by Eva Ashwood
That wasn’t how I wanted to win this thing.
We sprinted the last few yards to the portal. Lachlan reached it first, and for a horrifying second, I was sure he was going to leave without us.
Instead, he turned around and put his hands out. The three of us skidded to a stop in front of him a second later, linking hands so we were all connected. Then we turned in unison to stare at the portal.
I hadn’t had magic for very long, but even when I’d thought I was just a regular human living in Boston, I’d been smart enough to follow the common wisdom—never step into a portal if you don’t know where it leads.
Ugh. I hate this.
The portal’s light was flickering and dimming. Our chance at escape was about to disappear. But what lurked on the other end?
“Where does this go?” Trace murmured, eyeing it warily.
“Guess we’ll just have to find out.” I squeezed his hand.
It was either that, or we’d end up fighting every contestant who came through there, waiting for whatever monster it was that’d left the bones behind in this.
Considered in that light, I was willing to take the chance.
Hands locked together tightly, we all stepped through the portal.
Nothingness swallowed me up and spun me around, making me dizzy, and just when I thought I might barf, it spit me out on the other side. I stumbled slightly, holding onto the guys for balance.
The sound of the portal snapping shut behind me made me jump, and Lachlan gripped my hand tighter.
Then the four of us looked up to take in our new surroundings.
I hope we didn’t just step from a nightmare into hell.
Chapter Twenty-One
Cold wind gusted by me, sending my messy hair flying all over as goose bumps popped up on my skin. My boots crunched on stones and rocks beneath my feet, and I turned in a slow circle, surveying the landscape around us.
We were halfway up what appeared to be a mountain, the ground sloping beneath our feet and the shadowy landscape of the godly realm spreading out below us in the distance.
I didn’t see any immediate threats, although that didn’t make my muscles unclench even a little bit. I’d learned the hard way in this place that the worst threats were the ones you didn’t even see coming. The ones that snuck up on you while you were moving hot and heavy toward a four way with three gorgeous men.
Which, admittedly, was one of the dumbest things I’d ever done.
Not the act itself, necessarily, although I still wasn’t quite sure what it meant for the four of us. But the timing. That had been atrocious.
“Gods.” Trace groaned, bending over and putting his hands on his knees. “What kind of fucking competition is this? I know none of us are kids, but we are in school. We’re supposed to be learning how to use our magic in a safe environment. This is fucking ridiculous. I know there’ve been casualties in the Gods’ Challenges before, but it’s a miracle anybody survives these damn things.”
“That’s why I didn’t compete either semester last year,” Merrick replied. “It didn’t seem worth it. But the admins all push it so hard, and they make it sound like meeting the gods is the best way to level up after graduation. I couldn’t pass it up all three years. But you’re right. This is insane.”
“How many people usually make it through?” I asked, a cold feeling trickling through my body.
Lachlan grimaced. “It depends. Last semester, seven of the ten made it back.”
My eyes flew wide. I’d known people had died during the challenges before, but from the way Merrick was talking, it sounded almost like it was an expectation that not everyone would make it back.
“I can’t believe the admins are okay with this,” I muttered. “It’s bullshit.”
“Well, I always hear Dean Frost say greatness is forged in fire,” Trace said, straightening up and rolling out his shoulders.
“I don’t know if the challenges are the same for everyone, or if they base it off of your skill level. But we’re all pretty tough and skilled, so it doesn’t surprise me that everything we keep meeting head-on is extremely challenging.” Merrick blew out a breath, running a hand through his white-blond hair. A cloud of rock dust rose up from the strands, glittering in the dim moonlight. “We have to be close to being done.”
“Fuck. I wish I’d known how deadly this all was. What will happen to Chetna and Knox?” I asked, wrapping my arms around myself to fend off the cold. “Are they supposed to kill each other? And since the portal collapsed, what then?”
The guys all looked at each other but didn’t reply.
My stomach twisted. I didn’t want to think the worst. I refused to think the worst.
In almost every challenge we’d faced so far in this realm, there had been a way out, a solution. It might not’ve been easy, but there had always been some way forward.
I had to assume the same was true in the cave where we’d left Chetna and Knox—that some alternate way out would present itself. I would never have left them behind if I thought we were sealing their doom by doing so.
“No.” I shook my head, trying to convince myself as I spoke. “That’s ridiculous. There’s probably some other portal that will allow the others to escape the cavern. Why would the gods let everyone get trapped in there?”
Lachlan’s face went a little soft, and he nodded. “You’re probably right. There’s probably a whole network of portals. The gods probably give them out as soon as they believe the competitors have earned them.”
The other two men nodded, but I couldn’t tell if it was for my sake or because they actually believed what he’d said.
Normally, that kind of reaction would piss me off. I wasn’t the kind of girl who needed to be placated and coddled, but after seeing everything I’d just seen, I wanted to believe there were other portals.
It was stupid to push my fears into the background, but I had never known this kind of exhaustion and desperation in my life. It had been weeks since I stepped through the portal into the jungle, and I felt like in those weeks, I had completely changed as a person.
