Vicious Champion (Games of the Gods Book 2)

by Nikki Kardnov

  “Hey! You traitor.”

  Russ looks at me with big, wide eyes like, what?

  “I thought you hated him?” I say as I use my wet shirt to clean the blood off my foot.

  Haven laughs when Russ curls up to his side. A second later, Tarter joins her.

  “Tarter, you too? I can’t believe this.”

  “Don’t be sore, orphan,” Haven says. “I’m naturally good with animals.”

  “Yeah well, yesterday they were practically savage beasts whenever I thought your name.”

  “How often did you think my name to come to that conclusion?”

  I balk, realizing my mistake. “That’s hardly the point!”

  Russ growls, but now I can’t tell if she’s reacting to me or Haven.

  Great.

  Haven disentangles himself from my dogs and takes the bunny up by the ears. “Have you ever had fresh rabbit cooked over an open fire, Hearthtender?”

  “No. And I’m not about to start.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  I settle into Haven’s vacated spot and cross my arms over my chest. I realize I’m acting like a petulant child but I hate how Haven always seems so...well, competent. With everything. Including my very vicious guard dogs who now seem to think he’s their BFF or something.

  And he’s also apparently extremely skilled at skinning and gutting a rabbit.

  “That’s disgusting,” I say when he tosses the guts into the fire. The flames crackle and sparks shoot up into the darkness. “Oh gods. I think I might heave.”

  Haven rolls his eyes at me. “You’re going to change your mind when this starts roasting.”

  “I don’t think I will.”

  He finds several sticks that he fashions into a spit and then positions the skinned rabbit over the open flames. The meat sizzles.

  I packed bread and cheese and lots of smoked meat, so I’m not starving or anything. But I have to admit, once the fire chars the rabbit, it elicits a loud grumble from my stomach. Suddenly bread and cheese doesn’t sound quite as appetizing. But there’s no way I’m eating meat that just had a head a half hour ago.

  Haven squats at the fireside and turns the spit every few seconds. He pays me no attention and I try to focus on the dogs. Maybe I could count the hairs on their brows.

  “Last chance,” Haven says when the rabbit is pulled off the stick.

  Russ lifts her head. Tarter leaves me and sits back on his haunches at Haven’s side.

  When I don’t take the offering, Haven tears into the meat with his teeth. After he’s taken several bites, he peels off a few chunks and tosses one each to Tarter and Russ. The dogs inhale it.

  Watching him with the dogs, watching the way he shares with them and murmurs to them, makes my chest go all warm and fuzzy. Which in turn annoys me.

  Is he doing it just to piss me off?

  A streak of spitefulness lights in my belly. “Now that we’re out here all alone with no one to overhear, why don’t you tell me why you really told Nereus you defeated the shadowmen.”

  The firelight shines in his good eye when he looks at me. “I told him I defeated the monsters to make things easier for you.”

  I snort. “You expect me to believe that? I think what you mean to say is it’d be easier for you.”

  With a hard snap and final twist, he breaks the rabbit into two pieces and tosses what’s left to the dogs. They immediately dig into it.

  “I don’t care what you believe.” He wipes his hands on a rag.

  “I think what you’re really afraid of is looking weak.”

  A pained expression etches itself between his brows. He looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “We all have our weaknesses. That, I cannot deny.”

  I sit forward. “So you’re finally admitting it then? You took my victory so you’d look stronger?”

  Haven looks away.

  “Just say it,” I coax.

  “Drop it, orphan.” He grabs his pack and wedges it into a corner of the stone wall. He lies down on it and spreads his long legs out.

  “I want to hear you say it.”

  “We can’t all get what we want.”

  “I suspect that’s rarely a concern for the exalted Knightfall family.”

  He doesn’t take my bait and that just annoys me more.

  With a huff, I try to let it go and settle in. I nibble at my bread for a while but I don’t have much of an appetite now that the dogs are crunching on the bones of the rabbit.

