Chapter 13
The first of the three trials were to be a mind game. Everyone stood inside a long tent with a high-pitched roof, lined up from one to the other, silent, awaiting the next command. The only glances were between squad mates, silent nods of encouragement, solidarity. Whatever the trial was to be, the squad faced it as one – or so it was assumed.
The wait wasn’t long as Thanatos came in himself, that smug smile stretched broad over his mouth as he saw Fay. He winked at her, then laughed and took his place.
“I’m going to enjoy breaking you – there is no way you’re fit for this mission,” he said with a cruel laugh.
Fay wasn’t cowed by his threats. Despite what dangers posed to her from Andromeda, compared to her, Thanatos seemed childish. She lifted her gaze, unafraid, a steely resolution in them. No way in hell, literally, would she ever give him the satisfaction of beating her.
“You can try,” she said with a smile.
She heard the crack of his hand on her skin, taste the blood in her mouth, before she felt the sting of his blow. Even as her jaw throbbed, her head spinning a little, she still kept her stare fixed firmly on him, the smile fastened in place.
In the end, it was he whom tore his gaze away and cleared his throat. The game was hers, for the moment anyway.
“Tartarus is a place designed to drive one mad, to shred your spirit. To ensure you won’t crumble the second you enter we have brought a little Tartarus to you, just a taste of what you’ll face. To continue onto the next trial, you must have majority of your members standing after five minutes.”
Somewhere in the room someone chuckled quietly beneath their breath. “Five minutes? This’ll be easy.”
Beside Fay Nadia bit back a laugh. “He’s a goner.”
“Agreed.”
Thanatos’s gaze snapped to Fay. “Something to say?”
Fay smiled wanly. “I’m just excited.”
His lips compressed into a thin line but he said nothing. The curtain behind him parted and a woman strode in, dressed in black, a thin veil hiding her face. She held a jar with both hands and stopped beside Thanatos, glancing faintly up at him for instructions. With only a feint nod of his head she opened the jar and a black smoke spilled out, slowly filling the room. It went on and on until it seemed to consume the room completely, no one daring to move for fear of failing the test. As the last fragment of light was dashed the hollow laughter of Thanatos rang out. Even in the darkness she felt his eyes on her, boring deep.
As the smoke suddenly rushed into the ground, vanishing, Fay found herself standing in a sprawling field of bones. A blood red sky stretched on before her, streaked with ribbons of black energy. Silence reigned around her.
She held her breath, waiting for something to happen; a demon to attack, the ground to crumble beneath her, anything. After several moments when nothing did she exhaled and glanced around, frowning.
A figure materialised before her abruptly.
Andromeda.
“Well, this is not what I was expecting,” declared Fay. “Are you my challenge?”
Andromeda snorted derisively, the corner of her eyes crinkling with humour. “Chaos, no. I just…intervened. The essence they gave you was from Tartarus, so I just used that as a link and created a body here, in your illusion. I may have also kept your demon challenge at bay. I can give you that, though, if you’d prefer?”
Fay shook her head. “Um, I’m good.” She suddenly felt aware of the pain she’d felt before, uneasy now at Andromeda’s good mood.
Sensing this, the smile on Andromeda fell. “I’m sorry about before. Really, I am but I need you to win this trial and get your squad to Tartarus.”
“Why them? Why a squad?”
She hesitated. “It’s complicated.”
“Uncomplicate it then,” said Fay.
“I’m so close to everything I’ve worked for. I can’t risk it because of your hurt feelings, I’m sorry. The future is still so precarious and everything has to be just so for it to work,” she argued passionately, her eyes flashing with that spark I’d seen in her visions.
To have that sense of purpose…Fay was jealous. She’d never had anything like that, nothing to work for. Her whole life she felt like she was waiting or putting off something. Nothing felt settled, either as a human girl or a hellhound.
Then she remembered the visions and how lonely that purpose made Andromeda’s life. She had Amon, though she felt that the ending of that story was not a happy one. Still, she didn’t seem daunted by it, resolved in anything.
