Chapter 30
The ranch sat in a valley between two ridges, surrounded by pine trees that stretched up the mountainside.
Rhadamanthys directed the SUV down a dirt road that wound through the property, past a red barn and several outbuildings, until we reached the main house.
It was two stories with wood siding and a wraparound porch.
Diego's family network stretched further than I'd realized. Some distant cousin or uncle of Diego’s owned this place, but like all Romani safe houses, it asked no questions and kept its doors open to people who needed to disappear.
The seven kids from Alaska had ended up here, and somehow, so had we.
Rafael shifted beside me in the back seat. He'd been quiet since Seattle, clutching the rosary Florica had given him. I wanted to ask if he was okay, but I wasn’t sure if he was praying or just thinking. It seemed rude to interrupt a prayer.
The SUV stopped in front of the house, and Rhadamanthys cut the engine.
Rafael opened his door before I could respond. I followed him out into the afternoon heat. Montana was warmer than I expected, with the sun bright overhead and no clouds. It was a beautiful day, the kind that made you forget about underground mazes and eagles that tore out eyes.
Hades appeared on the porch in a pair of jeans and a simple black button-up.
“Welcome to Montana.” He descended the steps and took my hand.
I thought it was just a handshake until I felt him press something cool and metallic into my palm.
“You’ve more than earned this, my friends.
Constantine's eagles are vicious creatures. It was no small thing killing one in Alaska. He is lesser for it. You must use that to your advantage when he arrives.”
My legs buckled. “He’s coming here?”
"Of course he is." Hades released my hand. "You have three Director seals. That gives you the right to challenge him in a trial by combat. He must answer."
I looked down at the bronze disc in my palm. A crocodile was stamped into the ancient metal, jaws open and teeth sharp enough to draw blood.
"When?" Rafael asked. His voice was steady, but I heard the tension underneath.
"Within the hour." Hades glanced toward the barn. "The children are in there. They're safe as long as I remain on this property. Constantine knows better than to move against a Director so openly."
"But after the ceremony?" I asked.
"After the ceremony, you'll be in the labyrinth. Win or lose, it will be decided there." Hades turned back toward the house. "We'll set up outside. It's a lovely day, and there's no need to stain the floors with what's coming."
Hades and Rhadamanthys disappeared into the house, leaving us standing in the yard with an hour to kill before Constantine showed up to negotiate how we'd die.
The smart move would be going inside to strategize. Instead, my feet turned toward the barn where I’d heard the voices of children.
I stopped at the threshold.
Inside, the seven of them had scattered into their own versions of coping. A girl near the back was doing pushups, her form perfect, counting to herself like it was the only thing keeping her sane. Two boys were tossing a baseball back and forth, but their movements were too stiff.
The smallest one with the rabbit sat in a corner, rocking slightly and sucking her thumb. One kid had claimed the loft and was just sitting up there, staring at nothing. Another was pacing the length of the barn while the last one lounged against a hay bale with a phone, scrolling too fast.
One week out and nobody knew what the hell they were supposed to be doing.
I recognized every single response. The exercise. The fake normalcy. The shutting down. The pacing. The pretending everything was fine.
Rafael moved past me into the barn. The two boys with the baseball stopped throwing.
"You don't have to stop," Rafael said quietly.
The taller boy held the baseball, uncertain. "How long are we going to stay here?"
Rafael glanced at me. I had no answer to that. These kids needed families, therapists, years of deprogramming. What they had was a Romani safe house in Montana and whatever happened in the next twenty-four hours.
"As long as it takes," Rafael said finally. "This place is safe. Diego's family will make sure you're taken care of."
"And then what?" The girl doing pushups had stopped, sitting back on her heels. She was maybe eleven, with blonde hair pulled into a tight braid. "We just stay here forever?"
"No," I said, because lying to them seemed worse than the truth. "Eventually, you'll go somewhere more permanent. Families, maybe. Or group homes with people who know how to help kids like you."
"Kids like us." She said it flatly, like she'd heard that phrase before and knew exactly what it meant. Damaged. Broken. Weapons without a purpose.
The kid in the loft spoke up for the first time. "What if we don't want families?"
Fair question. I hadn't wanted a family either. Wouldn't have known what to do with one.
