9
Mind and body equally exhausted, I leave the temple and take the spilling steps to my beach house. My hand twists the handle at the same time someone curses. I push the door and watch as it silently swings into the room.
It’s dark, except for two flickering candles I didn’t light before I left.
My heart drops when I find my brother pacing the floor in front of the still-covered mosaic. Immediately, I fear that the nightly curfew will trap him on my tiny island, if it hasn’t already.
“Cillian? What are you doing here?”
He rushes over and crushes me in a hug, rocking me side to side.
When he pulls back, his eyes glisten with unshed tears.
“The trials are being shown on every telecaster in the realms. The reporters are talking about all of you, imagining what these contests might entail and whether you all volunteered for this to get coin. Did you do that? Did you volunteer?”
I’m about to roll my eyes when I realize what he’s really asking.
Did I do the very thing I accused him of? Did I leave him on purpose? Like our mother did.
My shoulders slump and I blow out an exhausted breath. “Of course not. Morrigan nominated me and Niall.”
He turns pleading eyes to me. “I don’t suppose you can respectfully decline her nomination and come home?” he asks, already knowing I can’t.
The likelihood that I’ll ever come home again…is not great. I watch the truth weigh heavily on his shoulders.
His strong voice breaks. “He’s going to take you, too.”
My throat tightens at the sight of his chin quivering. Unable to lie to him and tell him I’ll survive all Ares throws at me, I lay my head on my baby brother’s heart and memorize its steady rhythm. Minutes pass before I bring myself to speak, before I can peel my ear away and raise my head.
“Cillian, you can’t come back here. You need to protect Abuela now.
” My voice breaks on her title. One so common, it doesn’t do her justice.
She’s more than just our grandmother. She’s our matriarch.
Our heart and backbone. The embodiment of love and wisdom.
“Convince her to go to Morrigan’s realm until this is over. ”
“You know she won’t.” He tries to laugh. “I’ll do all I can to take care of her, but what about you? Morrigan’s here, right? She’ll protect you.”
I don’t lie to him. “She’s done all she can.”
“What does that mean?” he asks, ticking his head back. “The trials haven’t even started yet!”
I disagree. I believe Ares conceived them long before any of us were nominated. Has he been planning them since Carina’s broadcast?
I should feel flattered to have inspired such a dramatic response from one of the divine, but with my brother standing here reminding me of all our tiny family still stands to lose, I can’t bring myself to feel anything but fear for his and our grandmother’s safety.
I explain the rules Hermes gave us, chiefly that I need to find another god or goddess to champion me, and that I plan to win our first trial tomorrow. He emphatically believes I can because he wants to, and because he hasn’t seen the other contenders.
Even though we don’t know what the trial will consist of, my baby brother thinks I can win. Maybe his faith will be enough.
I shake my head. “You need to go back to Olympus before you get stuck here. They put barriers around our homes overnight so we can’t leave. How did you manage to get to the island anyway?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “My friend has a boat. He brought me across.”
My brows flare. “In these waters? They’re teeming with monsters!”
His head ticks back in surprise. “Monsters? We didn’t have any trouble.”
“Maybe the gods gave their beasts orders to only devour the contenders who step off their pile of sand,” I muse.
“Walk me back?” My brother finally flicks an uneasy glance at the blanket-covered wall. That tells me he peeked beneath it. And that he’s afraid now.
Frankly, I’m glad he is. I don’t want to lie and tell him I’m fine here, because I’m not. He needs to understand the danger he and Abuela are in now.
He can’t quit his apprenticeship, but maybe he can convince her to go to Morrigan’s realm when he’s away at work.
I follow him into the moonlight and down the still-open sand path. He walks the same way he did when he was little. Head down, hands in his pockets, shoulders low. As we walk to the shore, he asks me to tell him every detail of what’s happened since I left the house.
I start at the beginning, describing how Niall and I went to Morrigan’s realm, what she said on that clifftop, and how we were sent to Olympus. Then about Daedalus and Aisling and Ceann ársa – The Ancient One – carrying us to an island that didn’t even exist until it suddenly did.
He marvels at Morrigan’s great crow more than anything else. “You rode on its back?”
With a smile, I tell him how it felt to have the wind rippling over you, and how I flung out my arms and opened my heart to the sky. Just once.
Snickering, I tell him how Niall shrieked that we were going to die if I didn’t hold on.