  Exhaustion soon comes over me, but the ground is rocky and uncomfortable and I’ve never slept outside a day in my life. I try to fluff my pack into a pillow like Haven did and then toss and turn looking for any position that will give me some relief.

  And then—

  The ground is gone. There are no longer rocks jabbing into my side and dust coating my teeth.

  I open my eyes and find I’m lying on a feathered mattress with a pillow that smells like lavender and honeysuckle. A wool blanket is draped over my body.

  For a split second, I think I’ve gone mad and then I realize it’s an illusion. A very, very good one.

  I steal a look at Haven. He’s still lying on his back, his jacket draped over his chest as a blanket. His eyes are closed.

  I’m overcome with an intense feeling of gratitude, followed by confusion. Why is he being nice to me now? And why is my chest filling with a new warmth that has nothing to do with the wool blanket?

  I curl into the illusioned bed and tuck the blanket around my chin. The relief is immediate. I don’t want to like this gift as much as I do.

  I swallow my pride and say, “Thank you.”

  Haven doesn’t say anything for the longest time and just when I start to drift off to sleep, I hear him quietly, in the distance.

  “Good night, orphan.”

  Chapter 9

  When I wake in the morning I’m back on the hard ground, but I stretch and immediately notice that my body doesn’t feel like I’ve been sleeping in the dirt.

  Haven is still asleep across the clearing curled up on one side with his arms folded over his chest. He looks more peaceful than he has any right to look, given the darkness that runs inside him, but in this early dawn light he looks young, carefree, and deeply asleep.

  “In many circles it’s considered very rude to spy on people while they sleep, orphan.”

  I jump at Haven’s voice. I hadn’t realized my gaze had strayed from his face down the length of his hard body. When I meet his eyes, they’re wide open and staring back at me with a mischievous glint.

  “I was just trying to decide who should lick your face to wake you up,” I say, aiming for a joke and not realizing how far off the mark I’ve landed until a wide grin spreads across his face.

  “Of the dogs,” I clarify as my cheeks heat. “Which of the dogs should lick you...oh, never mind.” I roll my eyes as Haven continues laughing at me. Russ, the traitor that she is, ambles right over to Haven and nuzzles him. I hope she gets a little of whatever she had for breakfast on his clothes. The dogs both have remains of their morning catches splattered across their snouts.

  I pour some water from my canteen into a crater in a nearby rock so that the dogs can get something to drink and clean themselves up.

  “Do smoke monsters need water?” Haven’s voice makes me jump as he comes up next to me.

  “I’m not totally sure.” The dogs bound over to the rock and happily lap up the water. “I treat them like any other corporeal creature and that seems to keep them content. It’s not like there’s a book I can take out from the archives called How to Train Your Hellspawn Monsters.”

  Haven laughs again and my body does weird and traitorous things at the sound. I can’t help but notice that he seems lighter now that we’re away from Hades’s House. He’s laughing more and clearly his comfortable bed illusion last night is a sign that he’s in a good mood. Part of me wonders if this is another trick, so that I get comfortable with him just in time for him to stab me in the bac
k again.

  I pull out the bread from my pack and start to pull off a piece for breakfast. Haven sits down next to me and I automatically hand him some of it.

  “Thanks,” he says and then reaches into his own pack and pulls out a wrapped parcel. He hands it to me. When I open it, I find leftover rabbit from last night, pulled from the bone. I hadn’t seen him save it.

  “You don’t have to,” I start to say but he takes one chunk of meat and pushes the rest into my hands.

  “Just eat it, Hearthtender.” Haven stands up and stretches, his shirt rising just enough to show off his hard abs. “Besides, if you faint from hunger I’ll have to carry you the rest of the way and I don’t feel like straining myself.”

  I roll my eyes but happily eat the cold rabbit meat, which is surprisingly well cooked. I throw the last two chunks to Tarter and Russ and then pack up my stuff. Haven kicks dirt over the fire, extinguishing it and once we’re packed again, we set off up the mountainside.

