14

14

No Good Deed

With zero hesitation, I walk back to the glass rose and pick it up, waving it in the air. “Which of you is Artemis’ champion again?”

A man about my age looks up from a pile across the platform. I recognize him from Boone’s phone screen, though he’s more put-together now. He has the classic, clean-cut looks I only see on TV shows and movies and is dressed in a dark-green suit embroidered to match the moons and arrows decorating his patroness’s armor. When our gazes meet, he walks toward me, saying, “That’s me. Why?”

Only his lips and the sound don’t quite match up.

Which is when it strikes me that Hermes, who among other things is the god of languages, must be translating so that we can understand each other. But he didn’t do that for Spanish. Except I speak Spanish. Languages are one of the things thieves are taught from the start and one of the areas in which I excel. Still, that translation is a handy little trick.

I hold up the rose so he can see the goddess’s symbol etched in the bottom, and his jaw drops. “Why would you help me—”

“Just take it.” The second I place it in his hand, Artemis disappears and her champion follows.

“Hey!” Dionysus, his cherubic face sort of purpling, a lock of his golden hair falling over his forehead, waves at the Daemones like they should intervene. “She can’t do that.”

Zeles glances at me, then shrugs. “It is not against the rules for the champions to help one another.”

Excellent. I take a deep breath and raise my voice. “Look for your god’s or goddess’s symbol on the bottom of an item.”

There is a frenzied dash to check all the things around us. I really should have waited to give away the trick until after I found mine. I turn to do the same and collide with Hades’ glare. He smolders at me, and I mean that in the truest sense of the word. I’m surprised flames aren’t rising off his head. I shrug, and he looks to the heavens as if other gods might have an idea of how to deal with me.

Another champion disappears with their patron. Then another. And another gong clangs.

“Where is it?” I’m whispering to myself now, picking up and setting down item after item after—

“Lyra Keres.”

I look up to come face-to-face with Ares, and I feel the blood drain from my cheeks. The god of war, with his deep-auburn hair, pallid skin, and shocking dark eye, looks battle ready in fearsome armor of black gold with a vulture across the breastplate, its wings outspread, mimicking the black metal wings that stretch out behind him. His helm also looks like wings and covers half his face, including the eye he lost during the Anaxian Wars. A wound given to him by Athena, or so the legends say.

In his hand, he holds a tiny bowl of obsidian glass. He tips it so that I can see the bident and scepter etched on the bottom. I hold out a shaking hand to receive it.

“In case you feel like being helpful to everyone again,” he says in a voice that could make a mountain tremble in its wake, “remember this.”

He hurls the bowl to the ground.

“No!” I shout and lunge for it.

But I miss, splaying out on the marble floor, hitting hard enough to knock the wind out of me as my token shatters into a thousand pieces.

“No, no, no, no…” I reach out in desperation to touch one of the glass shards, hoping it will be enough, but I don’t disappear. I’m still crumpled at Ares’ feet, and the realization of what I’ve just done to myself feels as if he took the spear strapped to his back and impaled me with it.

Before anyone can so much as move, a horrendous sound—one I imagine a grouchy dragon would make when awakened from slumber…actually, four of them—has me clapping my hands over my ears. I’m not the only one, either. The remaining champions do the same.

The Daemones, in a whirlwind of feathers and fury, grab Ares by the arms and fly him away.

“No!” Neve shouts.

The woman’s red-gold hair is styled in pigtailed ringlets. Her green dress with a short, ruffly skirt that flounces every step she takes reminds me of a baby doll as she stalks toward me. “You dumb bitch!”

I scramble back. Only something behind me has her pulling up sharply. Her face loses color so fast, it looks like a vampire sucked her dry, her blue eyes and freckles standing out in stark relief.

“Ares interfered, and that is against the rules,” Hades says from where he still stands across the platform.

He levers away from the wall to walk toward us. And that’s when I see it. The way the champions hurriedly scatter away as he walks among them…and so do the gods and goddesses, though not as blatantly. As if he trails death in his very wake and they shouldn’t get too close.

Is it always like that wherever he goes?

