Send her in,” Daddy says to the intercom. “We’re wrapping up here.”

  As the door to the office opens, Daddy says, “Yes, let’s do this. Icarus, you handle the logistics.”

  They shake hands.

  I feel sick to my stomach.

  Icarus pauses the video feed. “You know the rest,” he says. “You can’t stop this, Ariadne. Theseus is moving into his room in the accommodations as we speak.”

  “Why are you doing this to me?” I ask quietly.

  I walk over to his inspiration board on the wall, where he’s added another self-portrait with wings on, but this time, the color has been leached from the feathers, now they are only silver.

  He follows me to the board, lightly touching the picture. “When the prince of Athens lands in my lap and gives me the chance to beat my dad’s season one numbers, I’d be crazy not to take that opportunity.”

  “Since when do you let ratings control your decisions?” I ask.

  “Ariadne, if ratings are high, it means people are watching, and if people are watching, I’m doing my job right. If I do my job right, I�
�ll have the chance to have other jobs in the future. That’s how this goes. It’s business.” He turns back to his monitor. “Can I get back to work now?”

  “Fine,” I say, leaving the room.

  As I take the long elevator ride down, I decide to head to my own room. To put my VR headset on and get back to killing harpies.

  Therefore, I surprise myself by walking past my own door, down the long hallway, to the elevator that only goes to the maze level.

  I am going to talk to Theseus. I am going to find out what he is up to.

  * * *

  I get out of the elevator on the lowest level and go to the frosted-glass door to the accommodations.

  I have never been in this hallway before. Never explored where the competitors stay when they are here. I’ve never had a reason to visit a competitor during filming, and it’s the last thing I want to think about on the fifty weeks of the year when The Labyrinth Contest isn’t on.

  I go through the retinal scanner and the door slides open.

  The common room is empty and dark, the doors to the individual rooms closed. The competitors are upstairs, at the party my mother and sisters are throwing, showing off their new clothes and shining skin. Icarus said that Theseus was down here moving into his room.

  I look at the nameplates outside each of the doors until I find Theseus’s. His name is on a piece of paper taped over the nameplate of the boy he replaced.

  I press the button to open the door before I can change my mind. The door slides open soundlessly.

  Theseus kneels on the floor in front of the large open fireplace that has been built into the concrete wall. In profile, his expression is bleak, empty. Like he’s been staring into the abyss. I feel a tug of connection. It is the look of someone who has been pulled into a whirlpool and knows, with absolute certainty, that there is no escaping. That you are going to drown. It is the look I wear on my heart.

  Who is this boy?

  He stares into the flames, and on the seventy-inch flatscreen mounted over the fireplace, a video image of my mother in a bikini enthuses about the islands’ lovely beaches and casinos. As though the competitors will have a chance to visit the casinos before their final gamble against the Minotaur in the dark.

  House always wins.

  Theseus jumps to his feet as the door glides closed behind me. He runs his fingers through his hair, then gives me a friendly smile, his emptiness stowed away like he’s closing a pop-up window on his browser. He steps toward me, and he’s truly looking at me. Appraising. Curious. Interested. Nobody looks at me this way.

  “Are you here for my last request?” he says, his tone flirtatious. I’m off-balance. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. I don’t say anything. I just stare at him.

  “A joke,” he says. “That’s a joke.”

  “Well, it wasn’t funny,” I say.

  “Not even a little bit amusing?” he asks. “Because I am hoping to get another laugh out of you at some point.”

  I remember him making me laugh yesterday in the VIP box. Before this whole mess.

  “I need to talk to you,” I say.

  “Come in, come in, sit down,” he says. “Welcome to my bomb shelter.”

  It does look like a bomb shelter. A very glam one. His room is built in the same concrete as the maze. It has an industrial luxury, with leather and unfinished wood and stainless steel. Other than a black leather beanbag on the floor in front of the flatscreen, the only place to sit is the bed, cantilevered, standing out from the wall, the black leather–upholstered mattress piled with furs.

  It is artfully rumpled, but it doesn’t look like Theseus has slept in it.

  In the four corners of the ceiling, the cameras sit like spiders spinning their webs, waiting for something to happen. The set dressers were here this morning, getting everything ready, making the beds enticingly comfortable. Outside of lights-out, the competitors have the run of this hallway, visiting each other’s rooms as much as they like.

  It’s crazy what people will do when their days are numbered.

  Impending death sells.

  I sit down carefully on the edge of the bed, keeping both of my feet on the floor. I’m trying to be businesslike.

  It’s hard to be professional sitting on someone’s bed, but I’m doing my best.

  Theseus looks at me expectantly. “Why are you here?” he asks, softly, and it isn’t a question, it’s an invitation.

  “Because you aren’t telling the truth, somehow,” I say. “You’re up to something—You’re hiding something.”

  “Funny,” he says, “I could say the same thing about you.”

