Page 238 of The Mortal Trials

The audience roars. They chant my name. Wave white flags in my honor. And I wonder if my brother is here, and if Abuela is watching from home, and Carina…

Does Carina know her sister wears the laurel and that to get it, she had to kill an innocent friend? Would she be proud or pity me?

“What have you done, Ulani?” Vailea whispers harshly, her voice trembling. “You’ve angered the gods.”

I can’t bring myself to look at the divine’s box.

“I did what was right,” he says, before slamming the end of his trident into the sand. “And my very existence angers them. As does yours. Or else we’d be home living our lives instead of fighting for our next breaths. Right is all we have left now. I won’t let them take that from me.”

Vailea shoots a worried glance in my direction, one that seems to say… if Ulani thinks it can’t get any worse than this, he’s wrong.

Torsten bares his teeth at the laurel on my head. The feathers in Freyja’s cape ruffle as he moves to the portal that empties into the temple, still holding the sword he somehow procured. His allies trail him, swilling like blood down a drain.

The unchampioned leave together as a large group. Some of them help the ones too distraught to walk steadily.

None of the portals glow. The people left behind are dead.

I look at Akira’s prone body and the girl still crying over her.

Elias and Niall hold onto Koda. He gives me a sad smile and a parting nod. He heard what happened in the darkness. He’ll probably never look at me the same way.

They assist him down the steps, his red clothing as stark as Akira’s blood on Taeniset’s armor.

Ulani and Vailea leave together.

I walk to Isis’s mortal and try to help her up. “Come on.” She shoves me away. “You can’t stay here.”

She scowls. “I can’t just leave her! Who would do that? I can’t just…”

And I can’t leave her here. I point to the staircase yawning from the sand floor. “Do you think the gods will just leave that portal open for you to use when you’re ready?” I hold her angry stare. “They can lock you out. They didn’t care about her, and they don’t care about you.”

Taeniset stares at the divine box. Most of the deities have left, but a few are still up there, laughing and sipping wine together. Akira’s death. Daedalus’s death… They served as entertainment for them and nothing more. They likely thought more of us would fall to the man they made a minotaur. How terribly anticlimactic for them.

And what about the craftsman’s performance? Was Daedalus the obedient beast they wanted?

Something tells me his conscience valiantly fought their will. That because they made a monster out of a good man, something in his mortal character and mind lingered longer than the divine who tried to carve it out would have liked. It felt like he remembered for a second that we were human and that he had been, too.

He’d hesitated by the inner wall when he must’ve smelled us. Heard us. I think he sensed his magic in my prosthesis. He didn’t change until I started toward him, desperate to help.

What a cruel trigger they designed.

“She’s right,” August gently tells Taeniset, grinding the end of my spear into the sand. “We should go back while we can.”

Her shoulders quake as she cries, but a moment later, she takes August’s hand and rises to her feet.

I hear my brother’s shouts as we turn to leave with her. August hears him too, and glances at me. I shake my head. I can’t face him after what he just saw me do.

“Callalie!” Cillian yells again into cupped hands. He waves wildly from my periphery, waiting on the arena’s bottom row like he did last time. And all I can think is that he needs to go home and stop watching them torture us. I wish he could stay with Abuela and avoid Olympus entirely. He’s not safe here. No one is.

They could make him the next monster.

“Cal!” He leaps onto the sand and starts running toward me.

I hurry down the steps to the portal with Taeniset and August. She angrily swipes tears from her cheeks, thanking us before heading westward. When she reaches a panel of the delicate ivory fabric hanging from the roof, peacefully billowing in the warm breeze, she wipes her armor clean with it, leaving Akira’s blood behind for divine and mortal alike to see.

I take the laurel off my head and imagine hurling the circlet across the floor, casting it into the sea, breaking off every leaf and twig until its beauty is spent and it means nothing.

“Keep it. Wear it tonight,” August suggests.