by Ines Johnson
Right. The ring. That’s what he was here for. That was his goal.
I shook off the childish fantasy that had clouded my judgment and got back in the game. Two of Gyges’s eye cameras were staring at me. Mocking me, more like it.
What had the people seen in that moment when I’d been daydreaming? Had they seen the little girl whose head had been filled with fairytales? Well, she was gone. She’d hardly had the chance to live. I’d had to grow up quickly as the real world yanked those silly stories out of my reach. But I did remember another story. One that was far more useful.
“Plato said that Polemarchus had found the ring in a cave,” I said.
Baros nodded. “If the stories in The Republic are true, then there will be a bronze horse with a dead man inside. He’ll be wearing the ring.”
“Do you think it’ll be that simple? That we just walk inside and take the ring off a dead man.”
“Let’s go inside and see.”
Baros reached for my hand again. Instead of placing my hand in his, I pretended I misunderstood the gesture. I took it to mean that he was allowing me to precede him inside, and I did exactly that. I couldn’t let myself believe it meant anything else.
I went ahead of him, getting a head start. But I didn’t exactly know what my end game was anymore? I should be trying to keep him from the ring, lead him on a wild goose chase until Geraint woke up, and then we could both overpower him. Right?
That had been my plan when I’d knocked Geraint out with my magical Vulcan death grip. If it worked. But if we overpowered Baros, Geraint would insist we take him back to the Olympians who would revoke his soul-contract with them.
On the other hand, I could let Baros get the ring. I could let him gain his freedom. Then the Greeks couldn’t touch him. He’d be able to live out the rest of his days anyway he chose.
My traitorous heart dared to ask the question; what if he chose to spend those days with me like he’d whispered over the pillow last night? Was that what I wanted? For him to come with me to Camelot? Arthur would never stand for it.
So, what? Was I going to leave Camelot and my family for Baros? Even if I wanted to, and I’m not saying for certain that I did, I couldn't remain too long off a ley line.
All I could do right now was to put one foot in front of the other as we ventured deeper into the cave. Two of the camera eyes preceded us inside. Their light illuminated a tomb and the bronze statue of a horse that stood at the center of the cave.
What I didn’t expect was for the man who was supposed to be inside the horse to be a giant. And he wasn’t dead. He was wide awake.
The behemoth turned to us as we approached. A fire blazed beside him from a hearth dug into the wall of the cave. The giant held the ring in his hand. It lay in his open palm as though he were baiting us to try and take it.
Beside me, I felt the tension rolling off of Baros’s shoulders as he eyed the ring, his freedom, his salvation. His hand tightened on his sword. His heels came up off the ground as though he were preparing to charge the giant.
“Who seeks the ring?” the giant asked. His voice boomed as though it came through loud surround-sound speakers.
“I do.” Baros stepped in front of me. He didn’t lower his sword, and his tense body remained ready to attack.
I felt a bit miffed that he didn’t give me a chance to address the giant. I was a contender, too, after all. But that wasn’t the plan, at least not the way Baros saw it. I was admittedly in between plans right now.
“What is your sacrifice?” asked the giant.
Baros turned back to me. His gaze lowered, and his chin dipped to his chest. My blood went hot again, and my poor, detached heart sank into my gut.
I should’ve known. I was the sacrifice. He was going to give me to the giant.
But instead of reaching for me with this free hand, Baros set his sword down. My blade was still snug in the satchel hanging over my shoulder, hiding out as a retractable cane. It would take but a second to reach for it and defend myself against … a ring?
With his sword hand free, Baros yanked the ancient ring off his finger.
“This was my wife’s ring,” he said.
It took me a moment to understand. But when I did, my sword hand ached to be filled so that I could cut off his balls. “Your wife,” I growled. “Your wife, who's been dead for hundreds of years, is the most precious thing to you?”
“I’m letting her go so that we can be together.”
Yeah, no. Somehow that didn’t make it better. Had his wife endured slight after humiliation after rejection from him for a decade? Did his wife have to pretend that none of it affected her while still hoping for his attention?
No. Because she was dead. I was the live, warm body that played second fiddle to a pile of bones. Hell, she probably wasn’t even bones anymore. She was more likely dust. I was competing with dust, and I’d lost.
Baros approached the giant and handed him the ring. The giant took the ring and turned it over in his meaty palm. But then he shook his head.
“No,” the giant said. “There is something more precious to you.” The giant’s gaze shifted to me.
Me? He was looking at me. I was more precious than Baros’s wife.
I wanted to pump my fist into the air. I kicked at the dust on the floor of the cave even though I knew it wasn’t anywhere near where Queen Gorgo was buried. But then, as the dust around my boot settled, reality hit me.
I was more precious than Baros’s long-dead wife.
I reached into my satchel and grabbed my sword.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Rocks crunched under Baros’s booted heels. They cracked and splintered, falling to pieces, turning to dust as he made his way to me. I didn’t look up. I didn’t want to see.
There might be pity stretched across his brow. There might be a deep V of resolve. There also was the slimmest chance that there might possibly be an arch of surprise that I would believe him capable of such a betrayal.