“Look, I’m grateful for you being here but I feel like you want something – so?” Fay pushed gently.
Andromeda nodded. “Straight to the point. That’s what I like about you.”
It’s not, Fay realises. She’s a pawn in Andromeda’s game. Everyone was. Only, no one really knew what she was fighting so hard to get, what she was willing to tear the whole world apart for. Andromeda would lie, steal, betray, spin all the pretty words. Yet, for all of it, she was honest about her ambition, about how she’ll likely betray.
Perhaps that was where they’d come to, this awareness of each other’s nature. They saw through each other’s lies.
“Win the trial, come find me in Tartarus and I will show you everything,” she said with a great show of effort, like she was reluctant, shy even.
Everything.
It dances before Fay, tantalising. The answer to why her life for the past few years, why her life in general really, has been a colossal mess. Answers. Real answers. It felt too real, too good to be free.
“Including what this whole show of yours is for?”
Andromeda nodded, just once. “Yes.”
“Why you’re so focused on me?”
Again, that nod. “Yes.”
“Swear it on the River Styx.”
Andromeda cocked her head to the side. “I have moved beyond that river’s effects. It yields to me now. I can swear on Chaos though, prickly bastard that he is.”
A ghost of a smile tugs at her mouth, like she’s told a joke only she’s privy to. Fay can’t tell. Her mind locked on Andromeda’s confession about the River Styx. Just how strong had she become? How strong was her set to become?
“Then swear it.”
“I swear that I will confess the whole story and my plan to you once you find me in Tartarus – only then, however - so long as you and your team are there,” she swore carefully. “Happy?”
“No, not really but it’ll do for now.”
“Then we best get you back to your challenge,” said Andromeda and she snapped her fingers.
The world spiralled out from beneath Fay, sending her hurtling freely into the darkness. The fall ended just as quickly as it had come. She sat up sharply with a groan. Someone was at her side, a hand on the small of her back, saying something to her. It was Nadia. Blinking several times Fay glanced at her, then at the others. A few were still screaming and writhing on the ground, two of which burst into smoke, vanishing to spin back up later.
In the tent she saw the rest of her squad, plus two other squads, though one seemed a little depleted. She saw Thanatos watching her from the doorway, scowling, like a petulant child. Oh, how he wanted her to fail. She winked at him and got to her feet.
“How you feeling?” Nadia asked.
Fay tore her gaze from him and smiled reassuringly at Nadia. “Never been better. How’d everyone else pull up?”
“With a prick of a headache but otherwise okay. We’d trained for some mind games, so we were fairly prepared before you came along. Hell, we didn’t know how you’d go, though,” she admitted sheepishly. “Sorry.”
“What matters is we’re fine. Next trial here we come,” Fay said, the last bit loud enough for Thanatos to hear. “I wonder when this is going to get hard.”
He released a low snarl but said nothing. Fay wasn’t afraid of him, not when she knew Andromeda would do everything in her power to ensure the squad made it to Tartarus. In the scheme of things he was small and that was just fine by Fay.
There was a half day break before the next trial, so the squad sat around a fire in a roped off area at the edge of camp, minus Remus and Diana. The crowds had filtered away, likely to return for the next trial. Several feet away was another squad, then several more feet, the third squad with its diminished size. Chatter across all camps is few, tense even. It was like returning from that mission in the forest again. The shared looks, the wondering what everyone saw, experienced, survived. No words were exchanged immediately though. Alexander, quieter without his brother around, stoked the fire aimlessly, his gaze mind somewhere else.
“Where do you think Remus and Diana are off at?” Fay asked quietly.
Nadia shrugged, her eyes cool. “Probably a lover’s tiff.”
“A lover’s tiff?”
Lucilla let out a long, loud yawn, stretching her arms high above her head. “Oh, they had a little argument before the trial and I believe Remus finally admitted he loved Diana. About time if you ask me.”
