by Lucy Auburn
Something is going on. Something that probably has nothing to do with what happened to me in the yard, but is affecting Portia. And if I ask her, she probably won't bother to tell me.
My own cuffs itch against my skin. Reaching across to fiddle with one, I'm tempted to try draining the death from it, but I'm afraid that the instant I take it off I'll starve to death. Not to mention the guards are closely watching us here. I'll have to find a source of life energy to sustain me if I'm going to remove them and try for my escape. For now, I need to gather more info, observe what's going on around me, and plan wisely.
If I can.
I've never exactly been good at thinking long-term.
An itch is rising inside me, too. The itch to be self-destructive. To drink myself into a stupor and start fight. It's always been my main instinct: search for the bottom, hit it, and revel in the shame.
You're a wonderful girl, Mora. One day you'll see. Omar's words haunt me. When we reach the communal area, the guard sneers at my direction and reaches out to pull a long strand of my black hair. I don't even react, I'm so numb. She leaves with a laugh and a sneer.
Portia and I line up for food; today's lunch appears to be some kind of sandwich melt. I watch the other godbloods grab plates and sit down to eat, their voices raised in raucous laughter or lowered in private discussion. Vesuvius tries to catch my eyes, and I turn away from him, aware of his affect on me.
Omar's face rises up to the front of my mind. I can't stop thinking about the way it felt to breathe his very soul back into him. Questions plague me.
For a moment there you looked like an angel. He couldn't have been more wrong about me. It's almost ironic, like that Alanis Morissette song. If anything I'm the exact opposite of an angel in every single way.
I long to see him again, to know that he's whole, to smell his falafel, hear his voice raised with humor, watch him with his family. How absurd of me. I've never cared much for the lives of mortals; they come and go from this earth so quickly. But this time, this one, has started to matter, all because I saved his life.
"Save my place in line," Portia says abruptly, just as we're about to reach the front. "I've got to go do something."
"What could you possibly—"
"None of your business." She cuts her eyes at me. "Just make sure no one takes my lunch."
Raising my brows, I nod at her, and watch her walk away. There's definitely something off about her today, but I don't know her well enough to pinpoint exactly what it is. She's not normally so nervous and twitchy, though. And while it might have something to do with the brutality of the guards, I'm starting to get the feeling that sort of thing is routine around here—none of the other prisoners reacted at all. Almost as if they've been trained to expect the unexpected and be used to random, severe punishment.
I'm not used to it, though. And I don't intend to stick around long enough to become used to it. My idea of staying here and keeping my head low has been dashed entirely—mortality doesn't suit me as well as I thought. I just hope I can find a way to power up before I remove my manacles and make an escape for it.
Maybe Yoric would be a good source of la petite mort. Or Garnet—she has plenty of life force inside her. What I wouldn't give to be able to take a few orgasmic, soul-bleeding energy boost from Vesuvius or Jasper, though. It would certainly speed things up.
If it comes down to it, I could hookup with one of the Bacchus idiots. They don't seem like the type to turn down anything. Even if they do make me roll my eyes more than Portia has in her entire wealthy lifetime. Maybe three or four of them would be enough to sate my hunger so I can take these damn cuffs off. Once I do, I won't have to put up with anyone doing anything to me.
And the next guard who aims an electric baton in my direction will die a slow and horrible death.
"Mora." A voice that haunts my dreams jerks me to a standstill, and a hand drops gently onto my shoulder. "I've been looking for you. Well, mostly I thought about looking for you. I've barely left my bed since... since coming here."
Turning around, I stare up into his face.
It's all I can do not to collapse to the ground, tears streaming down my face. Or punch him in the throat. Or scream and wail. My body can't seem to choose between all the options, so instead I freeze in place and just gaze at him.
He has the same shiny jet black hair he sported in the French Revolution, when his warhorse Carnage died beneath him from an enemy bayonet. His eyes shine an eerie bright violet hue that mortals see as dark blue. And he has tawny golden-brown skin, as if he just came from sunbathing in the Grecian sun.
