‘What?’ Zara’s eyes widen in an unspoken objection.
‘Are you refusing?’
I glance down at my feet. How the Goddess hasn’t killed Zara yet is beyond me. She has the patience of a saint. But I guess she knows more than I do. Especially if she can read our thoughts. Maybe the Rowell Rettling just keeps all the nice things in her head and speaks the rest. I doubt it, but who knows.
‘No, no,’ Zara replies hurriedly. ‘But what will happen when I win the gifting? Will it be returned to me, along with my gift?’
Again that wistful smile floats across the Goddess’s expression.
‘Ifyou win’—her stress on the first word causes a flutter of gratitude within me—‘all of your powers will be returned to you, along with the gift you have requested.’
‘And if we lose?’ I ask.
‘Then you leave here powerless. Assuming the other allows you to live.’
That’s a no-brainer. Of course Zara’s not going to let me leave. Still, it doesn’t change my answer.
‘You can take my powers,’ I say. ‘They’re yours.’
Zara huffs behind me. ‘She’s got fuck-all to give.’ She eyes me. ‘Though how a slum rat managed to afford a fire bead and an ice bead is beyond me.’ A frown creases her forehead.
The Goddess ignores her. ‘Rose Kultavaris will cede her magic to me. Do you acquiesce to my request to do the same?’
Zara gapes. Though whether it’s at the possibility that I have magic or the Goddess’s use of big words that confuses her, it’s impossible to tell.
Still, she exhales and looks at the Goddess. ‘Yes. Take mine too.’
The instant the Goddess inhales, I brace myself for the pain. But it does nothing, and a scream runs through every line of my body as the magic I recently gained is ripped away, a burning agony filling me as my very essence is pulled apart.
Next to me, Zara screams out loud. Having never been stripped before, she couldn’t have known how much it would hurt.
When it’s over, Zara’s red hair has been stripped to white-blonde. She matches me now. A fellow outcast.
I once dreamed of all my enemies being stripped like me, yet now that the moment has come, I’m surprised to find no satisfaction, only weariness. Magic or not, nothing will change between us. There will be no kinship, no bonding over a shared pain. At this point, I’m pretty sure Zara has no empathy left, if she ever had any to begin with.
I watch her raise her hand, clearly trying to draw the pulse of magic to her palms. When her hand drops and a tear leaks down her cheek, I almost feel sorry for her. Almost. Then I picture Grenda, and any burgeoning sympathy dies.
‘Very good.’ The Goddess’s chest rises and falls. ‘Now we must wait.’ With that, she closes her eyes.
Standing in such a manner, she looks even more like Dinah than she did with her eyes open, and I can’t help but wonder whether my friend is still there, present within herself and watching this whole debacle.
A chill sweeps through me as I wonder whether the honour of allowing the Goddess to possess you is something that can only occur once. Will Dinah’s life leave when the Goddess does? I pray she wouldn’t be so cruel to one of her own priestesses.
As the minutes tick by, I find myself desperate to know who or what we’re waiting for, and from the way Zara is fiddling with her furs, she is too. But the Goddess says nothing.
In the silence, I take the time to observe my competitor a little closer, like Benny would. Zara is standing with her back propped against thewall. Like me, her arms are covered in scrapes and scratches, but there’s also a long tear on the left leg of her trousers, which are soaked through with blood. Maybe she caught her leg on one of the jagged rock edges in the light shafts. Perhaps she’s the one I heard scream.
A dull throb forms in the pit of my stomach. It doesn’t matter how much of an arse Jonas was at the end, he still looked out for me at the start. Still felt enough for me to offer me marriage; a lifetime bound to me, with my forbidden powers and love for another man. The thought of Jonas lying dead or dying somewhere in the maze is enough to raise tears in my throat. They won’t leave the others here, will they? I voice the question loudly in my mind, hoping the Goddess might hear and answer me. The priestesses will take the bodies of those who died, surely?
When no reply comes, my mind returns to my friends. To Benny. I pray to every God and Goddess that he hasn’t frozen to death out there, waiting for us to finish. Yet it’s hard not to think of his skin turning blue. His fingers black as frostbite claims them.
My mind is still rife with such images when a faint sound draws my attention. A scratching somewhere beneath me. That rat-like scraping. Only, it’s not rats at all. I know it’s not, just like I knew it wasn’t them before. It’s another Rettling in the tunnel, and given how things have unfolded since the Ofur began, there are only two options for who it might be: Del or Jonas. And no matter how ridiculous it is of me, I know which one I’m praying to see.
As the scratching gets louder, the tension claws at my insides. I hold my breath, offering silent prayers to the Goddess who stands in front of me. If she hears my desperate pleas, she doesn’t show it. Her eyes remain closed, her face expressionless.
Only when a crown of sandy hair crests the opening do I let out a gasp.
‘Jonas!’