Remus loved Diana. Fay’s eyes nearly bugged out of her skull. She knew Diana had feelings for Remus but it had seemed more like an obsession, one-way feelings. She’d seen a kind of intense loyalty caught in snatches to Diana, the familiar way they spoke, the intensity at times. It hadn’t seemed like love, though.
“You seem shocked,” remarked Lucilla. “Have I shocked you?” The Grecian assassin leant into her husband’s willing arms. “Diana is many things; hard, jealously protective, terrifyingly astute and passionate. For all her faults, and she has many, like us all, we accept her and we let her argue with you, lash out as she saw fit.”
“We had hoped,” cut in Motep with his gravelly voice. “That she might temper herself once she saw you had no interest in the squad. Really, the way she thought you were some sort of monster, even dangerous around us, we had begun to think it ourselves.”
Fay kept her face neutral. “But you don’t know?”
“Your dangerous and you have secrets but, we forget we were all like that when we first joined. So, we forgive you but you ought to mend the bridge between you and Diana. Before we go to Tartarus,” said Motep. “This feud must end.”
She felt like there had been a long conversation about her when she wasn’t around. They’d accepted she couldn’t tell them everything, for the moment anyway. The problem was, would that last until Tartarus? Or would Andromeda’s own tight leash on Fay backfire?
As she thought about it, Remus returned with Diana, a hand on the small of her back. A quiet but clear gesture. His eyes flickered to Fay, then to the squad. Fay stood and Diana’s gaze snapped to hers, cold and ready for a fight.
“Can we talk Diana, please?” Fay asked.
She knew she had to get it over and done with. Diana watched her with guarded eyes, tense but, after a minute, nodded slowly. She shot Remus a long, meaningful look, whom merely nodded back. With permission seemingly given Diana walked away from the squad, forcing Fay to hurry after her, aware of the squad watching them both.
Once they were away from the squad, from the main encampment, and were strolling the empty fields between the forest and the camp, Diana slowed her pace. Together, they fell into step, their feet mutedly thumping against the ground in sync.
“I’m cursed,” announced Fay.
“You think being a hellhound is a curse?” Diana said frostily.
So, it wasn’t going to be easy.
Fay shook her head. “That isn’t my curse. It’s something else. I have…a second master.”
Andromeda’s presence brushed her mind. She was watching.
Speak carefully.
Diana stopped and turned to Fay. “A second master? How is that possible? How could Hades not know this?”
“I can’t say.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Diana pressed.
Fay sighed. “Can’t. They have a tight rope around my neck, so I have to be selective about what I say. They’re watching, even now.”
If Diana even believed she gave no indication. She seemed to be considering every word very carefully, deciding on the reliability. It was more than Fay expected.
“Why you?”
Fay laughed bitterly. “Oh, that I’d love to know. Unfortunately, I’m being kept in the dark. They’ve been in my head, playing with me, since I turned. Hell, it may have even been before I turned. I don’t know anymore. I don’t know why they want me, what I’m meant for. Frankly, it terrifies me because I’m the only one. I’m afraid of what I am, of what I’m becoming. I don’t have anyone like you, okay? No one I can trust. I did once but he tore that trust apart. I don’t think he ever trusted me, not really.”
Uneasy under Diana’s piercing gaze Fay tore herself away and shuffled off, her back to Diana. She’d said too much, let down too many walls. She was restless, her skin crawling, heart racing. It was like she was a cornered beast, ready to lash out.
“You’re wrong, you know.”
Fay sucked in a sharp breath, turned slowly. “About what?”
“Saying you have no family. You have us.”
“You hate me.”
“I reckon you’re bloody dangerous and I still think you’re a risk to our squad. I don’t like you, nor will I ever. Still, this is your family and if they can accept me for my flaws, then your little curse will be nothing. After this mission I’m sure we can break it.”
I don’t think I’m coming back from this mission, she realised but she smiled anyway. “Thanks. For being honest, for everything. Allies?”
Diana stared at the outstretched hand warily, then took it, shaking firmly. “I suppose I can deal with that. Hurt this family and we’ll tear you apart – slowly.”
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