31
Run!” I shout, grabbing August’s hand. We race across the battlefield, sprinting through the dead and dying, and emerge onto a broad, wooden stage.
The crowd roared, waving their hands and singing along to August’s every word. He strummed the guitar, veins popping in his forearms, sweat plastering his dark shirt and hair to his skin.
The song ended and he took a drink of water from a glass someone offered. His mother was in the front row. That look entered his eye. The look that said he was about to do something and there was no turning back now.
“No, August!” his mother yelled, shaking her head and trying to shove past the people blocking her way to the nearest gate.
Past August swept his eyes over the crowd. “I want to play something I’ve been working on. I’ve wanted to share it for a while and, well, today feels right. It’s called ‘Unsung Hero’ and I hope you like it.”
When he crooned the fateful lyrics, the mortals listened. Some cried. Some pressed hands to their hearts. And when the last chord fell, someone in the middle of the crowd began to chant Hero.
He-ro.
He-ro.
Soon, the entire amphitheater screamed the word. And August’s mother cried from the front row.
Quetzals appear and flap toward the finish.
“Let’s go.” August grips my elbow and tugs me away from the scene.
We dart off the stage, through those waiting along the fence for a chance to see the singer up close or touch his hand, and into the arid night.
We reenter the mirage of the desert where my heart feels most at home and follow the colorful birds that scream toward a glowing slab of gold in the distance.
We cut through brittlebush. Skirt prickly pear. Octillo. Ironwood. Mesquite. Palo verde. We trample and tear and push ourselves faster. Faster!
The quetzals fly ahead, rushing toward the light that just might save us.
Coyotes call from an outcropping of nearby boulders.
I have the briefest moment of fear that the birds aren’t my mother’s at all, but are yet another taunt, another piece of Ares’s game, but they are racing toward the finish line and we have to make it there even if they are his.
August roars as we reach the portal and rush through it, the bright birds circling before following us into the arena. They spill into the air and swirl out over the delighted audience.
But we’re not the first ones to arrive.
My heart drops into my stomach.
Every other mortal who entered this trial is waiting in the sand. We’re the last ones to arrive.
We finished last.
Even after Morrigan persuaded Ares to give us a chance to live, we got trapped in our pasts and forgot to run. This was a race, and winning depended on speed. The mirages were just distractions, another type of mud sucking us in and under, away from our goal.
The crowd is silent, as stricken and scared as August and I are.
The other mortals stare at us as we turn in a slow circle, trying to wrap our minds around our final moments.
No one from the other allied group is gloating. Not even Torsten is happy we’ll be eliminated.
I finally turn to face August, my chin quivering and tears spilling down my cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
He hugs me to his side. “So am I.”
“I forgot we were racing. I kept having to remind myself we were in a trial. If it weren’t for the birds, I wouldn’t have remembered at all. I would still be trapped in there. In the past. Like Mamá warned me about. She told me to look forward, but I only looked back.”
“So did I,” he admits. “So did I.”
Ulani and Vailea come to stand with us, then Koda and Niall. And Tae and Hazi, who are still panting and trying to catch their breaths. They haven’t been here long.
“Our trials weren’t like yours,” Ulani reveals. “They weren’t like that. They were true footraces. That – that was torture, Callalie. I wish we could do something, or that someone was brave enough to help.”
How much did they see?
Elias hovers but stands apart.
“Elias, I’m sorry!” I cry, my chin quaking. “I’m so sorry.”
His lips form a thin line as he nods to me. He’s merciful enough to accept my apology despite the hurt I caused him.
The portal behind us dims.
“August,” I sob, dropping the spear at the same time he drops his sword. I jump into his arms and he catches me and holds on tight.
He presses desperate kisses against my skin. On my left cheek. My right. My forehead.
And finally… finally, his lips meet mine. I bawl, emotion tearing from my heart. These past months I’ve sealed it all inside, but there is no containing it now.
Abuela said there was magma in the middle of me, but all I feel is grief and regret and the weight of a thousand things I want to do but won’t have the chance to accomplish.
“Don’t cry,” he whispers, brushing a hand down my hair. “I’m with you to the end, okay? Don’t let Ares see your fear.”
It’s what Morrigan said in her realm before sending us to Olympus. When you face him, don’t reward him with your fear.
Did she know we would die like this?
“I don’t care about him. I only care about you,” I cry. “I want more time with you.”
He kisses me again. Fiercely. Desperately. Finally.
Our time has run out.
The sound of the messenger god’s winged talaria echoes across the silent arena. He holds the golden laurel.
I slip down August’s body and place my feet on the ground, trying to stand upright and face this moment with dignity and bravery like Carina did. I look over at the divine box, from where Hermes is sending this moment to every telecaster in the realms. I stare into it and shake my head.
Don’t come for me, Cillian. And don’t worry. I’ll be with our sister soon.
When Hermes lands, Ares appears at his side with a sword on his hip. He nods at Hermes to continue.
The messenger god isn’t smiling.
“The winner of today’s trial is Veronia.” Hermes starts toward her, but she moves back.
Her eyes cut to us, then to the divine box. “Will no one help them?” she shouts in challenge. “None of you are brave enough?”
Her outburst startles everyone. It certainly shocks me.
Hermes moves forward again, but Torsten and Kallik step in front of Veronia, blocking his path.
The messenger god tilts his head at their interference. He could easily move them. Send them flying across the arena, raise them into the air and break their spines. He could, but he doesn’t. Instead, an amused smirk graces his lips.
Ares snarls as his sword sings from its scabbard.
I reach down and pick up the golden spear. The one he impaled my sister with. He planted it for me in the salt fields. Nudged Elias to push me and my chariot toward it. I probably passed it a dozen times as he moved it and moved it until I finally picked it up.