The centuries haven't change him. He's the same man I looked up to when I was barely old enough to hold a sword or ride a horse, when I drank mortal deaths as if they were nothing, my mother's morals guiding me. Somehow he still smells like ancient Rome, scented like the salt of the Mediterranean Sea with a side of crushed herbs and freshly oiled skin.
I can almost see his bold nose, strong chin, and chiseled jaw struck out of marble, the youthful curls of his blue-black hair like a crown, an unmoving cloak flowing from his shoulders. Even the fading bruise around his temple and the dried blood flaking on his neck don't ruin his impossible handsomeness.
"I felt your heart stop beating," I say aloud, because it's the only thought in my mind, the memory that plagues me. "When I woke up this morning I thought I'd imagined seeing your yesterday. Because you died." I find my hand fisting in his clothes, which are a grey linen made dirty and bloody from whatever happened that brought him here. "You died, Alek. Not just a little. But a lot. The way a woman is pregnant or the sun sets and rises. It was absolute. I felt it. And now..."
"Don't doubt Death," he says, the right corner of his mouth quirking up in a show of humor I find myself not being charmed by at all. "Your mother is still dependable. And so are your instincts. I did die... but then things got complicated. That isn't what I'm here to talk to you about."
I feel as if I might choke on nothing. The prisoners waiting in line behind us get impatient; it's my turn to get lunch, and Portia's lunch as well, but I find myself giving zero shits. Tugging Aleksander out of line—he feels so warm—I stare at him further, feeling as if I've walked out of a strange and terrible dream and into reality.
"I don't get it."
"That much is clear," he says wryly, his words still carrying the long-dead ancient of conquerers and kings in the empires of the west, sounding as if he walked off a throne and into the prison without a moment to spare between. "To tell you the truth, I can't explain all of it myself. That would be up to my father."
Of course.
The God of War. Ares. Mars. Father of my first love, god with a reason to loathe me deeply. I haven't seen him since his fallout with my mother became permanent, but it isn't hard to imagine how he would've reacted after Aleksander's death.
No one killed his favorite son and lived to tell the tale. He wouldn't have taken it quietly. Hell, he wouldn't have accepted it. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised to see the same violet eyes I remember staring back at me now. Alek's father would have done anything to keep his favorite son.
Including raising the dead.
"How did he do it?" I find myself staring Alek down, my mind running a mile a minute. "Do you know if my mother was involved? Was she there when you... came back? Did she say anything?"
He frowns at me, his eyes glazing over. "I don't want to talk about what happened when I woke up. As far as I'm concerned I just had a little gap in time. What I'm here to talk about is you—your plan." Alek looks deep into my eyes, placing a hand on my upper arms and squeezing them tightly. "I know you're going to try to get out."
I stiffen beneath his touch. "How could you possibly know that?"
"Are you kidding me? I know you, Mora. Hell itself couldn't hold you. You're too fiery. It's what I've always loved about you."
That dashingly handsome mouth of his curves up, and I swear, I want to sock him in the face so bad—also kiss him, t
hen stab him, then strip him naked, suck him off, and push him off a ledge.
Yeah, I'm a complex woman with a lot of emotions. So sue me.
It doesn't take me long to figure out how it is that Aleksander War-wager, son of Ares, renowned warrior and fighter, was captured by the likes of a couple of two-bit god hunters. I've seen Alek dive off a cliff with an axe in one hand and a sword in the other, both of which impaled his enemies when he landed on them. He's ridden wild stallions backwards and fired arrows upside down. If he truly was brought here after his not-so-permanent death, as Portia claims, it was only because his father willed it so.
And he can only be back for one reason.
"You let them take you," I accuse him, fingers curling up into angry fists. "Because you heard that I was here. Alek, why? Why would you do that—after all this time, when you didn't even bother to find me after..."
