Page 31

Chapter 30

I’M DONE PLAYING GAMES

B lue found me on the way back to my room in the morning. Pashim had offered to let me use his shower, but all my stuff was at my place, and I’d be damned if I let Araz chase me off. I mean, how dare he bring someone back to our room for the night without checking with me first?

Now that I’d had some sleep and the shock had worn off, I was pissed.

“That good for nothing piece of eye candy!” Blue raged from his perch on my shoulder. “I hope his truncheon shrivels into a teeny pecker. I hope his bulbous balls shrink to the size of peanuts. I hope he catches drohi crabs. I hope he trips on his own cock and breaks his perfectly aquiline nose. Fuck it, let’s make it all of the above.”

I was seething, but like always, Blue had me smiling. “ Stop it, Blue. I can’t go in there with a smile on my face.”

“Ya think I’m jokin’?”

“Oh, I know you’re not.”

“What ya gonna say to him? What ya gonna do if the dirty skank that slept with him is still there?”

“I don’t know. I’ll just see what happens.”

“Playin’ it by ear, eh? Good call.”

I took a moment to compose myself outside my door before pushing it open and?—

“Leela!” Chaya looked up from pulling on her boots. “We’ll be out of your hair in a moment.”

“Their shower is so much better than ours,” Dharma said as she came out of the bathroom. She was fully dressed, but her hair was wet. “Leela, hey, thanks for this.”

“This?” I looked between them. “You…you two slept here last night?”

They exchanged confused glances. “Well…yeah,” Dharma said. “Our room has a leak, and they had the floors up to do some work, so Araz offered to let us have your room. He said you guys were going to sleep under the stars or something, and I thought maybe he was coming around and…” She trailed off with a wince. “You didn’t know, did you?”

“No, she didn’t,” Chaya said. “Leela, did you walk in on us last night and think…”

A hard lump had formed in my throat burning with betrayal. “The roof, you said?” My voice sounded strange.

“Yes, but Leela?—”

But I was already halfway down the corridor, heading for the stairs to the roof.

Araz sat on the edge of a daybed, his warm brown skin bathed in the orange glow of the sunrise.

There were so many things I could say right now, but all I could manage past the constriction in my throat was “Why?”

“You’ll have to be more specific than that.”

“Why dintcha tell her you’d loaned out your room?” Blue said for me.

“I didn’t think it would be a problem.” He tipped his face to the sun, his body still turned away from us. “Aren’t they friends of yours?”

He was being deliberately obtuse, and I was sick of it. “You knew exactly what you were doing. You knew what I’d think, what assumption I’d jump to. You wanted to hurt me.”

“Hurt you? Why would my sleeping with someone else hurt you? It shouldn’t hurt you. You don’t own me. We have no commitment to each other aside from a bond neither of us asked for, so why the fuck would it matter?” He speared me with his burning gaze, top lip slightly raised in the habitual sneer he wore around me.

That look would usually hurt, but not today. Because today I saw right through it.

Pashim was right about him. He was desperate to keep me at bay. Desperate to fight the connection that the bond had activated between us. None of this was personal no matter how it hit.

“You’re right, Araz. I shouldn’t care. Just like it shouldn’t bother you that I slept in Pashim’s bed last night. That I asked him to hold me.”

His chest heaved, and his jaw hardened. “Of course, you did.”

“Yes, because he’s my friend, he cares about me, and he’s not afraid to show it. But I get it. You are. You’re afraid of getting close. Of getting attached, and so you’re being an asshole.”

“I’m not afraid of anything.”

“Yes, you are. But it’s fine. I’m going to make this real easy for you. I’m done. Done trying to form a connection, done trying to be your friend. Going forward, you are nothing to me, just a guy I share a room with. Come to training or don’t. I don’t care. I don’t need you, Araz. I have me.”

Saying the words was like letting go of a weight I’d been holding for the past three weeks. The weight and responsibility of making this work. Of making us work. Of being like the others. Of fitting in.

But heck, when had that ever been easy for me ?

It was time to let it go.

I left him to the sunrise and walked back into the building shifting my mind to the gauntlet tomorrow. Nothing else mattered. I wouldn’t let it.

“Rise and shine, it’s gauntlet day!” Blue crooned in my ear.

My eyes popped open. Today was the day. I was up and ready in minutes. “The others?”

“At breakfast. Pashim is waiting for you,” Blue said.

“I don’t think I can eat a thing.”

“Ya need fuel. Maybe just some porridge?”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“Course I am.” He puffed out his chest.

“Have you seen Araz this morning?”

“We don’t care about the muscle-bound monolith, remember?”

“I know, I just…I want to be prepared if I’m going to see him.”

“No sign of him.”

I glanced at his neatly made bed. Had he even come back last night? Maybe he’d slept on the roof again. Maybe that was for the best.

Not my problem.

I opened the door and almost stepped on a neatly tied bouquet of white flowers .