  The terrain for the walk today is a little rockier and a lot steeper. The dogs jump up the hill with ease, moving from one rock to another with a grace that makes my grasping and panting even more ungraceful by comparison.

  “They must have some mountain goat in them,” I comment, trying to break the silence that has fallen between us and take attention off the sound of my struggling breathing.

  “When have you ever seen a mountain goat?” Haven asks with what sounds like genuine curiosity.

  “Demeter keeps mountain goats up in the hills north of Olympus City. She and Hestia often worked together around harvest times so we would travel with her and watch the goats play on the hills.” I smile remembering the strange, small creatures that would disappear from one rock only to appear on another.

  “Did Hestia often require your assistance when she traveled?”

  “Not really our assistance. It was more like...a treat? She wanted us to be able to see some of the other areas of the realm. So if we were good or did well in our lessons, she would let us come with her and usually there were flowers to gather or animals to play with.”

  “She would take you on these visits...for fun?” Haven is acting as though he doesn’t understand the concept. “There were no trials? Or tests to pass?”

  “I mean, we had lessons, sure. And we had chores, most of which revolved around gardening and caring for animals. My sister Clea is practically an animal whisperer, she’s so good with them.” I smile sadly, a pang in my chest as I think of how much I miss Clea.

  “I didn’t realize you had a sister.” Haven holds a hand back to me almost absently and I take it, pulling myself up on a rocky ledge behind him.

  “She’s not my blood sister. None of Hestia’s children have known blood family,” I clarify. “But Clea and I have been at Hestia’s since before we can remember, so we’ve been raised as close to sisters as I imagine two can be.”

  “That must have been nice.” Haven’s voice sounds almost wistful, but I’m sure I’m imagining that.

  “But you have many brothers,” I counter.

  “I have six.” He laughs, but not with any humor. “And if you’ve spent any time with Nereus, you’ve pretty much met them all. Maybe he grunts a little less than the others but that’s about it.”

  I shudder to think of what it would be like to be surrounded by that many Nereuses.

  “Do they all serve in Hades’s elite ranks?”

  Haven moves a low hanging tree branch and holds it until I’ve walked past. “Every Knightfall ever born has been chosen and won their trial, so yes. Four brothers serve Hades in a military capacity. Then there’s Nereus as Head of House and my eldest brother is a captain in Hades’s army.”

  “So will you go home and visit them before the final trial?”

  Haven laughs loudly at this, like I’ve made an amazing joke.

  “Absolutely not.” He shakes his head, still laughing. “I was thinking I would use the time to go visit friends in other houses and I’d like to see my grandmother, too.”

  “You have a grandmother?” I’m not sure why this fact is the one that shocks me most, but I’ve always imagined grandmothers to be like older versions of Sura or Hestia. Welcoming their kin to the home hearth with food and stories. I can’t picture a Knightfall grandmother. I mean, maybe if she had horns.

  “Of course I have a grandmother.” Haven frowns at me. “Most people do.”

  “I don’t,” I point out, only because it’s a fact, not to garner sympathy.

  But Haven’s expression immediately falls. “Right. I didn’t think. My apologies, Hearthtender.”

  That’s the first time he’s ever sincerely apologized to me and it completely catches me off guard. To shake the discomfort, I ignore it and turn the conversation back to him. “What’s she like? Your grandmother?”

  “She’s...fierce.” Haven looks like he’s considering his words carefully. “She’s my mother’s mother...but she’s the opposite of how my mother was in almost every way. She’s strong, commanding, she can see a lie coming before you even think to open your mouth.”

  I’ve never really heard Haven say much about his mother, so I stay quiet, giving him the space to finish his thinking.

  “After my mother passed, my grandmother assumed the role of matriarch of the family. In truth, she’d always been doing most of it. It’d been her design for my mother to be the wife of the general. My grandmother was always out for the highest role she could get.” He smiles sadly at where his thoughts are taking him. “My mother was never really cut out for dealing with other people. She got overwhelmed easily.”

  I don’t know what to say to that, so I say nothing.