After he came back. It wrenches my heart; it makes me want to cry, curse, scream, spit, and tear my hair out. Even after everything, he had to have known how much he meant to me. But he let me keep living, believing he was gone from the world, for no good fucking reason at all.
"I can't tell you why, Mora. I wish that I could." His violet eyes shimmer with deep emotion. "Just know you were the first thing I thought of when I was brought back. And now... now I need you to trust me, and listen to me. You need to stay here. Stick around. Help me fight, please. Don't leave."
Looking up at him, I find the only words inside of me are angry.
"You left me," I point out, "so you have no right to tell me what to do. The time for that has passed."
"Mora—"
"Enough, Alek." Pushing his hands away, I try to ignore the huge part of me that wants to wrap my arms around him and sink into his embrace. He was always the strong, upright, righteous one, while I was the huge fucking mess. "Just pretend like you're dead again, why don't you."
Turning my back on him, I cut through the food line, grab two of the biggest, ridiculously gourmet sandwich melts, and join the misfits at the table they got for us. I try to ignore the beating of my heart; I pretend I can't feel Alek's eyes on me, and that my heart isn't yearning for the past.
I was such a different person then that I don't know if I can ever go back. After everything that I lost, who I became, it feels so useless to even try.
What I do know is that the woman I am now won't ever be able to blindly trust Ares' firstborn son like I used to. So it's better just forgetting that he's even here. After all, I lived this long without him. A few more months—hell, a few more weeks if I get out of this place fast enough—is nothing in comparison.
Chapter Ten
"I was thinking, maybe..." Leo shoots me a nervous look, fidgeting with his sandwich melt, which is dripping cheese and vinaigrette dressing onto his plate. "Well, if you're okay with it, which maybe you're not, I don't know, but since you seem like you might know a thing or two about weapons and battle, and since we don't really know anything at all, I mean we've done what we can but really it isn't much, so maybe, if you were uh, okay with—"
"He wants to know if you'll train with us." Sasha sighs in her brother's direction, shaking her head. "I swear, we may look alike, but we couldn't be more different. Mora, what do you think? Would you join us in the training room after lunch?"
I frown, glancing across the dining hall towards a set of three tables pushed close together. A few of the Bacchus sons are playing with the short, incredibly dull knives they give us for cutting up our food. With hands splayed on the table's surface, they stab the spaces between their fingers over and over again, faster and faster, cheering and hollering each time they nearly sever a finger with a dull piece of aluminum.
I wish they'd stab each other instead.
"Don't Vesuvius and his team train after lunch?" The fiery demigod himself is at the head of one of the tables, a fit blonde woman pulled against one side, his plate loaded up with extra food. He seems to sense my gaze, and his eyes go to me for a moment, those thick ginger brows of his raised. I make myself look away, but feel him there, like a flame burning in the corner of the room, giving off heat and light. "I'm not sure if I want to share the training room with a bunch of raucous musclebound idiots."
"It's the only available time." Sasha sounds unhappy. "We either share the training room with them—well, whatever part of it they'll give to us—or we don't get to train at all. It means dealing with the warriors, which is annoying as fuck, but there's no other option."
"Seems like a bad idea to train with the people you'd be fighting."
Leo explains, "Challengers go up against each other first, and whatever animals and beasts they've got. Only the ones who survive go against the warriors—that almost never happens, and the one-on-one fights aren't to the death. They won't even see us as a threat."
"It's the other challengers we have to worry about." Sasha shivers with fear. "They'll do whatever it takes to survive."
"Vesuvius and his team isn't that bad," Leo says. "They're annoying sometimes, but V is cool. He wants the challengers to survive and fight his warriors fairly. It just sucks having to share the training room."
"Yeah." Garnet sighs longingly, putting her chin in her hand and staring off into the distance. "It's so terrible. All those tall, muscular women. Like Amazonian warriors. Their thighs are so broad and the way they flex their arms while swinging their swords around... it's just not fair. None of them even look my way."
