17 #3
“Four years ago. I was eighteen.”
He hums. “You haven’t heard any of my songs since then?”
I shake my head. “Sorry.”
“Not even the one about you?” he asks offhandedly.
I tilt my head back. “Ha. Ha.”
A splash soaks us both. I wipe the saltwater from my eyes and see Elias pop out of the water, shaking his head like a wet, long-haired dog and sending more into my eyes.
Niall drops a towel near the edge before stepping onto the pool’s bench. He keeps his distance. I can’t tell if he’s wary of my mood or still sulking. Probably both.
“How’s Koda?” August asks him.
“Taking a nap,” he answers brusquely. Definitely sulking.
Elias swims like an eel circling beneath the surface. He’s a blur of dark hair, olive skin, and navy shorts as he moves through and around us.
He pops up behind Niall and sends a wave over his head.
Niall growls and strikes the water, returning Elias’s splash, but the Greek just laughs and dives down again.
Ulani and Vailea walk in from the palaestra’s training grounds, pausing in the shallows as they enter the pool.
Elias gives an ornery grin. “Does this mean we’re allying for the third trial? Personally, I think it’s a good idea.”
“I want in,” a feminine voice calls out. Taeniset, clad in a golden bathing suit that instantly erases Niall’s sour expression, slips into the deep end. With a weary sigh, she adds, “Please.”
Elias quirks a brow and smirks. “Isis gave you her blessing?”
She swivels to face him, her dark eyes narrowed. “Did Athena give you hers?”
The Greek’s smirk grows into a full, delighted smile.
“Have you spoken with your champions?” Ulani asks Elias, Taeniset, and Niall. “Kanaloa’s offered guidance, but he said any decision I make is ultimately mine.”
Vailea scoffs, “That’s one interpretation. What you told me he said was… if you die in the trials, it will be from your own stupidity. And then he urged you to listen to him. To be wise.”
Ulani growls playfully and dunks her head under the water. He yelps from something she does underwater and releases her. “Evil woman.”
Vailea blows him a kiss, then swims over to tread between August and me. She waves everyone closer.
“Our next trial is tomorrow,” Vailea whispers.
For a moment, utter silence. My lungs turn to stone.
“So soon?” Taeniset croaks. “They gave us four days to recuperate after the first one.”
Ulani glances around from face to face. “They’re announcing it tonight.”
“Do you know anything about it?” August asks.
“No.” Ulani takes a seat along the pool wall. “But if being in a group for it is the wisest path forward, we want to be with this one.”
Everyone readily agrees.
Ulani wastes no time targeting Niall. “If you perform tomorrow like you did in the maze today, it’ll be your last with Vailea and me as your allies.”
Niall chews at the inside corner of his lips. “I understand.”
“Good,” Ulani growls. The threat hangs in the air with the pool’s steam.
For several long moments, our team is silent. Elias brings an air of levity as he becomes eel-like again.
“How’d you learn to swim like that?” I ask when he surfaces.
“My mother taught me.” He floats on his back beside me. I hope he knows how lucky he is to have a mother who cared enough to teach him so well.
Elias’s green-brown eyes cut to me and for a second, the same anger he had for me on the salt flats flares. And I’m not the only one who sees it.
“Do you still want Callalie dead?” Ulani asks Elias, jerking his head to me.
Elias stands up, crosses his arms, and narrows his gaze like he’s considering. “I’m still struggling with how I feel about her. She did save me from driving straight toward the troll.”
“I considered letting you go past,” I admit.
He shrugs. “I rammed your chariot.”
“I deserved that.” And worse.
Elias holds his hand to his ear. “What did you say? I couldn’t hear you.”
I smile. “I said… I deserved that much.”
Elias turns to make sure everyone heard, but his glory is cut short when Taeniset divulges what happened with the three unchampioned who died in the labyrinth.
She lives next to one of the women who were in the group. One of the men suggested making a lot of noise to intimidate the creature, but the sound agitated Daedalus and led him right to them.
He trampled one of them and gored two more in the first brutal charge. Those who got away fled into the maze, where they stayed completely quiet. They heard us working our way through. Heard Torsten’s team maneuvering, but after their three friends died, the rest were too afraid to help.
They’d used the string. So, they retraced it, hid close to the portal, and waited for it to activate.
Waiting and surviving were never going to be an option for my group. Daedalus was thrown into the dark for a reason: for me to kill.
If we had run and tried to hide, the gods would have sent something worse to flush us out. Or pushed Daedalus to us in those narrow corridors… and there’s no way all of us would be here sitting in the pool on a sunny afternoon discussing the trial, because not all of us would have survived it.