Chapter 2

Blocked, huh?

What a shame.

With a shake of my head, I swiped my finger across the screen, endlessly shopping for someone else who might tickle my fancy for this year's game.

No reason to fret on one more disqualified candidate. It was so easy nowadays to find pliable, broken people, so it's not like I had to linger on a single lost connection. Humans had literally made whole applications on their personal tracking devices that they filled with the desperate and unwanted, flaunting their questionable mental health for all the world to see. I had a catalog of trauma right at my fingertips, where feelings that were once taboo were now shouted from proverbial rooftops like fun quirks. It made my vetting process for choosing my tribute so much easier.

Did I want the man who wore his anxiety on his sleeve? How about the insecure woman who chronicled her desperation in increasingly provocative photos? The angel who held her smile in a vice grip, or that brave but damaged soldier who still couldn't let go of his bloodlust, long after he'd resigned to ordinary life?

Who would last the longest in my Minotaur's maze? Who would offer the most exhilarating spectacle?

Whose corpse would satisfy my bed? And whose spirit would serve best in my revenge?

The standards were so high, and every year they only got higher. The more men and women I watched get slaughtered by my traps and devils, the more incredible the show had to be to excite me, and that was a dangerous precedence after a millennia or ten.

I kept going back to this Sela, however, who was so quick to reject my invitation. I could practically feel her terror through every carefully chosen word, and it was delicious to rattle a woman like that. One so proper in her professional life, yet clearly a hot mess in her personal life. All of my favorite things.

It didn't hurt that she was positively striking in her bold expressions and her neat and professional presentation. Those big blue eyes and her confrontational tongue reminded me of someone else. Someone who I wouldn't ever be fucking again, but I certainly wouldn't shy away from murdering again.

Would taking Sela give me a similar thrill to Pasiphae?

Maybe that fierceness in her was what made her so perfect. She was a self-proclaimed "girl boss" who thought she owned the world because she was "vice president" of a strange human organization. Not even the actual president, but the second in command. A princess who thought herself the queen, when she was little more than another pawn for Kings. It was adorably na?ve at best, and my how I wanted to destroy such false machinations and pretense with reality. Even the most high ranking human official was little more than a fragile meat sack when you threw them into the orange circle of the maze.

No matter how long I perused the rest of my nearby matches, I couldn't stop thinking about her. She had the bite that I was craving this year, like a sweet treat after last year's salty old businessman. I was used to both male and female humans tripping over themselves to please me, while she was ready to spit in my face, and I loved that.

Besides—how much more satisfying would it be to break a girl who has proven unbreakable? A silly little thing who thought she was crushing the patriarchy by chasing her dreams, going against social stigma and expectation, and carving out her place in a realm of men. She offered the kind of resilience I needed. Another tribute dying before they even reached the walls would satisfy Olympus' debt of blood, but would it excite me and amuse me? Certainly not.

Sela had blocked me, but I already had her name and her face and her general proximity that placed her within a five mile radius of my current location. Finding her would be as easy as crafting a single portal.

Taking her would be my right. I just needed the perfect motivator to get her to follow me willingly into the realm, then the deal would be sealed.

That shouldn't be hard. Women like her always had an Achilles heel, usually in the form of the most mundane security blankets. Take her most sentimental possession, and she becomes a puppet.

She just needed a little push, and I'd have another darling toy in my collection. Depending on how she faired, I might even keep her for good.

Let's play a game, Vice President Sela.