  Haven quickens his pace. Tarter and Russ are a ways ahead of us now and I have to really push to keep up.

  “What about you?” he asks suddenly, surprising me.

  “What about me?” I respond carefully, unsure which aspect of our conversation he’s referring to.

  “Are you going to take the time to go home before I beat you in the final trial?” He grins at me over his shoulder, but it seems less taunting than usual. I can see he really just wants to change the subject, so I let that one go.

  “I hope so.” I decide to go with honesty, since he shared so much about his own family. “I’m anxious to see Clea. I haven’t been good about keeping up with her since I came to Hades’s House. It seems like every day has its own crisis and by the time I go to bed each night I’m too tired to write to her.”

  “She could have come to visit,” Haven says.

  “Clea wouldn’t be comfortable in a place like Hades’s House,” I say. “It’s very different from Hestia’s. The energy is more intense, everyone is rushing to where they need to go because it’s critical. At Hestia’s things are much quieter. Our days would flow with the path of the sun—we’d rise with it in the morning, go about our days as it travelled, and set with it in the evening.”

  “That sounds peaceful.”

  “It was. But it could also get tedious.” I'm surprised to hear myself admit this. It’s something I’ve never told anyone. “Don’t get me wrong, I loved my family and had a very nice life there. Hestia treated us as though we were her own flesh and blood daughters. And I enjoyed learning and teaching the younger girls. But it was hard to imagine a life where that was all there was. Lessons and flowers and growing vegetables...forever.”

  “But you said you miss it?” Haven reminds me.

  “I do. But I miss it the way a child misses a blanket...not necessarily because they need it but because it was something that they associated with comfort and safety. Nothing about Hades’s House has been comforting.”

  Haven raises his brows at me suggestively. “Nothing?”

  I roll my eyes and laugh a little. “There’ve been so many new...experiences at Hades’s House. But I honestly wouldn’t call any of them comforting. Not like my childhood was at Hestia’s.”

  “You’re lucky then,” Haven says, surprising me again.

>   “Lucky to be an unclaimed child of no one in a world that doesn't quite seem to fit me?”

  “Lucky to have people who care about you,” Haven responds, and this time the wistfulness in his voice is unmistakable. “When I got chosen for the descendant trial, there was no one who was going to miss me. My family was instantly trying to figure out all the ways in which my being elevated was going to benefit them. Not one of them cheered for me or was worried for me. It was just instantly assumed that I would win and they were already plotting what that win would do for them.”

  “I’m sure they were proud in their own way,” I offer, thinking of Nereus and wondering if what I’m saying is even possible for him.

  Haven scoffs loudly. “My father told me that if I lost and brought mortal shame upon our family he’d kill me himself.”

  I stagger back, glad that we’re now on even terrain. I don’t want to believe that it’s true, but I’ve seen the scars on Haven’s body. I know the true story of his damaged eye.

  The Knightfalls are just as cruel as their reputation says. Maybe more so.

  “When it comes to me,” Haven goes on, “my father doesn’t assume success. He expects failure. And then if you do manage to succeed, that’s considered the least you could do. There’s no winning in the Knightfall family.”

  “That’s awful,” I say, and I know before the words leave my mouth that they were the wrong thing to say to this stormy version of Haven.

  “Do not pity me, orphan.” All of the good humor and lightness of our earlier conversation has vanished from his face.

  “I don’t,” I lie, because in truth everything he’s told me about his family and his life before the trials has only made me pity him more and it makes me feel sick inside.

  Because I want to win this trial.

  I want to prove to Haven and to Hades that I am powerful.

  But if I win…

  I worry about what’ll happen to Haven if I do and I think this might be my biggest weakness of all.

  Chapter 10

  For awhile Haven and the dogs travel ahead of me. I don’t mind having the opportunity to sort through everything that Haven has told me about his family and his past, and I can tell he needs a break from talking. Now that I think about it, this is probably the longest conversation that Haven and I have ever had without it turning into a physical battle or...my face heats against my will as I imagine the other things our conversations have turned into in the past.