We Will Rend

by Nicole Thorn

  Callie sat in a cage that had been brought for her. It looked kind of like a director’s chair, but not quite. The crowd behind her all watched us with the most impassive expressions on their faces. When I stepped onto the stage, it felt like all their eyes drifted over to me at once. I sucked in a breath to keep from panicking, reaching blindly for Zander’s hand.

  I pictured him moving his hand out of my reach so that I couldn’t take comfort from him. I prepared myself to feel the rejection, the blow to my heart.

  Then Zander’s fingers slid into mine, giving me a tight squeeze.

  “What’s going on?” Verin finally asked, when the silence had gotten to be too much. He crossed his arms over his chest, staring at the crowd until they dropped their eyes one by one.

  Callie cleared her throat, drawing my attention. She had been pretty solid throughout the trials, mostly looking annoyed with things that she didn’t like and only crying when we had been wrecked. Now, she had tears in her eyes and her hands balled into fists at her sides. She rose from her chair, and I noticed how she shook.

  My heart started to pound.

  Her eyes locked on me. “I regret to inform that you have failed your trial.”

  A ringing started in my head as my heart thundered so hard and so fast that I felt dizzy. My mouth went dry as every eye in the room turned to me, including that of my family. “Wh-what?” I asked, my words barely able to come out.

  Callie swallowed as the first of the tears slipped out from the corner of her eye. “Jasmine Nelson, you have failed your trial.”

  “What trial?” Zander demanded, but I knew. I just knew.

  “She couldn’t resist temptation,” Callie said, another tear falling from her eye.

  I started to shake my head while behind her, a large screen showed me in the hotel room the night before, standing in front of a food cart. My hand lifted some of the clothes to find a bottle. My eyes locking on that bottle.

  For a second, I felt like I’d been transported there all over again. Like I stood in the middle of that room, feeling the terrible things that I had been feeling. Then I slammed back into my body as Screen Jasmine popped the top and brought the bottle to her mouth for a hardy drink.

  My knees went weak even as I continued to shake my head. I slid to the ground, losing my hold on Zander’s limp hand in the process. “No, no, no, no…” I said.

  Callie broke. She dropped her microphone and came rushing over to me. She hit her knees in front of me, throwing her arms around my shoulders. I didn’t realize I’d started sobbing until she hushed me, telling me that it would be all right, but it wouldn’t be all right. I’d ruined everything. I’d failed my trial. I’d put the weight of the world on my entire family. I’d done this, all because of a stupid bottle that had been left in my room, designed to taunt me.

  I hadn’t even taken a second to wonder why, when the gods had to know my problems, they would leave such a thing for me to find.

  I hadn’t thought. I’d just reacted. And I’d failed. I’d failed so miserably.

  The sobs started ripping from my chest as the crowd began to boo and scream hateful names and words.

  Aster rose from the bench and screamed so loud that it shut them all up. “Stop!” He sounded disgusted with them.

  Micha, the Hunter, rose up as well, glaring at everyone. “I think now would be a great time for a commercial break.”

  I continued to sob.

  Zander

  “O h… oops,” Micha said without a drop of sincerity. He held a broken piece of the camera in his hands, staring at the demigod who’d been trying to film in the green room. “Guess you should go get that sorted, huh?”

  Though Hunters weren’t as strong as demigods, the boy gathered his supplies and rushed out of the room like Micha would break his neck if he didn’t. And maybe he would have. I couldn’t make myself care all that much.

  Other than that exchange, the room had been so silent. Jasmine hadn’t stopped shaking since Callie’s announcement, though we’d moved her since then. She sat beside me on a couch, her head in her hands as her body trembled. There was nothing I could say to her, so I didn’t try.

  Aster had Callie on his lap, her head against his shoulder while she stared distantly at nothing, tears on her cheeks. Aster had her hand, fury in his eyes as he too stared at nothing. I felt heat boiling inside of him, and a smaller echo of that in Micha as he paced in front of his friends. His thirst for blood grew every time he looked at Callie or heard her sniffle.