“Look at me, Lolo.”
I closed my eyes. It was a stupid thing to do, to have my back turned and my eyes closed in the face of an adversary. But I was a stupid girl. I’d always been stupid when it came to this man. I’d missed so much out of life because I was stupid for him.
I’d never had a boyfriend, only a string of lovers that all paled when I inevitably compared them to him. I’d never been swept off my feet because he’d taught me to plant my feet in a wide fighting stance, giving my opponents my profile with my shoulder first and never my front where my heart was. I’d never heard those three little words, all because he told me they were fairytales for weaker women, and I was a fighter.
“Look at me, Lolo.”
In the end, I did as I was told. I always did what he told me to do, hoping that he would one day see something special in me, something that would make him choose me and only me. There; I admitted it.
I was in love with Leonidas Baros. Had been for nearly my entire life. The moment I believed that he might finally feel the same way as I did, the earth literally opened up and shifted. All because I’d been stupid enough to dream, to hope it could be me, that I might be that girl who could get the fairytale.
Stupid.
I was stupid.
But I wasn’t a coward.
I turned around, and I faced him. But I didn’t raise my head. Instead, I raised my sword.
I saw his feet. He stood in a wide stance. He didn’t even have the grace to give me his shoulder like a warrior would. It felt like a slight, and so I lifted my head. I was even more confused at what I saw.
Baros had his hands open, arms spread at his sides. His sword was sheathed. He took a step, approaching me slowly, like the wounded animal that I was.
“Put your sword down,” he said.
I double fisted my blade.
“It’s me, Loren.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s why I’ve got a sword in front of my heart.”
“You think I’m
going to hurt you?”
I rocked back on my heels, but I didn’t lower my blade. “You do it all the time. For as long as I’ve known you. You’ve broken my skin, my heart, my spirit. And I’ve let you because I thought I loved you. But this is not what love feels like. And the funny thing is, I know that. I know what love is like. It’s not like I was a damaged girl with daddy issues. I was loved. I was just stupid for you. I’m not gonna be stupid anymore.”
“Good,” Baros said. “Then be smart and put down your sword. Don’t make this hard.”
“You want to cut out my heart with your blade so you can give it to a giant, and you want me to hold still?”
“Only because you mean the world to me.”
A horrible sound rose from my chest, like a wounded animal being left in agony after a hunter’s bullet or arrow missed a vital organ. Then the damned bastard just left it there to die instead of putting it out of its misery. It was cruel. And so I did what any animal on the brink of death would do to its attacker, I lashed out.
The next cry that left my lips was a guttural wail. My attack was sloppy. It was clumsy. But my wrathful strike was filled with the power of a decade of hurt. As always, Baros simply sidestepped my feelings.
I slashed at him. I slashed him for all the times I sat by the phone waiting for him to call. I slashed at him for every time I found another woman’s number in his phone or saw lipstick on his shirt. I slashed and slashed, but I couldn’t make the kill strike.
I wasn’t done. I turned, swinging my blade in an arc. He leaned back, just an inch beyond my reach.
“It’s true,” he said, easily stepping out of my way as I continued to strike out at him. “You do mean a lot to me.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t have stuck your nose up every skirt that came by.”
I aimed for a low blow, but Baros hopped out of my reach so that I couldn’t decapitate the little head that did most of his thinking.
“Is that what this is about?” he asked. “You know they didn’t mean anything to me. Just warm bodies to feed my appetite. You were always my number one girl. Doesn’t this prove it?”
He motioned to the giant sitting off to the side watching the fight with vague interest. I came to a standstill as I looked at the giant and the glistening ring sitting idly in his palm, waiting patiently for its new master.
“Doesn’t this prove the depth of my feelings for you? That I care so much for you that I need to give you up?” Baros’s face softened and his hand, still empty of a sword, reached out to me.
“Oh, my God, Lenny.” I stared at his open palm. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes as my emotions overwhelmed me. “That is the douchiest thing that has ever been said to any woman in the history of the world. I’m totally calling Cosmo. You’ll be a centerfold spread.”
I couldn’t believe I’d done it. I’d forgotten the cardinal rule. I’d pretended that the universal truth was a myth when it came to this man. But he was just like all the rest of them. He was a god-damned dud. There truly was no such thing as a fairytale. At least not for me.
“Love doesn’t mean sacrifice,” I shouted at the confused arch above his vacant gaze. “I mean it does, when you’re hurting yourself. But not when you’re hurting the other person in order to make yourself stronger. That’s abuse.”
Slowly his brow straightened. Then his open palm closed. And finally, his hand lowered. “Fine. Have it your way.”
He unsheathed his blade. Then he sank his weight into a fighting stance. This time, he gave me his shoulder.
He didn’t wait for me. He advanced. When the feel of his blade against mine rang so loud that my eardrums felt they would burst, I knew that he’d been holding back on me not only with his heart but with his sword. Like the ache that spread throughout my chest, I knew that this physical contest was another bout that I’d lose with his man. He was going to take it all from me.
And then it happened.
I’d managed to get free of his last attack. I’m pretty sure he’d allowed it. But I saw by the straight score of his brow, the pensive line of his lips, that he was done giving me anymore chances.
