“Why didn’t I know until now?”
“I-I have powers?”
“Why do we have to die for their mistakes?”
“What if we learn how to use them and fight against them?”
“This is a fucking stupid plan. How are you going to fight them when they have thousands of years of experience over us?”
“Do you really believe what they say? What if it’s just a way to excuse themselves for killing us without mercy?”
The Gods watched with an abnormal lack of interest, surely not the first time they heard such complaints, but I didn’t acknowledge them. I seemed to be stuck in a trance, the voices diffusing into background noise. I lifted a hand in the air, transfixed by the palm that I kept twisting backward and upward, almost expecting a flare of magic to emerge from the movement.
Somewhere within me lived a thread of the god’s power, and I had been oblivious to it my entire life. How could I have been so blind? In all the fictional and mystical worlds I had read about, magic rarely lay hidden. Instead, it spread traces of its existence until it manifested with full force after not being set free for too long—some would burn buildings to the ground, others would freeze entire cities or wield the weather with their emotions.
But me? I had never experienced anything even remotely close.
My teeth bit the inside of my cheek. What if this was the advantage I was waiting for? I hadn’t found an ally, but perhaps it wasn’t necessary to attain one against the gods. All I needed to get home was magic, and that I had. If I could learn how to use it, I could return to my mother—I could veyrith there.
Yes. It was a good plan. 226688 had told me that in order to veyrith to a specific destination, one had to have visited it before, and what other place could I be more familiar with than my own house?
I could gohome. My chest constricted, and my heart missed a few beats as the possibility set in. The next breath I took was easier, calmer. For now, all I had to do was to pass today’s trial, and I’d figure out the rest from there.
“Are you okay?” Theo neared, placing a comforting hand on my shoulder. I flinched at the touch and held back a smile when my eyes met his.
What power does he have? My eyes strained to detect something amiss, but nothing about him was other than ordinary.
I nodded instead of offering an answer and found the redheaded man among the contestants—the one who foresaw the outcome of the first game and sent a vision into my mind. He wasn’t a psychic, as I initially assumed. He was a seer.
Then, I shifted my focus to Verena, who was farther away from the bustling crowd. She whispered urgently through her teeth, eyes pointed to the side where nothing but the wind stood. Perhaps her power was talking to ghosts, though I did not know what that would be called. I had heard about the existence of necromancers, but those could do far more than speak with the dead—they could command them to rise and bend them to their will. While nothing assured me that Verena didn’t possess that capability, I had done my history lessons well enough to remember no one in Greek mythology could revive corpses.
With a gentle click, everything fell into place.
“Quiet.” The God of War lifted a hand in the air as if he were the conductor of an orchestra. The crowd silenced.
Athena stepped forward, and the owl tilted its head as she began to speak. “For the time being, I suggest you disregard your self-perceptions, and instead focus on the trial at hand. You shall receive a riddle that will aid you in solving the mystery of the god from whom your powers originate and a weapon that belongs to one of us. Be advised that, in opposition to the riddle, theweapon you’ll be given is not from your god and instead belongs to another.”
“Upon successfully solving the riddle and determining the god from whom your power stems, you may then obtain your god’s weapon from your colleagues through any necessary methods, including amicable agreement orforce.” Ares’s lips rose into a twisted smile, the sole mention of violence seeming to thrill a sick part of him, then let his sister continue.
“For instance, if your riddle proves I am your source of power, you must find a shield and spear, retrieve them, and then come to me once you escape the maze. Are there any questions?” The nine of us shook our heads. “Excellent. We will all await your presence at the end of the trial.”
The next time I blinked, I was no longer at a safe distance from the maze—I was gawking with round eyes at the entrance of it. A tremor passed through my body, and my fingers curled on the . . . I paused. A papyrus and an imitation of Zeus’s weapon, a thunderbolt, sat in my hands. My fingers tested the rough materials, and I hoped for my sake that Zeus’s error wasn’t as ruthless as he was. Perhaps I could do a civil trade, though it was unlikely I’d succeed if the god and human had anything in common.
I filled my lungs with brisk air, noticing Georgie’s muffled sobs as Yvonne held her to her chest, caressing her blonde hair and offering words of encouragement. When Yvonne’s eyes met mine, a wave of understanding traversed between the two of us—she believed with all her might that these moments were their last. Her tattooed arms flexed across Georgie’s body and at the sight of a silent tear running dry on her cheek, I averted my gaze.
With a shrill laugh, the harpies clacked their talons on the ground and jutted out their blackened red tongues, the tips curling tauntingly on their teeth. The creatures were an army of their own, I thought. Their tongues alone, with those hideous,disgusting scales, were enough to compel someone to beg for their life.
Nicolas stood farther from the group, his face a ghostly white with dark purple shadows beneath his eyes. My chest constricted at the sight of him.
“Adam?” the blue-haired girl called, inching closer to the seer. She flashed a gaze over his face as he swayed on his feet, a hand grasping his stomach. “Are you okay?”
Before he could reply, Adam and the girl tumbled back, narrowly avoiding the claw of a harpy and landed on the ground with a painful thud. Their grunts mixed, and Adam spilled the contents of his stomach, his fingers trembling at his sides.
When he was done, he wiped the corners of his mouth and looked her in the eye. “I’m going to die today, Riley. I saw it—I felt it.” After his words, silence settled as the contestants shared tense glances.
Before Adam could get up on his own, Draven grabbed him by the collar, his grip tight enough to turn his knuckles white.
“Let him go! What has gotten into you?” Riley grabbed at Draven’s shoulders, but he wouldn’t budge.