I shakily push to my feet by the time he gets to me.

He’s still staring Neve down when he reaches us and tells her, “It was a mild infraction, and he’ll get a commensurate punishment. It won’t affect you. Get on with finding your token.”

If daggers were glares, the one Ares’ champion shoots me would’ve lodged in my heart. I cross her off my list of potential allies.

Before Hades can lay into me, I grab his arm. I don’t know why. Maybe to give myself something solid to hold on to. His muscles tense under my touch, but that hardly penetrates the panic starting to set in as my own consequences hit me.

“I—I won’t be able to—” I won’t get my gifts now. I’ll be the only champion going into the Crucible without magical aids.

If I thought I was in trouble before…

Hades shakes off my hand, and my heart sinks. He’s done with me already, prepared to abandon me, and I curl over a bit on myself. But he takes me by the shoulders, face close to mine, and meets my eyes directly. “There is never only one way to win any Labor that is part of the Crucible.”

My mind can’t keep up with his words, and I frown. “What?”

He gives my shoulders a slight squeeze. “There’s more than one way. Find it.”

I didn’t even find the first way. Zai did. All I did was pay attention.

I glance around at the champions all wildly searching now. Where do I even start?

He sighs. “Try to remember what I told you about this game at the beginning.”

“That’s enough.” Zeus is the one to growl the words. “You’re getting awfully close to interfering yourself, brother.”

A muscle at the corner of Hades’ lip twitches, but he lets me go and suddenly offers a smile so filled with charm that for a second even I am a little dazzled, like I can’t quite catch my breath. Turns out the god of death has dimples.

“Of course,” he says.

He walks away and leaves me here trying to remember what in Tartarus he said before.

Something about… Oh heavens, what was it about?

Get your shit together, Lyra.

Usually, the voice in my head is my own. But every so often, Felix pops in there, or memories of him when he mentored me.

I pick up and discard another dozen items in rapid succession, and when none zap me away, my shoulders sink. I hug a bright-green bowl against my chest as my eyes dart from item to item. I need a plan. There’s not enough time left to pick through it all—nor is it likely any item remains that will transport me to the end.

I take a deep breath. Panic will get me nowhere. I need to think. What the hells had Hades said exactly? This test is cryptic, but there will be signs.

He meant something by that? Something more than just being an unhelpful ass?

Think, Lyra. What could he have been saying?

I single out the important words. Test. Cryptic. Signs.

My fingers are gripping the bowl so tightly, a rough edge rubs against my palm. I go to set it back down, but something niggles at me. Why would a god ever allow a blemish on one of their artifacts?

I run my fingers along the rough edge again and realize it wasn’t a mistake… There are tiny, raised bumps just along one edge. Crypticode!

I don’t dare glance in Hades’ direction as I run my fingers against the lip of the smooth marble bowl.

Please let me be right.

“What in Olympus’ name is she doing?” I think that’s Athena’s voice. I don’t turn to see.

Closing my eyes, I feel along the system of bumps, which are formed into dots and dashes a lot like Morse code. That little bell keeps going off as more champions find their tokens.

But I stay focused, reading the code on the bowl. Directions.

The rules said if you reach your god or goddess, you win the gifts. And presumably the token was one way to reach them at the finish line, so to speak. But the rules didn’t say you couldn’t find a way to your patron yourself.

I quickly set the bowl down and pick up another object, feeling around until I find the same pattern of small bumps. Every item in here must have the same directions on it—directions that make the hope wither in my chest like the hydrangeas after Demeter got upset.

I look up the path that is almost entirely stairs that wind and climb the mountainside into the heart of Olympus, and my hopeful heart drops back to the soles of my feet to be trampled.

Fuck me.

The gong resounds. “Five minutes. Gods and goddesses, leave to wait for your champions at the appointed location.”

I’ll never make it in time.

Out of nowhere, Hades appears at my side. “Go.”

I lift my chin and take a deep breath. I haven’t spent all my life tooling around the steep hills of San Francisco for nothing.

I grab his arm for balance while I strip the fancy heels from my feet. Then I throw them to the ground and take off running up the stairs.