“En guarde, Lolo.”
I took a deep breath, fully aware that it might be my last. Then I lunged into him. He held for a second until my blade was nearly upon him. Not until I extended myself, did he offer a defense.
Just like when I was seventeen, just like when we were in Eleusis, just like when we’d been in the arena, he parried. The flick of his wrist moved my blade aside. Baros’s forte met my hilt, and I lost control of the fight.
His blade was at my neck. All he needed to do was flick his wrist one more time and riposte. He took a moment to gaze at me, as though taking a moment to remember my features.
My mind may have been playing tricks on me, but it looked as though there was a spark in his white eyes. My brain swore that that spark looked slightly—just a bit—like something that could’ve possibly been adoration.
“We all must sacrifice for the greater good, for the glory of Sparta,” he said.
“I’m not a god-damned Spartan. I’m a knight and a Galahad girl.”
Leonidas Baros, the man I loathed to admit that I loved, stood over me. There was actual remorse on his face as he looked down. He leaned over me like he was going to kiss me before he slit my throat.
“Back away from her.”
Baros’s eyes narrowed. His brows rose in surprise as he recognized Geraint’s voice. Then his jaw clenched, and his nostrils flared as he looked back down at me.
Seriously? He looked at me as though I was the betrayer?
“Stay out of this Geraint,” I said.
“Can’t,” said Geraint, advancing on us with his sword raised. “I took an oath to come to the aid of all of my brothers.”
The blade at my throat was suddenly an insignificant nuisance as I digested Geraint’s words. I was spent emotionally. I had lost physically. But, wonder of wonders, I still had a moral leg to stand on. And so, while Baros spared Geraint a moment of his attention, I focused on the fire burning beside the giant and began a chant.
“Don’t worry, sir,” Baros was saying. “You’ll have your turn as soon as I do away with this traitor.”
“She’s no traitor,” said Geraint. “She was just on the wrong side having put her faith in the wrong people. She has her family now, people who will never lead her astray.”
Baros scoffed and looked down at me. His mouth opened as though he were going to say something more, but he paused. His gaze focused on my moving lips. His ears twitched as though they were trying to hear what I was saying.
A wind kicked up in the room as the fire blazed brighter. The flames leaped outwards, blasting the room with light and heat. Baros’s hold on me broke, and we all went clattering to the floor. All of us, except the giant, who glanced at the fire with the barest of interest.
A dark head poked out of the flames of the fire. Hades looked around, confusion in his eyes until he saw me. His brows rose in a question. Before I could answer, his gaze found Baros.
“Ah, Baros. There you are.”
Baros’s eyes widened impossibly large as the Greek God of the Underworld stepped out of the flames. Baros’s eyes went to the giant’s palm where the ring rested. Then he turned on me. “How could you?”
“What? We’re you expecting a fairytale? A happily-ever-after after you slit my throat?” I said. “Happiness is a constant, hard-fought battle to be won. You taught me that.”
“Well said, Dame Galahad,” said Hades. Then he reached out to Baros.
Before I had even a second to think about changing my mind, Baros was pulled into the fire. His protests extinguished by the flames as he was consumed.
There was a moment of deafening silence in the cave. And then cheers. The cave fell away, and we were back at the center of the arena. I heard the unmistakable voice of Gyges. Purple filled my vision as the sadistic fairy appeared before me. I was too distressed to hear a word he sai
d.
Then there were arms around me, holding me tightly and shielding me from the accolades of consigning the man I loved to a death sentence. I turned my face into Geraint’s chest and began to sob. He swept me off my feet, and I let him carry me away.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The ringing in my ear was a dull, somber tone. It matched the slow pulse of my heartbeat. The phone lay beside my head on speaker mode because my hands were to limp to grasp onto anything, even though I was trying to reach out to someone. But Nia’s phone rang and rang and then went to voice mail. Like the last twenty times I’d called her.
I pushed up from my prone position in my bed. There was silence in this part of the castle as everyone was down in the dining hall. Well, almost everyone.
I couldn’t hear them, but I could feel Morgan and Arthur arguing in the Great Hall. Well, Morgan was arguing. I felt the modulations of her emotions even though I couldn’t hear her words. Arthur’s punctuated silences and stillness were deafening, but he wasn’t unaffected emotionally. I’d expected to feel anger as he glared at her, but instead, there was awe, and admiration, and something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Beyond those two, I could feel each of the townsfolk’s energy signature, practically see their life force as they all arranged themselves at tables. I felt their joy, their love, and even some of their attentions as a few points of energy hailed me in acknowledgment. Someone, likely Igraine, gave me a tug, inviting me to join them. But I wasn’t ready to face my family, not while I was still in mourning for what I’d lost.
I turned and looked out my bedroom window. The sun had set and the moon turned over another day. It had been three days since the tournament. The fae had cleared out moments after their fun was over. With their departure, and no one left holding the magical spell, the underground arena had fallen away.
I couldn’t remember how we’d gotten out. Nor how we’d returned back home. I just remembered opening my eyes to the comforter that had belonged to my mother.