He wanted me to carry it, oblivious to what it was and what it had done, for the rest of my life.
I raise the weapon, ready to fend off another thirteen blows if I must, simply for the chance to plant the blade that killed my sister in the mouth of the one who took her tongue.
Suddenly, the earth begins to quake. Sand rattles under our feet.
Ares’s head whips to Hermes, who’s also looking around for the source of the disturbance.
At our backs, the portal activates and a strange hum resonates from the glow.
The telecasters on either side of the arena illuminate and Carina’s face fills the screens. She stares into the camera with wildfire in her eyes.
“Hermes?” Ares growls.
“I…it’s not me,” the messenger god stutters, pressing an innocent hand to his chest. He’s still holding the laurel.
Carina stares into the camera. “My sister, Callalie Ryan, is a gods damned hero.”
Her image distorts and her declaration plays again and again, overlapping like the voices we heard returning from the river in the fourth trial.
Until the video suddenly freezes, pausing on the righteous indignation on my sister’s face.
But there’s not just anger in her stare. There is also justice, truth, and love.
These were the first words of the editorial she broadcast that day – the one Hermes’s power pushed to the realms despite its content – and they remind me of the ones Ares said were her last: Callalie will kill you.
A hot, arid wind gusts against our backs. August’s eyes meet mine as we turn to see quetzals pouring from the portal. Thousands upon thousands of them. Beneath them, bright green serpents of all sizes slither through, carving sideways paths into the sand as they flood the arena floor.
A small one climbs up my prosthesis, twisting into the metal so that I can’t get him out. It curls around my wrist before I know what’s going on.
Beside me, August curses as one cuffs around his wrist, too.
The tiny snakes harden into stone – to jade – with their mouths snapping at their tails.
The ground shakes as a massive man ducks through the portal, towering over even Ares and Hermes.
He wears a golden disc headdress with long, male quetzal plumes streaming from the back. They sway when he turns his head. My heart thunders as his slitted, serpentine eyes find me. They’re yellow, like Carina’s chair that’s nestled beneath our dining table back home. Just as Abuela described.
I’ve never met this god, but my grandmother introduced me to him in stories when I was only a girl. Tales I thought were just meant for fun and to encourage me to sleep.
But my wise Abuela knew him. She proved it as she described him down to the smallest detail, including the dimples bracketing the fatherly corners of his mouth. The way his beard is trimmed. The iridescent scales set within his copper skin.
On his chest lays a broad collar necklace made of jade and gold. An exact match to mine, only much larger.
“Daughter.” He crouches to meet my eye.
I kneel, grabbing August’s arm and dragging him down to his knee with me. “Quetzalcoatl,” I greet.
The feathered serpent god gives a terrible, fearsome smile. He turns his attention to Ares. “I claim Callalie Ryan as my champion.”
His champion.
Not his mortal. Not the girl he will champion.
The words are a blade held to Ares’s throat.
A golden fucking spear.
The earth trembles again before a second giant emerges from the portal, his face a mixture of life and death. Of mighty flesh and skeletal bone. The Aztec god of death.
His headdress is made from a black-feathered bird and sits on his head like a macabre crown.
I finally see something more primal and vivid than Morrigan’s darkness: Mictlantecuhtli’s eyes.
They are depthless coals with no beginning and no end.
No iris or pupil, but a keenness sharp enough to pierce the veil separating the souls with and without bodies.
August takes my hand.
“Mictlantecuhtli,” I whisper to him. “Lord of the land of the dead.”
Mictlantecuhtli makes a fist. When he opens his fingers, a necklace lays in his palm. A braided leather cord with a jade charm shaped like a skull. He raises the pendant to his lips and blows into it. The sound of a thousand human screams fills the arena.
The quetzals flying overhead shriek in reply.
The death deity drapes the necklace over August’s head.
In a voice that’s young and old, sharp and rusted, with form and disembodied, he addresses Ares. “I claim August Aymes as my champion.”
August’s clothing changes. The white doesn’t just seep into new colors; it transforms entirely in a brilliant flash of light.
His long-sleeved shirt and shorts are gone.
His chest is bare, except for Mictlantecuhtli’s gift.
Gold bands and bright braided fabric encircle his biceps.
The loincloth he wears is the cool shade of the pines surrounding his home.
At his waist is a gold disc depicting a skull.
I gasp when radiance overtakes me and my ivory gown is replaced with an ensemble worthy of Mexica royalty.
Draping heavily behind me, a skirt boasting layers upon layers of feathers to match the ones in my hair.
My cropped shirt is red, trimmed in vivid green and sapphire.
Gold cuffs my biceps, and my grandmother’s necklace is joined by a cascade of jade beads that fall in waves over my chest.
An image of August overtakes Carina’s angry face.
He strums his guitar and his voice, his song pours over the mortals watching from all around us.
Mortals that begin to sing with him. They know every word by heart.
The chorus of ‘Unsung Hero’ spreads until I can almost hear it echo from the realms. Hero.
August turns a circle, watching the crowd sing like he can’t believe this is real.
I take a step toward him noticing something heavy pressing against my hipbone. An obsidian knife with a carved jadeite handle is tucked where my shard had been, the blade sharp and thick. In the dark glass is the promise of death.
Quetzalcoatl didn’t take my spear. He left my fingers curled around the handle. And I vow to him, my sister, and the universe…
When I find a way to kill Ares, it will be with this.
My eyes and fury flick to Ares, and I burst out laughing.
Because the Greek god of war, the deity who has caused my family and so many others mountains of grief, looks like he might piss himself.
THE END