“Where the feck did those come from?” Blue scampered down my body to peer down the corridor.

I picked them up. “I wonder who they’re from.”

“No card or note?” Blue sniffed the air. “Don’t like the way they smell. Ditch ‘em and let’s go.”

I sniffed them. “They smell fine to me.” I didn’t have a vase, so I put a stopper in the sink, filled it with water, and propped the flowers in there.

“Today, chickadee. Time’s a wasting.”

The kitchen was busy with potentials scarfing food and drohi tidying up, but there was no sign of Araz, thank goodness, or Pashim, not so good. Priti told me he’d left to help set up the gauntlet event.

Event…as in it would be watched.

Everyone would be there.

My stomach rolled, and the oats I’d just eaten threatened to come back up.

By the time we were on the trail to the complex, I’d broken into a light sweat.

“Leela.” Blue touched my cheek. “You all right, chick?”

“Nervous. I’ll be fine.”

The arena, the wall, the platforms, every space was filled with unfamiliar faces. Drohi and demigods, and anchors. I spotted Umbra, Guru Chandra, Guru Mihir, and Pashim standing together.

Dressed in his black armor outfit, hair pulled back in a severe knot, Pashim looked stern and forbidding. And if I didn’t know him better, I would have been intimidated, but I’d spent the night sleeping in his arms. I’d seen his smile and felt his kindness. He didn’t frighten me. Not one bit.

His gaze snagged mine for a moment and softened. It was good to know he was rooting for me.

Ravi was on the wall with several of his packmates and an older, grisly-looking dude with sideburns you could comb and eyes like flint. He zeroed in on me as I followed my peers onto the main platform that accessed the main gauntlet, and a shiver of unease skipped up my spine.

“Fuck it’s scary,” Blue said.

I focused on the gauntlet. This was the real thing. One huge machine built to challenge us. The space below the logs was filled with jagged rocks. The spikes were real. The blades were real. The chasm filled with more jagged rocks was real. And the tantrik mages scattered close by, staffs at the ready, were testament to the fact that one misstep here would maim and in worse cases, kill.

Guru Chandra confirmed it a moment later, his voice booming across the arena as if he had a megaphone to his mouth. “Today we hope to welcome a new batch of recruits into pareekshan. Not all will pass, but those that do will take the first pareekshan in a week’s time, bringing them one step closer to potential ascension. The gauntlet is not only a test of physical agility and acuity, but also of determination. It can prove lethal for some. But the rules are clear. You must all attempt it, whether you complete it or not.”

I searched the crowd again, looking for the one face that, despite my resolve to the contrary, still mattered.

He wasn’t there.

Dharma and Priti were ahead of me in the line leading up to the ladder that connected to the platform that was the start of the gauntlet. Chaya and Keyton had already taken positions below us, ready to jump in and save them if something went wrong. The other drohi waited on the sidelines for their demigods’ turn.

But I had no such safety net.

Araz wasn’t here.

I was on my own.

The crowd fell silent as Dharma took position at the log. She crouched for a moment, fingertips grazing the wooden platform, her gaze on the path ahead, focused and intense.

I’d watched her complete this course twice now. The woman was an athlete. She was born for this. She stood slowly, thighs bunching. I held my breath, heart pounding as she tucked in her chin and broke into a sprint.

There was no hesitation, no drop in speed as she crossed the log. She leapt to avoid the slip spot, landing on the next platform and barely touching down before launching herself into the spike run. Damn, she was setting the bar high.

The frame with the snakes came next, and here she took a breather to study the vines before leaping up to grab the frame and begin swinging across. She altered trajectory a couple of times but made it across without incident. I lost view of her then as the gauntlet curved away from us, but I heard Chaya yelling encouragement and the roars of the seasoned demigods that had come to watch.

“Dammit, they should give us a better view,” Priti said.

I flexed my sweaty palms and took a couple of deep breaths. A collective roar of triumph filled the air.

“I think she did it,” Priti said. “There!” I spotted Dharma running toward us, soaking wet and grinning.

Priti rushed forward to hug her. “You did it!”

“You can too,” Dharma said. “You guys have got this. Watch out at the pedestals, though. They move.”

“Dharma,” Chaya called out from the other side of the main platform. “We’re not supposed to be on this side of the gauntlet. Come.”

Dharma blew us a kiss then followed Chaya across the arena and out of view.

“Next potential please,” Guru Chandra called.

“Wish me luck,” Priti said before jogging up to the ladder.

I blinked to clear the sudden blur in my vision as Priti took her place on the platform above.

She rocked back and forth on her heels, then set off. Like Dharma, she made it easily to the vine frame, where she stopped to assess before leaping up and swinging across effortlessly.

My chest grew tight, and I massaged it with my knuckles.

“You okay, chick?” Blue asked.