I didn’t like the idea of Knox and Chetna dying for this stupid challenge, and I couldn’t stand the thought of any of the men around me getting hurt. Seeing Trace injured had just about wrecked me.
I needed to believe that we were all getting out of this place. That it was just a matter of who got the prize first.
Not who lived and who died.
“So, where are we?” Trace asked, drawing me from my thoughts as he glanced around.
I blinked, gazing down at the valley below us. It was still dark out, but the sky was a whorl of blue and purple light, and the moon and stars shone bright enough that I could make out a bit of the terrain. “I have no clue where we are. I don’t remember seeing these mountains when we were down below. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t there, I guess. This place is so weird, who knows.”
Merrick furrowed his brow. “No, I think we transported somewhere else entirely in the godly realm. Somewhere we’ve never been before.”
We all stood in a row, looking quietly over the lush landscape in front of us.
Trace shook his head. “It’s funny, from up here it’s kind of beautiful. It’s not like anything I’ve seen on earth, and with the sky swirling in those colors like that. It’s wild.”
I wanted to see the beauty in it, but I couldn’t.
Not in that moment.
I turned around as anger swelled in my chest. “It’s bullshit, that’s what it is. This entire competition is bullshit.” I gritted my teeth. “Why would they put people through this?”
Lachlan walked over to me, his expression soft. With one hand, he lifted his shirt over his head, and I realized with a start that I was topless except for my bra. I’d left my damn shirt back in the cave.
My cheeks flushed as I held my arms up, letting Lach pull the oversized shirt over my head until the fabric settled around my body.
“Thanks,” I mutter
ed.
His lips tilted up in a smile, and his hands stayed on my hips, his emerald eyes shining in the light. “It is bullshit, but you have to remember each of us came in here on our own accord. No one made us accept the challenge.”
“They also didn’t prepare us for it,” I replied, my voice sharp even as my body softened under his touch. “Not enough, anyway.”
With my gaze focused on Lachlan, I hadn’t even realized that the other two men had come up on either side of me. When I did, my face flashed hot, and visions of what had just happened in the cave went running through my mind like a movie.
Merrick’s hand drifted down my arm as Trace’s did the same on the other side. I wasn’t sure if they were trying to comfort me or what, but the heat was definitely back on.
Now that the wind was hitting me in the face, and I could take a full breath that didn’t feel tinged with burning air from the lake of fire, what had gone down in that cave seemed almost unreal. As if none of it had happened.
Not Trace’s brush with death.
Not my confession of my feelings for Merrick.
Not the men’s possessive stares and hungry glances. Not their lips and hands converging on my body.
I couldn’t believe what we’d done, and maybe it was the literal change in temperature out here, but I felt the hard shell building back up around my heart. It had been stupid. Merrick had lured me into a closet the first day of school, fucked me senseless and left me there naked.
What had happened in the cave had seemed entirely different than that, but I had to be smart. I had to remind myself there was always the possibility they were just trying to get me to lower my defenses to make it easier to beat me when the time came to end our partnership.
No matter what feelings had sprung up between all of us, we were in the middle of a competition that was a matter of life and death. I wanted to think these three men genuinely cared about me, but in reality, I didn’t know if they would take me down just to win the prize.
Besides, we needed to focus. If Chetna and Knox were any indication, the other contestants weren’t far behind us. We needed to focus on finding the gem and getting out of here alive.
I maneuvered my way from between the three warm bodies, turning back to look at the guys. “We… shouldn’t let that kind of thing happen again. We need to focus. We almost died down there. We have to keep our eyes on the prize and not get distracted.”
I held my breath, waiting for their reactions. I wasn’t sure whether they’d be upset with me, agree with me, or make fun of me for it.
My stomach soured at the thought, and I steeled my heart.
It’s fine. We’re each here to win the competition. If they can’t focus, I’ll leave them behind and find the next clue by myself.
The thought didn’t help as much as I’d thought it would. I was starting to dread the moment we all split up, when this weird little team we’d formed was disbanded. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to say that out loud.
But none of the men mocked me, and none of them seemed angry either.
Merrick smiled, his amber eyes warming slightly. “You know I don’t like agreeing with you, but you do have a point. That was…” He shook his head, seeming at a loss for words. “Well, I wish we hadn’t had to stop. But the last thing I want to do is risk your life, or any of our lives. You’re right. We need to keep our focus and get to the end of this thing.”
Trace nodded too, sticking his hands in his pockets. He was still shirtless, and I could see the healed scars from his burns, the lighter skin contrasting the dark marks of his tattoos.
“Yeah. I guess so.” Heat flared in his eyes, and he shot me a wicked glance. “When we get out of this place alive, we’ll have plenty of time to do whatever we want. Besides, when we get to the end, we’re no longer a team anymore remember? I can’t have any of you assholes going soft on me.”
We all chuckled, and I ignored the pinch of regret in my chest, wondering if I saw a similar emotion flash across his face for a moment. It was too dark to be sure, and whatever the expression was, it was gone too fast for me to analyze it.
