26

26

Figure It Out

“The tide isn’t coming in.” Neve is telling this to herself, but I manage to catch the words. Her Canadian accent sounds thicker—maybe because of the danger. “It’s going out.”

I open my eyes to pay attention to the water. She’s right. It’s lower than when we first got here. Which means I need to work faster to get free. Right now, the water is holding some of my weight.

Tied up like this, I can’t reach anything in my vest, so using one of my tools to cut the ropes isn’t a possibility.

Movement to my left catches my eye, and I find Dex has managed to flip around and is climbing up his pole.

Damn, he figured that out fast. But I should also take his lead. My wrists may be bound, but my feet are not. I use the movement of the water to swing sideways and probably look like exactly what I am—a worm on a hook trying to wriggle off.

It takes me several tries, but eventually, I manage to hook one leg around the post, my rope twisting with me. I wait for the water to flow back out, then wrap my other leg around. The rough-barked wood posts clearly haven’t been in the water long because they aren’t slimy.

Leaning back, I wrap my hands around the rope, which is thin, but my gloves help with the grip. Using the rope and my thighs around the post, I start to climb. I’m able to use the lift of the swells when they roll by to help boost me for the first few scoots, but soon I’m above the waterline, a soggy, heavy mess, dragging my own waterlogged weight up the pole as my muscles scream.

Fuck. This was easier in my head than in reality.

“Look at them!” someone yells nearby.

Them? Out of the corner of my eye, I see Neve shimmying up her pole, only way better than me, and nearing the top. On my other side, Dex is already there. I’m not surprised about Neve, who strikes me as the independent, fuck-the-world type. Dex, either, really, who is tall but lean in the way wolves are in the winter, giving them a meaner edge.

“How did you do that?” someone else calls.

“Turn around and use your legs and the rope,” I shout back and slip a little from the effort.

Then I keep going, focused entirely on what I’m doing. One hand over the other, scoot the legs, try not to slip.

“Oh my gods,” Neve snarls off to my left. “Quit with the fucking humming.”

The noise cuts off in my throat. I seriously need to get that little habit back under control. When I finally make it all the way, I can’t figure out how to heft myself up to sit on the flat top. And I’m running out of strength quickly.

I force myself to focus. My wrists are still bound. Now that I have slack to look at the knots, I know I can’t undo them with my teeth. I need my relic to get free, but it’s in a zippered pocket at the small of my back.

I won’t be able to reach around.

I lose my grip and slide down the pole a few feet but manage to catch myself.

Think, damn it.

On either side of me, Neve and Dex, who I guess don’t have knives, are struggling to get on top of their poles. Dex has managed to pull himself up enough to lay over it on his stomach. Neve is breathing hard, her brows puckered in a ferocious scowl. A few others are making their way up now, too.

My relic is the answer. I know it. But how do I—

I grunt as an idea hits me between the eyes. I’m taking a big fucking risk and have one shot at this if I’m lucky, but it’s the only option I can see.

Holding myself up with my shaking thighs, I lift my bound hands over my head and start tugging my vest up. My shirt drags up with it. More than once, my legs slip and I have to pause and get a grip. Finally, it pulls free with a tug.

I’d love to take a breather, but my legs are jelly and I’m slipping more. Working as fast as I can, I manage to unzip the pocket at my back and pull out my relic. First, I cut the rope that secures my wrist bindings to the post. My legs give, and I tumble back into the water, dropping my vest. Still clutching my weapon, I helplessly watch the vest sink until it’s snagged on a small rock outcropping, maybe six feet down.

Shit, shit, shit.

When I come up for air, I let my quivering body float as I awkwardly hack through the bindings around my wrists as fast as I can without cutting myself. The rope isn’t thick, so I’m quickly freed. My body quakes from the cold. I need to get out of the water before I can’t—we all do. I duck back underwater and swim down to my vest, slipping it back on with jerky motions as I kick back up to the surface.

“Stop climbing!” I yell to the others. “I’ll come to you and cut you free.”

“Don’t believe her,” Neve snarls. “She’ll just gut us with that axe.”

“She already helped us once,” Meike yells back, her bangs plastered to her forehead by the spray of the sea. “We all have our gifts because of her.”

Something falls into the water from a pole closer to the cave entrance. I look just in time to see Kim Dae-hyeon ––Artemis’ first male champion in…maybe ever–– swear as a bulging backpack sinks under the water.

That sucks. Hopefully he can get to it.

Kicking to stay afloat over another swell, I shout at Dex, “It’s up to you. Come down to the water if you want my help.”

Dex is climbing down. It’ll take him a second, so I swim past Neve’s pole to Trinica Cain, Hephaestus’ champion…one of the Courage virtues. She’s the only other champion from the United States, from somewhere in the South, I think.

Her dark waves hang over her face, and discerning eyes stare back at me from between the strands. “Are you going to gut me like she said?”

I like Trinica already. No-nonsense and practical. “No. But I have to climb your pole to get to your hands, so we’ll have to touch. Don’t bite me or something, yeah?”

She nods.

I try to avoid pulling or leveraging myself on her, which would hurt her hands and wrists more, and manage to get up the pole high enough to cut her down. She falls in with a splash and comes up coughing and wild-eyed. “I need my hands!”

I drop back into the water and cut her wrists free as fast as I can, and she wraps herself around the pole.

“Get to the wall.” I point.

She nods, and I move from pole to pole, skipping Apollo’s champion––Rima Patel, world-class neurosurgeon turned fish bait––who’s already freed herself. Next, I get to Zai, who managed to sit on top of his pole, at least, although by the shaky looks of him, that took all he had physically. He waves me off. “I’m safe up here for now. Get the others.”

By the time I reach Isabel, it’s more difficult because the water is still receding. Too fast. This isn’t a normal tide.

Isabel mutters through chattering teeth in a litany of angry Spanish about the cold water, sadistic gods, and why the fuck is she here anyway. She and I really need to be friends. As soon as she’s free, she flips her long, blond hair out of her face and twists it up into a knot on top of her head while treading water. “Do you have anything else that cuts?”

I hesitate a beat, and she sees it. “It’ll go faster with two of us,” she points out.

She’s right. “I have this.” I pull the wire cutters out of a different pocket and hand them to her.

We both swim as fast as we can to the other champions, past where I’d been tied up. I can see already that Samuel Sebina, champion of Zeus, must have broken his rope by strength alone. He’s helping Meike on Dex’s other side. Meanwhile, Dex has climbed back down, but it’s obvious that with the lower water level, his arms and wrists are hurting now.

“Hurry,” he groans at me.

“Hold on.”

I hear him grunt. “Like I have a choice.”

Because there’s more strain on the rope with his weight, it snaps like a twig after the first saw. I follow him into the water and free his wrists. In a blur of movement, he grabs the axe from my hand.