  I press my temples in frustration. “Why are you doing this? Why did you volunteer?”

  “It’s what I said in the stadium,” he says. “I can’t let these people die and not do something to stop it. I’m the prince of Athens.”

  “I’m the last person in the world who is impressed by that, right? You’ve been prince for what, two weeks?”

  “Six months,” he says.

  “Fine, six months. And you’re going to immediately get yourself killed? I don’t see how that helps your people.”

  “It helps my people to have a prince of Athens who cares about them. Who would actually do something to stop this. Besides, I’m not going to be killed.”

  “How can you be so sure?” I ask, getting to the heart of my question. “Why do you believe you can do this? Why are you the one who can end this when none of the others could? Don’t tell me it’s because you’re the Hero of Athens. Because that’s not a thing. If it was a thing, every city would have one. A Hero of Corinth. A Hero of Sparta. Don’t tell my dad, or else next thing you know he’ll say we need to get one of our own, and how will they decide which of my sisters gets to take possession?”

  He laughs, and I’m irritated at myself for smiling in return.

  “I did kill the Cretan Bull at Marathon,” he says.

  That’s our bull. The one that was my mother’s lover, the one that went insane.

  “How old was that bull anyway?” I ask. “It seems to me he must have been getting pretty elderly by now. I’m not sure about a bull’s lifespan, but it can’t be too much longer than fifteen years.”

  “It wasn’t easy,” he says.

  “Sure, sure,” I say. “But the Minotaur is not some elderly bull who has been put out to pasture…”

  “I fought every bandit along the Mediterranean coast,” he says. “I killed the Crommyonian Sow.”

  “The what?”

  “The Crommyonian Sow … it was this super-dangerous wild pig.”

  “Okay, okay,” I say, “I believe you. But what I’m telling you is that none of those would prepare you for the Minotaur. And I think you know it. I’ve seen the film. If you were the person you were pretending to be in the meeting with my dad, maybe you would believe that, but you aren’t.”

  “What do you mean, pretending?” he asks.

  “You weren’t yourself with my father. Don’t tell me you don’t know it. All that stuff about the Cretan Bull—”

  “I told you, it did happen,” he interrupts.

  “That’s not it,” I say. “You didn’t even sound like yourself.”

  He shrugs. “Over the course of my life, I’ve found it’s helpful to be what people expect you to be. The Labyrinth Contest needs a big, dumb princely volunteer, and I am happy to comply. Now that I’ve answered your questions”—he leans in a little closer to me—“I have a few of my own.”

  He picks up my hand and runs his thumb across the backs of my fingers, drops his eyes to my mouth. My throat is dry; I don’t say anything.

  “I want to know why you pretended you’d never seen me before when you walked into your dad’s office. I know you’re the Keeper of the Maze, Ariadne, a mask isn’t enough to keep me from recognizing the rest of you.”

  I jump to my feet. “Gods, Theseus, I can’t talk about that. You’re making this more difficult.”

&n
bsp; He holds up his hands in apology.

  “Making what more difficult?” he says. “Come on, I promise I’ll keep my hands to myself. Why are you here?”

  I sit back down, pushing away the hollowness I have now that his hand isn’t on mine. We do not belong together. We don’t.

  “I want to know what you are planning. I want to know why you are so sure of yourself. I want to know why you aren’t afraid.”

  He shrugs.

  “It’s my destiny to be here. To do this. If I’m meant to kill the Minotaur, it will happen. I will do it.”

  His steely determination is right there on his face. His utter certainty. I feel a great sadness, hiding behind my eyes, waiting to overwhelm me.

  He grabs my hand, staring hard at me. “You don’t want me to kill the Minotaur,” he says with dawning understanding.

  “Can’t you tell my dad and Icarus that you don’t want to volunteer anymore?” I manage.

  He laughs. “I don’t think that’s an option.”

  He’s so close that his breath tickles my cheek. He smells like soap and salt water.

  “I’ve been watching you,” Theseus says, still holding my hand. “For years. I’ve watched the glimpses of you on the Paradoxes, and I realized today that I’ve been watching you without knowing it on The Labyrinth Contest when you were the Keeper of the Maze. There’s no way you want to be doing this. Our deaths don’t make you happy. You don’t get off on it. I can tell.”

  “How can you know that?” I whisper, pulling my hand back.

  “I trust you. I know you wring your hands when you are nervous,” he says, and clasps his hands around my twisting fingers. “I know you like to wear flannel pajamas with cherries on them. I know that there’s no one here who appreciates you. I know that there’s no way you enjoy your job, leading the competitors. You hate the cameras.”

  He leans in close to me, moving my hair away from the side of my face and putting his mouth next to my ear. “I know you don’t want me to die.”

  I shiver at the whisper of his breath on my skin. I have been wandering dark corridors for too long. Turning and turning and turning in upon myself. He’s right. I don’t want him to die. He’s offering me a tiny crack of light in the darkness.