26 #4
Cillian yells to me, “They’re safe. I’m going ahead. Just keep walking this way and I’ll meet you in the arena.”
He starts singing again, and his words dissolve as the portal whisks him away. I hurry forward, feel a wash of golden light, and step into sand that spreads under my bare foot. Bright sunlight stings my eyes. The excited crowd writhes, but I can’t hear them over the ringing in my ears.
Cillian grabs my hands and tugs me away from the portal. I look around to see who’s already here, and who isn’t.
August is crouched nearby hugging Aster, patting his back and telling him how proud he is of him. The boy clings to his neck as August rubs his back and tells him it’s over. That we’re all safe and that he’ll be home soon. He asks Aster to hug his mother the way he’s hugging him right now.
Aster emphatically agrees. “I will. I promise.”
Torsten and his relieved mother smile at one another. She nods to him, a parent proud of her child. I think they won the trial.
Koda’s granddaughter passes through the portal, and a breath later, he appears next to her. He takes hold of her arm when she offers it this time. The tea’s effects are wearing off. Maybe the gods have been too busy with their mortals to worry about Anansi’s.
Across the arena, Niall and Fiona take in the crowd. “They’re so loud!” she yells to Niall over the din.
When she sees me, she gives a brief nod. I return the greeting.
When I was with Niall, she and I became close friends. The last time I saw her, she’d come to visit me right after I ended things with him.
I was a mess, and incredibly unfair to her, I’m ashamed to admit.
I thought Niall had sent her and accused her of as much.
She told me she came to see me because she wanted to, claiming that her brother didn’t even know she’d come.
She didn’t tell him where she was going because she didn’t want him to try and stop her.
She left and didn’t bother coming back.
Head still throbbing, I press my eyes closed.
Cillian quickly clasps something on the nape of my neck.
A heavy weight settles on my chest. I look down to see Abuela’s necklace, a cozcatl – a family heirloom made generations ago.
It’s a beautiful collar of little golden bells and beads of hand-polished jade.
My fingers graze the smooth, cool stones.
Abuela always told Carina and me that this piece would pass to us when she departed this life, and not a moment before.
“Cillian?” I look up at my brother, terrified of why he brought this to me. “What does this mean?”
Brigid said Abuela was safe, but things can change so painfully fast.
My brother doesn’t answer. He takes the obsidian shard from my hip and drags it across his palm, the exact way Mamá had in that red room where the copal burned away all her secrets, its plumes stretching all the way to Mictlan and Carina.
He rakes his hand over gold and stone, coating them with his blood. Then he takes my hand, opens my palm, and slices it open. “Add yours to it.”
I don’t know why it needs to be done, but something in the jade and gold, and in my very blood, demands it. Thrums and sings and pines for it.
With a slash, I paint the necklace red. In a blink, the earth, the very air, shudders. Everyone feels the powerful vibration.
Mortals stop cheering. Flags lower. Faces search the sky for the answer to their question: What was that?
Dread coils in my stomach. I turn to Cillian. “What have we done?”
“What we must,” he supplies, echoing the advice Hermes offered before the trials even started. He presses his lips together but doesn’t look up or around. His stare never leaves mine.
I shake my head. I don’t understand.
Our fourth trial isn’t over. The portal is still glowing. Mortals are still trying to escape that ashen land.
Hermes flies to us, a shield appearing on his arm and a sword flashing into his expectant hand.
As soon as his feet touch the sand, every god appears beside him, clad in armor, each with their choice of weapon.
With even Zeus gripping his flinching thunderbolt, the divine encircle us, facing outward to thwart the threat they sense beyond us all.
“Cillian?” my voice quivers.
He doesn’t get the chance to answer, and I don’t get to say goodbye or tell him that I love him. Because in the next instant, Morrigan materializes beside us in a cloud of billowing, brilliant darkness.
As the goddess grabs Cillian’s shoulder, her eyes drift to my blood-stained necklace and then rise to mine. Her slow-spreading, brilliant smile sends a shiver through my bones.
My brother is safe in her realm before I even think to pick up the obsidian shard he dropped in the sand. Fine grains stick to the mingled blood on it. I drag each side over my thigh to wipe it clean.
Carrying Aster, August pushes through the clustered mortals, making his way to me. “What’s going on?”
I shake my head, unable to speak.
I don’t know what’s happening, but I know that Abuela, Cillian, and I are the cause. And if the gods find out, they’ll make quick work of killing me.