  Kizzy sat on the floor on the other side of the room, her legs tucked in close to her chest. She sat between Verin and Juniper, who pulled lint from her lint free shorts. Verin was working on gnawing off his thumbnail. Jasper, who was much more qualified than me when it came to comforting Jasmine, had his hand on her back. I couldn’t help but wonder how something so small could do so much.

  “I feel like I should be out killing someone,” Micha griped. “When there’s a problem, there’s typically something for me to kill.”

  “Not today,” Callie rasped.

  “Really? Because someone put that bottle—” He cut himself off when he saw Jasmine twitch.

  Callie glanced up at him. “What, are you going to punish someone given an order by the gods? That’s not fair.”

  “None of this is fair,” Aster said. “Fair isn’t picking a handful of people barely adult age to carry the weight of a war on their shoulders. The gods don’t care what’s fair or not. As long as they don’t have to be the ones fixing the mess they caused.”

  Jasmine still said nothing, so silent that it hurt me. I waited for something to change. For her to start apologizing or going into denial, or anything but this silent crying. I would know what to say if she would just give me something to go on.

  “How long do you think we have?” Kizzy asked from across the room. “They’re going to want to get on with the show.” She stopped, rubbing her eyes. “The fucking show.”

  Rage came back to me as I thought of how these people saw these trials. Like it was a fun game. If we weren’t all broken people when we walked into his place, then we sure as hell would be when we walked out again.

  “How am I supposed to keep doing this?” Callie whispered. “Am I really supposed to walk out there and pick up that microphone? This is disgusting.”

  “And there’s not a choice,” Micha said. “Like it or not, the gods own us. They own everyone, and if they call on us for something, we have no choice but to obey.”

  Of course, the Hunter would feel that way. He only existed to serve Artemis and do her bidding. I knew he didn’t fully agree with everything the gods said, but it was still in his DNA to serve.

  “What do we do?” Juniper asked. “He’s right. It’s not like we can walk out of here. We have to keep going.”

  “And if we lose?” I asked, the words slipping from my mouth before I could stop them. Jasmine twitched, revealing her face. I tried not to look at it. “I don’t know… I don’t know what happens if we lose.”

  “Then we don’t get what we need,” Jasmine said quietly, her gaze pinning me. “I set it up so you all have to be perfect. I might be the reason countless people are killed.”

  Something thrummed in Verin, making me look over for only a second. He agreed with her, and I knew that without him saying a word. Without this tool, then we would most likely not win this war for the gods. A war at all would get a lot of people killed, but a loss… I couldn’t even imagine. Could I really put that all on Jasmine? We’d been given such a thin line to walk, and one of us was bound to stumble.

  “It’s not all on you,” Jasper said two seconds before Kizzy sat up a little straighter. “We haven’t lost yet.”

  “But now… we could. We really could,” Jasmine whispered, her voice breaking. “Only one more person has to screw up.”

  “Good thing the rest of us have a handle on ourselves,” Verin couldn’t help but say.

  Juniper looked at him sharply. “Verin.”<
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  “What? It’s the truth. Jasmine’s been muckin’ about like she’s a blessing to this earth, and she’s the one who fucked us. How dare she have put failure on you when she goes and pulls something like this.”

  “She didn’t mean to,” Juniper said. “And you aren’t helping.”

  “What help is left, Jasmine?” he asked, turning to her. “You couldn’t maybe assume something like a bottle in your room might be a setup? Your perfect goddess brain couldn’t put that together?”

  “Stop,” I growled at him, rising to my feet. “Shutting you up wouldn’t be hard to do.”

  Jasmine grabbed my hand, squeezing it so hard that I worried a finger would snap. “He’s not wrong,” she whispered. “I should have known better. And even if I didn’t, I shouldn’t have touched that bottle. I could have gone to find you. Find anyone. But I cracked it open.”

  I sat back down, taking one of her hands. “This isn’t over. Not yet. We have one screw up, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to have another.”