As we skirt the island, Cillian informs me that he searched every oikos until he came to mine, and revealed that each one has a painting unique to its intended occupant. He cried when he saw the one meant for me. Sat at the foot of my bed and wept at its duplicity.
“I know why you covered it, but you should consider taking the blanket down,” he rasps. I open my mouth to tell him that’s the last thing I’ll do when he adds, “Let his cruelty fuel you. Win their trials, win their games, and do it in her name. Don’t do it to spite him. Win to elevate her.”
The fight leaves me and my shoulders sink. I try to smile. Revenge was the only thing I’d been thinking of. Not Carina. She should have been my focus all along.
Cillian’s expression is vulnerable in the moonlight as he regards the stars innocently flickering above us like the flames of a thousand oil lamps. Carina used to take us outside at night. We’d spread a blanket and she’d tell us the stories of the skies – some she learned, others she invented.
I squeeze his arms. “Cillian, if I don’t make it, I want you to know how much I love you and Abuela. I’ll try my best for you.”
He pulls me in for a hug, settling his chin on my head. “I love you, too. I pray your best is enough.”
Moonlight rolls and tumbles in time with the rushing, receding tide. He had no business traversing these waters. And just like he’s praying for me to make it back home, I pray he’ll make it safely back to Olympus. “Don’t come back here, Cill. It’s not safe.”
Tender defiance blazes in his eyes. “I had to talk to you before the games begin.”
“They already have.” I gesture to my white dress that seems to glow under the moon. It’s not the uniform Morrigan gave us to wear onto a battlefield for her, but it marks me, nonetheless.
This war began the moment The Ancient One landed on this island and my feet struck its new soil. Every trial will be a battle. Every victory will see a fellow mortal conquered. The winner will be no better than the gods who toy with our short, fragile lives.
A figure appears from farther down the beach. Their white attire marks them as a contender. We wait as their stride brings them closer. Music still pours from the temple.
“That’s August Aymes! I saw he was here, too,” Cillian marvels, his face alight.
I nod. “His oikos is next to mine. We’re allies.” For now.
He turns to look at me. “You don’t sound convinced. Do you not trust him?”
Sighing, I answer, “It’s too early to know who to trust, but even if we work together and wind up at the end of the games, there can only be one winner.”
My brother hums noncommittally. “What’s he like?”
“He’s smart. Strong. A good dancer.” He’s kind.
“And Niall?” His tone sharpens on the name like a blade raked over a whetstone. “Has he begged to be your ally, too?”
“He’s not my ally.” I stare out over the water. “Morrigan championed him.”
“Him?” His tone is incredulous. After I again explain the rules of the game, Cillian is speechless for a long moment. “Morrigan chose Niall?”
“Yep.”
“Over you?” he clarifies, brows raised.
I sigh. “Yes.”
“So, you need to find a champion by the end of the final trial, or…”
I make a motion of cutting my throat and he sucks in a sharp breath. “The best part is that Ares has apparently threatened anyone who’s even thought about championing me. Not because he wants me to die faster, but so I’ll have no choice but to beg him to champion me in the end.”
He growls, then scrubs a hand over the scruff on his jaw. “Do it.”
My head ticks back like he struck me.
“I mean it. If that’s your only choice: him or death, then do it,” Cillian stresses. “He’ll champion you just to torture you, but at least you’ll live to see the games. If you win them, maybe he’ll –”
A mirthless laugh bubbles up from my chest. “He’ll what? Forgive and forget?”
August reaches us in time to hear the latter half of our argument. “Everything okay?”
I gesture to my sibling, then to my new ally. “August, meet my brother, Cillian. Cillian, this is the August Aymes.”
The two clasp wrists, and then I feel like I might turn to glass in the sand because my brother wastes no time roasting me.
He tells August that Carina and I were infatuated with him when we were girls.
That we went to one of his shows just before I left for Morrigan’s army and talked about him in the letters we wrote back and forth to each other for months afterward.
I consider wading into the monster-teeming waters.
August is gracious. If he’s embarrassed, I can’t tell. But he does smother a grin when he glances at me after that.
Cillian raves about his music, revealing that I haven’t heard any of his newer songs because we haven’t had a telecaster at home for a while. Nearly a year, to be exact. My brother flicks a glance at me I can’t decipher.