Lachlan let out a deep sigh and shrugged. “Ah, fine. Takin’ all the fun out of everythin’. All right, hands to myself.” He held them up as if to demonstrate. Then he lifted an eyebrow. “But I’m not promisin’ my mind won’t be thinkin’ dirty thoughts.”
I grinned. “I’m pretty sure that’s all your mind has ever done. So it’ll be just like usual. And at least I know you can function that way.”
He chuckled, a low rumble in his chest.
Ignoring the way the sound seemed to settle in my own chest, way too close to my heart, I turned out toward the godly realm below us again, scanning the forest and trying to figure out what route would be best to take.
Where do we go from here?
The gods set aside a huge swath of their land as the “playing field” for the challenge. I didn’t know whether we had successfully finished part of the course, or if we had been punished and sent to a different location to set us back.
Or were the gods not intervening at all?
Maybe they truly just plunked us down here, let a bunch of monsters loose in the wilderness, and waited to see who would make it out in one piece.
I wasn’t sure which one of those possibilities I hated more.
There has to be some sort of clue to at least give us an idea of where we are.
As my gaze drifted over the swaying treetops, it came to a stop in the valley below. The trees were much thinner there, the trunks smaller and more twisted. I stepped closer to the edge of the small rock platform we stood on and felt Merrick’s hand on my wrist.
He chuckled as I looked up at him. “We’ll get out of here, Ari. You don’t have to go jumping off a ledge.”
I shook my head, grinning at him. I liked the teasing light in his eyes. The warmth.
Turning back to the valley, I pointed at a flickering and pulsing light coming from the trees. “Don’t worry. Nobody’s jumping off a ledge today. But do you see that? I think it’s exactly what we’re looking for.”
In the distance, barely visible through the trees, a faint glow rose up, shining like a beacon in the night.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“This feels like when I was a kid,” Trace said as we stepped down the mountain, trying not to slide on the slick rocks. “My dad used to take me hiking. He was a huge hiker. But I hated it. I had two left feet, and I ended up tripping and falling every time we went.”
I smiled as I jumped down from another rock, grabbing on to a tree branch so I didn’t go tumbling headfirst the rest of the way.
“You’re a good fighter.” I shot a look back at him. “I’ve seen you in action, and you’ve got some great moves. It’s hard to believe you when you say you’re clumsy.”
He grinned down at me. “Hey, when it comes to some things, I’m smooth as butter, baby.” Then he grimaced. “It’s just walking down steep embankments that’s not my thing.”
My blood heated at the innuendo in his voice. But I was sure he wasn’t lying. He was extremely talented in several areas, and I had a secret plan to try to make him sing for me one day. I wanted to hear the voice that’d captivated thousands of fans.
But he must’ve been having flashbacks to his childhood at the moment, because he went slowly, hands held out on either side of his body like a tightrope walker.
“I’ve always had pretty good balance,” I commented. “I’m sure the fight training has a lot to do with that. I spent a lot of hours making sure I was quick on my feet. I used to think you couldn’t fix clumsy if you were that kind of person, but Vin proved me wrong on that one.”
As I finished speaking, Trace lost his footing on a rock, letting out a low grunt as he slid toward me. He recovered just as I grabbed his shoulders, bracing him with my body.
His bare shoulders were warm and solid in my grasp, and our chests pressed together as he looked down at me with wide eyes. He let out a bre
ath and shook his head. “Maybe I need to talk to your trainer when we get back.”
We stepped away from each other, and Merrick slapped him on the shoulder as he passed, laughing. “I don’t know, I think it would’ve been pretty funny to watch you somersault all the way down the hill, taking out the big lug down there with you.”
Lachlan looked back at Merrick with narrowed eyes. “Oy! I’m not a big lug. I’m a big man, and that doesn’t make me dumb. Besides, even if I am a bleedin’ idiot, it wouldn’t stop me from bein’ able to kick your arse.”
I laughed as I followed them down the last bit of mountain. There were no trails from where the portal had dumped us, so we literally had to forge a path down the mountain on foot. The first several hundred feet had been such a steep drop that we’d had to climb down, clinging to the rock face with the help of our magic.
As we got nearer to the base of the mountain, the terrain had leveled out a bit, and now it was a walkable decline.
“Why do you think that portal in the cave sent us all the way to the top of a fucking mountain?” Merrick asked as he jogged down the last bit of steep, mountainous terrain.
“We weren’t at the top,” I said absently, and he rolled his eyes.
“Close enough. It felt like it. But still, the point stands. We escaped the cave. Shouldn’t we have been dropped off somewhere nearby the next clue?
“That’d be too fucking easy. I’m pretty sure the gods set this whole thing up to mess with us. Maybe they just like watching us struggle.”
Bitterness tinged Trace’s voice, and I couldn’t argue with it one bit.
“Personally, I think maybe we’re coming up on something other than another clue. It could be the end of the game,” I pointed out. “I mean, we’ve been in this realm for weeks. We’re beat up and exhausted. I sure as fuck hope we’re getting close to the end.”
Lachlan stopped, resting on one of the boulders at the base as we caught up. “Do you think it’s kind of strange that we haven’t seen any of the other contestants? I mean, it’s kinda silent out here.”