  Jasmine looked at me weakly. “You’re lying to me.”

  “No, I’m not. Everything I’m saying is true.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not your words. It’s everything else about you. You’re pretending that you believe this can end okay, and I know you better than that. Be scared if you’re scared. Don’t look at me and lie. Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’ve just done to us.”

  I felt my breath catch as I stared at her. I’d told her I was afraid, and it wouldn’t have been that hard to guess it. The odds were that we would lose. The challenges would only get harder, and some of them had barely been beaten. We would prove ourselves unworthy and unable to overcome our flaws, the flaws that the gods decided to test in front of who knew how many strangers. And the worst part was when we lost, the world would know who to look to. Who to blame. When the dust settled and everyone went to collect the bodies, they would know who to blame for them, and it wouldn’t be the gods.

  “What do you want me to say?” I asked.

  “Say what you actually think, because lying isn’t going to make this better. Nothing is.”

  I swallowed, taking a look at the group of weary and broken people around me. “The trials aren’t over. The rest of us each have one more, and then this part is over. If we can get through them, then we’re fine.”

  “Zander…”

  I threw my hands in the air. “What! What do I say? Yeah, you fucked up. We all know that. Am I supposed to be angry about it? Do you want me to scream at you? Do you want me to get myself all full of rage so I can go out and fuck up my trial too? We can die here. We can die right after this too. I’m trying to keep it together, Jasmine. I’m barely holding on.”

  She blinked at me, tears spilling from her eyes again. “Maybe I do want you to yell at me. Maybe I want all of you to yell at me.”

  “Gladly,” Verin said.

  Kizzy swatted at him. “Knock it off.”

  His eyes narrowed at her. “Should we let it go then? Pretend like she didn’t do this to us?”

  “No,” my sister said. “But berating her isn’t going to fix anything. It’s not going to turn the clock back and let her change her mind.” She looked at Jasmine. “Everything about your behavior has been utterly reprehensible lately. I’m tired of it. We all just want our sister back to normal. I like to think that you understand your actions have been out of hand.”

  Jasmine nodded. “It’s pretty impossible not to. I… I’m just… I’m so sorry. I ruined everything.”

  No one said a word.

  Yelling at Jasmine wouldn’t solve this, and letting her off easy wouldn’t do anything either. Being soft or being firm, I didn’t know which the better choice would be. The mistake had already been made, and Jasmine knew what she did wrong.

  We had no idea who would be up next for their trial. That meant any one of us could have had to walk into hell after this whole ordeal, expected to do something insane and do it perfectly. No more slips. No second chances. If one of us failed, we all failed.

  I felt compromised, only able to see myself as the weak link. If the gods sent me out to battle next, I wouldn’t win. They had to have known that, seeing all. They’d been watching us every moment, seeing what we’ve said and done.

  We’d been in the green room too long, and I knew we would be called back out at any second. Then I would have to meet hundreds of eyes that belonged to people that I’d want to hurt for the way they gazed at Jasmine. The loss wasn’t only on her. It was on me for leaving her alone like that. I should have known better, and yet, they all blamed her.

  “I can’t believe I did this,” Jasmine said, haunted. “I can’t believe I really lost a trial.”

  She’d walked in so sure it would be someone else to put us in this situation. Juniper, to be specific. I didn’t know anymore if I’d thought we would lose a trial before this. If I had to guess, I would have put the loss on myself. I was too emotional, and all too easily, I failed people.

  Sure enough, Callie sat up straight, her body rigid. “They want us back now. Are… are we doing this?”

  “As opposed to?” Micha asked.

  She rubbed her eyes before rising from Aster. He took her hand tightly, the bond between them solidifying even deeper. He kept her close as the rest of us found our way to our feet.

  We walked like a funeral procession out of the room and back to the stage. I scanned that crowd, looking at the strangers who judged Jasmine for something she couldn’t help. They had no idea how hard any of this was, and yet they still thought they could sit there and think what they did.