That wasn't the way I was seeing it, but now that she mentions it, all the tall women with muscles are on Vesuvius's team. He doesn't seem to mind it when a women has meat on her bones or height to rival a man's. Such things aren't uncommon among godbloods, of course; the warrior gods make daughters as well as sons, and all the features they pass to us are pronounced. The short among us, like Garnet, are shorter, while the taller are even taller. I myself have much of my mother's celestial height on my side.
Sometimes it would get awkward with mortal men when I want to throw them down on my bed and clench my thighs around their hips. They don't like feeling dominated, or knowing that I have strength too. It would make them protest. That is, until I'd slip their rock hard cocks inside me and change their minds with the ride of a lifetime.
I miss sex. The idiotic Bacchus boys are looking better and better by the day. Maybe training will be a good chance to meet up with them—and figure out how I'm supposed to get laid around here, with the guards always watching, their damned torturous batons in hand.
"I'll do it," I tell Leo, enjoying the way he grins; even quiet, introverted Yoric looks pleased. "Just don't expect me to fight in the arena. I'm not volunteering to be on any team."
Grimly, Yoric warns me, "You may not have a choice. Everyone who's in here winds up being thrown to the wolves sooner or later."
"Yeah," Garnet agrees, "as soon as you're not fresh meat anymore they'll make you fight. There's no escaping it. Not unless you have the favor of a powerful god... like Plutus."
Portia looks up from her lunch, which she's been pushing around listlessly on her plate this entire team. Quietly, she murmurs, "The favor of a powerful god. Yep. That's exactly what I have on my side."
"If only there were some other way to get out of the arena," Garnet says, sighing longingly. "Until there is, I guess we'll just have to train. I'm glad you've agreed to help us, Mora. It's better this way. You'll want to train in order to prepare for your inevitable moment in the arena, and learn from our mistakes. There's no escaping it."
There is—if I manage to escape this place before something like that happens.
* * *
The misfits are champing at the bit to go train, but I manage to slow them down by taking small bites of my sandwich and nudging Portia into eating at least a little. I don't want to get to the training room first—it's important that I suss out the other warriors in there before I reveal any of my abilities.
After all, I've been playing the weakling all this time. Or at least trying to. While Po
rtia seems to have bought it, largely because she saw me get electrocuted and curl up into the fetal position afterwards, others seem less convinced. It's important that I make sure not to appear too strong or capable in battle—just strong enough to help the misfits, without convincing Vesuvius to try to recruit me again.
"Hurry up, hurry up." Leo taps his fingers against the table, impatiently watching me turn the last bite of my lunch into two bites. "We've got to go, now."
Portia snorts dismissively. "I don't know why you're so eager to get this one's help. She's already said she's no good at fighting. How can she help you?"
"Huh. That's... true." Leo deflates a little.
"All we need is someone to practice against," Yoric points out. "If she can even hold a sword it'll help. You can hold a sword, can't you?"
I've run hundreds of warriors through with a sword on the battlefield, then crouched beside their dying bodies to take the last bit of their life force before they crossed over to whatever great beyond their spirit chose to reside in. But the only one here who knows that is Alek, and he's several tables over, conferring with a few of his younger brothers. No doubt they're planning yet another rebellion, or trying to figure out how to beat the other teams in the arena—there isn't an Aleksander without war of some kind brewing around him.
"I can hold a sword," I tell the misfits, eyes still on Ares' sons. "But don't worry about that. Just worry about learning how to run."
"What?" Sasha blinks at me. "How to run?"
"Yeah." Shoving the last bite of my lunch into my mouth, I swallow it quickly and lick my fingers, ignoring Portia's wrinkled nose of disgust. "When you're down there in that arena, a sword won't be your friend. Especially if you haven't already trained how to use one for years—those Bacchus and Ares warriors have been training for decades, centuries even, and those are the challengers you'll be going up against. But you've got the beasts to contend with, and they'll go for the kill. So just figure out how to dodge and run until the other challengers are worn down or taken out for you."