Rafael moved closer to the boys with the baseball. "Then you get to figure out what you do want. That's the whole point. You get to choose now."
"Choose what?" The taller boy's grip tightened on the baseball. "We don't know how to do anything except..."
He didn't finish. Didn't need to.
"You're kids," Rafael said. "You'll learn other things."
"We're not really kids anymore." The girl with the braid stood up, brushing hay off her pants. "You know that, right? You can't just put us in school and pretend we didn't spend the last two years learning how to kill people."
Christ. She wasn't wrong.
I stepped further into the barn. "No one's pretending anything. You were dealt a shit hand." I looked at each of them. "But you're out now. That's something."
"Out until someone decides we're worth coming after," the girl shot back. "We know how this works. The facility's gone, but the people who wanted us trained? They're still out there."
My jaw clenched. She was right about that too. Constantine's network was bigger than one facility. Zeus's reach was longer than any of us wanted to admit.
"That's what we're trying to fix," Rafael said quietly.
The girl's eyes narrowed. "By doing what? Fighting him?"
"Something like that," I said.
She studied me for a long moment. "Are you going to win?"
Honest answer? I had no idea. We were walking into a trial by combat against a man who'd orchestrated every move we'd made for years, chained together in a labyrinth he probably designed, with almost no advantages.
But these kids didn't need honest. They needed something to believe in.
"Yeah," I said. "We're going to win."
The smallest one with the rabbit looked up at me, thumb still in her mouth, and I wasn't sure if she believed me or if she was just too tired to care anymore.
The kid on the phone finally spoke up. "What happens after? Like, to you guys?"
I blinked. "What?"
"After you win." She didn't look up from her screen. "What are you going to do?"
The question landed wrong. I'd been so focused on surviving the next twenty-four hours that I hadn't thought past it. Hadn't let myself.
Rafael's hand found mine. Squeezed once.
"We haven't really talked about that," he admitted.
"Why not?" The girl with the braid frowned. "That's stupid. You should know what you're fighting for."
Out of the mouths of traumatized eleven-year-olds.
"She's got a point," I said.
Rafael looked at me. "What would you want? If we had a choice?"
A choice. What a concept.
I thought about the last few weeks. We'd spent them running, fighting, and bleeding. Surviving by inches. Every decision made with a gun to our heads, literally or metaphorically.
But what I actually wanted? That wasn't hard.
"I want things to go back to normal," I said. "My normal. Taking contracts. Good ones. The kind where you actually know why someone needs to die." I looked at Rafael, watching for his reaction. "I'm good at what I do. I like it. I just want the freedom to say no if a job feels wrong."
"So you want to keep killing people," the girl with the braid said flatly.
"Yeah. Bad people." I shrugged. "Someone's got to."
Rafael's hand tightened in mine. "What else?"
"Expensive suits. Dance clubs where the music's too loud and no one asks questions. Coffee that's too sweet." I squeezed his hand back. "And you. I want you there when I come home."
His eye had gone bright. "That sounds perfect."
"What about you?" I asked. "What do you want?"
He was quiet for a moment, like he was testing the words before he said them out loud. "I'm going to miss the administrative work."
One of the boys made a face. "Administrative work?"
"Ledgers. Schedules. Organizing people and resources." Rafael's mouth curved slightly. "I know how it sounds. But there was a certainty to it. Everything had its place. Everything made sense on paper."
"That's the most boring thing I've ever heard," the girl with the braid said.
"Probably," Rafael agreed. "But I was good at it. And I liked it." He glanced at me. "Maybe I could do something like that. Find work that uses those skills without the Church attached."
"You could run logistics for the Pantheon," I said. "Directors always need people who can manage operations."
The kid in the loft snorted. "So you want to be a secretary, and he wants to keep stabbing people. Weird relationship."
"Yeah," Rafael said, and he was almost smiling now. "But it works for us."
“You’ll understand when you’re older,” I told her, waving a hand.
The girl with the braid opened her mouth to say something else, but movement outside the barn caught my eye. Hades was crossing the yard toward the house, his posture different. Alert.
"He's here," I said.
The temperature in the barn seemed to drop ten degrees. The smallest one with the rabbit stopped rocking. The kid on the phone looked up. Even the boys with the baseball went still.
"Stay in here," Rafael said. "Don't come out until someone tells you it's safe."