  Aster and Micha couldn’t stay with us, but they lingered at the side of the stage and away from where the cameras could see them. Callie stared at her boyfriend while one of the clipboards handed her a mic, and the makeup crew brushed and fluffed her hair. They couldn’t do anything to make Callie’s eyes no longer red, but they attempted making her look a little less crushed inside.

  A sister I didn’t know went through and did something similar to the rest of us, getting her hand batted away when she attempted it with Verin. He had no charm reserved for her today.

  Callie cleared her throat, walking to the center of the stage with contempt in her eyes. She held the mic to her mouth, her voice flat. “Moving on,” she started. “We have another trial to get to today. No wheel spinning. No pulling names from a hat. Our next person up is…” She paused like she was listening to someone in her head. The girl blanched as she robotically repeated, “Juniper Nelson.”

  A clear buzz of surprise spread across the entire room. It pulsed louder in our little circle, Juniper’s insides getting tense as she breathed harder.

  “It’s okay,” Verin whispered to her, his hands on her shoulders. “Breathe.”

  “It’s too soon,” she gasped. “I just went. I don’t understand.”

  I would have thought that it would be Kizzy up next, or maybe me or Jasper. The only one more surprising would have been Verin, but this just didn’t make sense.

  Juniper still trembled, not moving to Callie like she was supposed to. Verin assured her she would do great, but it didn’t help her any. Nor did it help when Jasper tried.

  “One more,” I said to her, getting her attention. “You do this, and then you’re finished.”

  Jasper nodded. “In an hour tops, you’ll be finished.”

  “We all might be,” Juniper said in a breath. “If I lose…”

  “You won’t,” Verin said. “You’re going to be spectacular, just like you were with your last trial.”

  Jasmine stared at the floor, her arms crossed as her eyes closed. I wished I could have given her the privacy of not knowing what she felt, but I couldn’t push it out of my head or my heart. It screamed at me every second. I still didn’t know what to say.

  “Juniper,” Callie said, holding a hand out.

  The crowd cheered when the girl started walking, and it felt so repugnantly false that I wanted
to throw up. I’d hate the sound of clapping for the rest of my life.

  Juniper took Callie’s hand, our friend giving her the sincerest smile she could manage. She held the mic away from her face, leaning to Juniper to tell her something that I couldn’t hear. Juniper nodded, breathing out.

  We all waited on the edge of our seats as we prepared to hear what hell Juniper would be put through. Jasmine made herself look up, eyes locked on her sister. It felt like she willed strength over to her as if it could work. It had been cruel of the gods to give us another trial today, but it was so fucking like them. They wanted to push us, and they did.

  Callie opened her mouth, but then something made a clanging sound behind her. The girls turned to see doors opening behind them. Fog poured in out of nowhere, covering the figure that stepped through. The moment it cleared enough to show a face, the crowd went insane.

  I covered my ears, the cheering sounding like screams. Hera smiled, waving gently with both hands at the people excited to see her. I was not excited to see her, and it didn’t look like any of my family was either. Jasper tensed, moving closer to Jasmine.

  “You can go for now,” Hera told Callie.

  “Huh?” Callie’s big eyes focused on the goddess.

  She pointed to us. “Go stand over there.”

  Callie looked to Juniper, not wanting to abandon her. But she didn’t have a choice in the end, and she scurried over to us. She ended up with Aster’s arms wrapped around her, Micha in front of both of them as if he were prepared to fight off an army of wolves.

  Hera held a hand out in our direction. Her expression empty, she said, “Jasmine?”

  I heard my own voice screaming ‘no’ in my head. I came so close to grabbing Jasmine and running out of this place, but it wasn’t like that would have saved anyone. We couldn’t run from the trials, and blowing another one would only destroy the world. I had no choice but to let her go.

  Before Jasmine could take a step, I gathered her up in a hug. I stayed silent, feeling her arms tight around me. Hera repeated her name, her voice clear even without the mic to help her. Jasmine gave me one last look before she started walking toward the goddesses.