“Indigestion. I don’t think the porridge agreed with me. I’ll be fine.” The burning in my chest abated a little, and I wiped my sweaty palms on my trousers.

The crowed roared again. Priti must be close to finishing. Someone screamed and the crowd began to buzz.

“An excellent effort,” Guru Chandra said. “Next!”

Wait, did that mean Priti hadn’t made it all the way across? Shit.

Blue tugged on my hair. “Leela, ya next. I’ll see you on the other side.” He scampered down my arm then leapt to the ground. “You’ve got this!”

I could feel the eyes on me as I climbed the ladder and took to the platform.

Center of attention, the worst place to be.

Just block it out, Leela. It’s you and the gauntlet.

My stomach rolled, and I breathed to calm it, channelling my focus onto the beast I needed to tame.

I’d beat it in dummy form, I could beat it now.

The whir of the log filled my head, the sound familiar and almost comforting.

I took a steadying breath, then broke into a sprint across it, leaping at just the right time to avoid slipping on the smooth spot and landing neatly on the other side.

Spikes were next. Not wooden dummy spikes, but lethal sharp points of metal that would slice and impale.

No, don’t think like that. Imagine them as dummy spikes. They can’t hurt you, not if you stick to the training.

I took a beat to wipe sweat from my brow. Focus, Leela. I watched the metal points, finding the rhythm that would allow me to cross unscathed. My pulse beat hard in my throat as I waited for the cycle to reset, then counted to five. The spikes right in front of me slipped down, and I ran, hitting the next platform to the whoosh of blades shooting up behind me.

The vine frame was next, and ten feet below me was the chasm filled with wickedly jagged rocks. A fall from the frame would either kill or seriously maim, a far cry from the woodchips in the dummy one.

Don’t let it psyche you out, Leela. That’s what it’s there for.

My gaze cut across the arena to where Pashim stood with Guru Mihir. I was too far away to make out his features now, but his presence gave me strength. Ravi, my unofficial trainer, stood slightly apart from his pack now, arms crossed, watching me put into practice all he’d taught me.

I could do this.

Blood rushed to my head, leaving me momentarily dizzy. It passed, and I turned my attention to the vines wrapped around the metal frame above. Dark green was safe; light green were venomous snakes. The area closest to me was wrapped in dark green. Perfect. I wiped my palms on my pants, leapt up, latched on to metal, and began to swing.

Movement to my right had me veering left to avoid a bite. A snake peeked its head out from between the vines in front of me, forcing me to backtrack a little and go around it. I had to move fast but stay vigilant at the same time. I kept my eyes up, on the vines, watching out for peeks of light green that would indicate threat.

Hisss

Air brushed my ears, and my heart shot into my throat, but I reacted in time to avoid a bite, swinging right to avoid the snap of fangs. My arm muscles burned, fingers tingling, but I held firm.

The snake hissed again, then bobbed its triangular head as if to say well done before retreating into the net of vines where it had been hiding.

I made it the rest of the way across without mishap and swung myself onto the platform to land in a neat crouch. A rope bridge awaited me, leading me to the rockface.

The halfway point.

My palms tingled, and I flexed my hands to get the circulation working before making my way across the bridge. It swayed beneath me, but I wasn’t concerned. The ground below was muddy and swampy. If I fell, the worst that could happen would be that I’d get dirty, not that I was going to fall. No. I was finishing this damn course.

The rockface was a vertical structure riddled with small dips and ledges. I studied its face, searching for the route I’d mapped out on the dummy course over the last three weeks. It was the same here. But Ravi had warned that the rockface was a danger spot of unpredictability. That it would test me in some way.

I was about to find out how.

I nocked my fingers and boot into the first notches and began to climb.

I was almost halfway up when the notch I’d been holding melted away. I flailed and managed to grab hold of another one to my far right in time to stop myself falling. My heart hammered my ribs, sweating prickling my body as I hugged the wall. Okay, so that’s what was going to happen, was it?

I scanned notches, not just the route I would have taken but others that I might need to adjust to if this happened again, which I was sure it now would.

This time I set off with a backup plan in each step. When my boot slipped because the stone smoothed out beneath it, I was ready to hang tight and swing to another spot. My arms ached, muscles straining when I was forced to hold my body weight. Sweat dripped off me, stinging my eyes.

But it was only when my palms began to burn and black dots danced in my vision that it occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t all right. My pulse raced, too fast to be attributed to the climb. It was getting harder to breathe, and it wasn’t because of the altitude.

There was something wrong with me.

The crowd below was filled with blurred faces and smudged bodies. The volume of sound surrounding me rising and falling like someone was playing with the volume button.

“Leela!”

A figure broke from the crowd, running toward the gauntlet. Toward me.

Araz?

My vision went dark. Panic crushed my chest. I couldn’t see. A wave of heat rushed up my body and hit my head.

I couldn’t feel my fingers.

I lost my grip on the wall and fell into darkness.