Chapter 20
There are two carriages to carry us around the mountain to Olympus City and to Zeus’s palace. I end up in a carriage with Haven and Pearce. Haven is quiet the entire ride. Pearce fills the silence with his pompous buffoonery. He tries entertaining Haven with his recount of our first trial, how he had to fight Orrin in the Dark Wood and bested him by kicking him in the groin.
Haven doesn’t react and Pearce trails off in awkward laughter, then turns his attention to me—an easy, captive target.
“It must be nice to reap the rewards and do none of the work,” he says to me.
“Excuse me?”
Pearce nods. “You really think you’re still standing because you’re better than us? Hah! The only reason Haven is letting you move on to the next trial is because you’re—”
“Pearce.” Haven says his name quietly and casually with no venom or warning in his voice. But Pearce shuts his fat trap and looks away like he was slapped by Hades himself.
I steal a glance at Haven out of the corner of my eye, but he’s turned away from me, his gaze trained on the streets of Olympus City blurring past outside the carriage window.
So they still think I’m just an easy mark for the end of the trial. A weak link that can be snuffed off the board.
I’ll let them keep thinking it.
Of course, unless I get control of my power, they might turn out to be right.
When the carriage pulls into the long, curving driveway, I forget all about the trials and my power and Haven Fucking Knightfall because I’m just minutes away from seeing Clea!
The carriage comes to a halt, and a footman opens the door. Haven is the first out with Pearce right behind him. Holding my dress so I don’t step on it, I duck out and into the sweeter, warmer air of Olympus City here on the sunny side of the mountain.
Though it’s just after dusk, the air still has that muzzy summer warmth to it as I walk up the marble steps to the palace. Footmen dressed in Zeus’s livery stand at both doors. They neither greet me nor acknowledge me as I walk inside.
The faint swirl of music filters out from the ballroom at the end of the grand hallway. Laughter rings through the air. There are people milling about. Girls in shimmering dresses and young men in tailored suits, some decorated with the gold trimmings and pins of their god houses.
Twinkling lights wink from the ceiling. I crane my neck, marveling at how they’re suspended in mid-air. Though I grew up in Olympus, there’s still so much I don’t know about how the magic works and every time I attend a party, there’s more wonder to take in.
I really was sheltered at Hestia’s House and I don’t think I realized just how much until I moved to Hades’s.
All of the Hades descendants, including Haven, have disappeared into the crowd so I start searching for faces I recognize. I enter the ballroom tentatively, feeling like I must stand out like a storm cloud in a sunny sky. Where at Hades’s House, I felt like I belonged in my black dress, here I stick out amongst the others’ dresses that are made of shades of white and gold and pink and orange.
Finally I spot Clea across the room and the relief I feel is nearly palpable. I skirt the perimeter of the room and come up behind her. I grab her by the elbow and whirl her around, causing her to yelp in surprise. When her eyes land on me, for a split second it seems as though she was expecting someone else.
“Oh,” she says. “Oh! Ana!” She flings her arms around my neck and squeezes tightly. I’m immediately overwhelmed by her sweet sugared scent. “I’ve missed you!” She stands back and holds me at arm’s length. “The dress looks divine on you, just as we thought it would.
I self-consciously run my hand down its front. “It isn’t too...I don’t know...funereal?”
“What? No. Not at all. It’s bold and daring.”
With Clea’s endorsement, I start to feel a little better. We turn to the crowd, arms linked together. “So,” she says, “you must tell me everything. How is it being the only girl in a house of boys? What’s Hades like?”
The full band that plays from the stage switches to the “Nocte Amantes” which translates to night lovers, if I remember correctly. It’s a choreographed partner dance and people start pairing off to begin.
“Living in Hades’s House is different from Hestia’s. For one, they stay up all night. I’m not used to that at all so I’m perpetually exhausted. And they don’t have a separate bath for women! Can you believe that?”
Clea’s eyes widen at the scandal. “So you have to shower with the boys?”
“Well...I’ve taken to going early in the morning to avoid them. So far it’s kinda working.” But my face warms at the memory of Haven catching me in the shower and me using my nakedness like a weapon.
“And Haven?” Clea asks as if she’s picked up on the thread of my thoughts.
I catch sight of him across the room. He’s with Pearce and Kal and Lyantha and some other girls I don’t know. They’re all turned to him as if he’s the sun and they the planets that orbit him.
A force that can’t be fought.
Lyantha gets in close to his side and hooks her arm through his as if she somehow owns him. Though they’re both descendants of Hades, their blood is so far removed that if they decided to take up with one another, no one would give a care.
Except...there’s this sharp, tangy feeling in my gut, like maybe I might.
I don’t like how she’s touching him. And I don’t like how she’s gazing up at him as if she wants to devour him.
My chest clenches and one word rings out in my head: mine.
What the hell? Get a grip, Ana.
I don’t want Haven. Not in any way, shape, or form.
When I look at him again, I realize he’s staring right at me. He’s caught me watching him. There’s an expression on his face that’s almost amused.
I quickly dart my gaze away.
To Clea, I say, “Haven is insufferable.”
“Why am I not surprised?” she says. “He’s a horrible person. I swear he was born of the fetid scum of the Underworld. I wish he’d lose so his very existence would be wiped from my memory.”
“Same,” I say, but the lie tastes bitter on my tongue.
I chance another look. Haven’s gaze is still on me and I warm beneath his stare.
I don’t want him to lose, I realize. But I don’t want to lose either.
Trying to dispel the unease currently churning in my gut, I turn the conversation to more hopeful matters. “How’s Marigold?” I ask. “And Sura?”
“They’re well,” Clea says.
We stop in the corner as the dancers spread out for the song’s finale. The music picks up speed again. Onlookers clap in unison with the beat of the band.
“Marigold misses you, of course, but she’s turned her sights on getting picked for Ares’s House now that you’ve blazed a trail for all orphaned descendant women.”
Ares has always had male descendants in his trials as well and the trials are notoriously brutal and interminable. I think Ares’s last trial lasted over a year. You not only need to be savage and strong in Ares’s House, you also have to have incredible endurance and unwavering strength of will.