Oh my Gods. He’s right.
Unless…I look at Selena. “Can you take her place?”
Selena shakes her head. “You registered a female Hoi Polloi. There’s no way I can pass for Hoi Polloi, no matter how I mute myself.”
Mute herself?My stomach cramps. I feel sick. “Of course. I wasn’t thinking.”
I turn to Griffin, barely able to look at him. “Then it’s over. I didn’t protect my team. We’ll have to forfeit the Games. I just started, and I’ve already failed in every way possible.” My hands ball into fists. I want to hit something, break things, tear something apart. Mostly myself. “This isn’t me. I can’t do this!”
Griffin pins me with his hard stare. “Don’t make this about you.”
I gape at him. “You’re always saying it’s about me. Now suddenly it’s not? Make up your mind!”
A whisper of apprehension over the back of my neck is my only warning before I’m off my feet and over Griffin’s shoulder. The world dips, my insides roil, and acid burns a line from my stomach to my throat. He sets me down in the next room. My feet hit the ground hard, and I swallow, tasting dinner and bile.
Griffin slams the door shut and then turns on me with a frown so fierce his eyebrows turn into one furious slash across his face. “This happens. You think I haven’t lost people? You think I haven’t seen dead men and women and known that parents no longer have their children? That children just became orphans? That husbands and wives and lovers and friends will never see each other again because they believed in me? Because they followed me?”
My jaw clicks shut.
“It’s time to be the person you were meant to be, Cat. You don’t just have to make decisions and stand by them now. You have to live with them.”
My anger erupts like a volcano. “You live with them! I don’t want this! I never wanted this!”
“The Fates don’t care what you want! You were born for a reason. Most people have to figure out their role in life by themselves. Some never do. You had yours handed to you when you were fifteen. Harbinger of the end. Destroyer of realms.” He advances on me even though we’re only a step apart. “Youend the scourge.Yourebuild the kingdom. You’ve had more than eight years to think about it. Now stop hiding and do something!”
If he’d hit me, I couldn’t have been more stunned. “I tried to do something! Look how well that turned out!”
“We have the Ipotane. Sinta is behind a locked wall. That’s a win.”
I shake my head. Scoffing, I look down. “It’s over.”
Griffin pinches my chin and forces my head back up. “You’re the leader. You don’t get to look down. You look straight ahead and acknowledge the damage you cause.”
My eyes widen. Blur.
“And the good you do,” he says more gently, easing his grip. “Nothing ends in this arena. If we have to, we invade. Good options don’t exist. Only choices.”
My throat burns with rising tears. “I made one, and Cassandra’s dead.” Her lifeless face is all I can see. Her gruesome second smile. “Oh Gods. Piers already hates me. He’s going to kill me.”
“Piers doesn’t hate you.” Griffin wraps his arms around me and draws me in close. I resist at first but then realize that’s not what I really want. I lay my cheek against his chest, letting my weight sag and wishing I could somehow settle our burdens back onto his shoulders again.
“This isn’t your fault.” His large hand moves slowly up and down my back. “Cassandra shouldn’t have left the suite at night. Not here. Not in this place.”
An ache unfolds under my rib cage. “Did he… Were they…in love?”
“Piers? In love?” Griffin shakes his head. “Not to my knowledge. He cared about her, though. They were comrades. And friends.”
The hot sting behind my eyes gets worse. I take a deep breath. Let it out slowly. “Plan B?” I ask.
“Plan B,” Griffin agrees.
I sniff. “I don’t have a plan B.”
Jocasta throws open the door. “No. Plan A.” She frowns. “You do realize we can hear every word you say?”
I blink at her. “And?”
“We can go through with the Games.” She points to herself. “Woman. Hoi Polloi.”
