by Eva Ashwood
I smiled, not wanting to push too hard. It was a strange silence between us. It wasn’t awkward, but it wasn’t quite comfortable yet either.
Luckily, Lachlan chose that moment to burst into the space between us, crouching down and putting his hands out toward the fire.
“I think it’s goin’ to be a cold night.” He glanced up at me and winked. “Good thing we’re in the same tent. You know I’m always up for cuddlin’, Snow.”
Ugh. The damn nickname Snow White had stuck like glue. Stupid Trace.
I was still brainstorming a suitably idiotic nickname to call him in revenge.
“Good thing you’re on first watch then.” I pursed my lips as I nudged Lachlan with my foot, shoving down the flare of heat that tried to rise in my body. Despite his constant offers, I’d refused to huddle together for warmth again since that first night in the cave.
Not because I didn’t want to.
But because I really, really did.
Sleepy, horny Aria was an untrustworthy Aria—I couldn’t allow that bitch anywhere near these guys, or she’d do her damndest to do something wide-awake Aria would regret.
He groaned and rolled his eyes. “I forgot about that. We’ve been travelin’ and fightin’ off these godsdamned monsters so much that I’ve lost track of what fuckin’ day it is. Things were much simpler back home, I can tell you that right now. Ridin’ with my boys, drinkin’ and fuckin’. Havin’ a good old time, no damn schedule to keep. Now I’m out here with you morons, tryin’ to survive and find some strange prize at the end of the water and fire rainbow.”
I chuckled.
Lachlan loved to piss and moan about shit, but he was actually one of the hardest working guys I’d ever met. Protective too. He was always the last to sleep and the first awake, and although he might pretend to have forgotten it, he was the one who’d volunteered for the longest shift at watch.
He just liked to make sure we all knew he wasn’t a softie.
My lips curved up in a fond smile as I gazed down at the burly redhead, letting my attention drift over the broad muscles of his back.
Then I froze.
Holy shit. Am I actually starting to… like these guys?
The answer to that question was obvious, but I avoided letting myself even think it. I wasn’t ready to admit the truth.
But as I pulled my gaze away from Lachlan, I found Merrick watching me carefully. I couldn’t read the expression on his face, but it made my stomach twist anxiously.
Was he jealous?
Would I mind if he was?
Did I want him to be?
A howl split the night air, and Lachlan’s head popped up, his entire body going tense. Then he stood quickly.
“I’ll start the watch now. Make sure whatever it is doesn’t get any closer.”
He tromped off into the surrounding brush just as Trace stepped up to stand beside me and Merrick in front of the fire. The heat from the two large bodies next to me seeped into me even more strongly than the warmth from the fire, and I shifted uncomfortably, trying to master the reactions my body was having.
For the first time, I found myself almost hoping for a monster attack.
As long as we were fighting, I’d be less tempted to do… other things.
“Ugh.” I scowled, slapping the back of my neck. “Can we just go back to when there weren’t any bugs in the godsdamned jungle?”
Trace laughed, looking back at me as he stepped over a huge log. “Sorry, Snow. They haven’t bitten me once. They must be drawn to the evilest member of our group.”
Lachlan snorted up at the front and glanced back at us, his green eyes twinkling. “Ye can say that again. Aria is definitely the most evil.”
I wrinkled my nose and flipped him off, but there was no real bite in any of our remarks. We kept poking at each other because it was what we knew, because it felt comfortable, but in recent days, the four of us had become almost close with each other.
Teaming up against life-or-death threats had the effect of forcing you to get to know your teammates very well, very fast.
“Sure, sure,” I drawled, pretending to think about it. “You say I’m the evilest—which I take as a compliment, by the way. But I’m pretty sure Merrick can match me. At least on the evil scale.”
Merrick was behind me, so I couldn’t see his reaction, but my neck suddenly prickled with awareness, and I was sure he was gazing at me.
“I don’t know, Ari. Maybe it’s not the evil at all. Maybe they just think you’re fucking delicious.”
Another bug buzzed by my head, but I barely even noticed it. Merrick’s voice had been low, not even intended for the whole group—almost like he hadn’t even meant to say it out loud.
A flush of heat filled me, and I slapped at the bug in irritation, taking out my sexual frustration on the poor insect.
It’d been two weeks since we’d left the dome behind.
Two incredibly long weeks.
While it wasn’t the company that had made it long, it was still two weeks in the jungle, sweating to death and fighting off some of the strangest monsters I had ever seen. Just the day before, we had faced a swarm of bee-like creatures with wings that looked like butterflies. They weren’t pretty or sweet though. They’d had fangs, and they’d wanted to eat us.
Thankfully, our fight skills and my magic skills were improving, and we were starting to function even better as a team in dangerous situations, so none of us had gotten injured. Despite the buzzing insects that were swarming around me today, it was nice to take a trek that didn’t involve fighting for our lives—at least, not so far.
Carefully ignoring the prickle of Merrick’s gaze, I scanned the area up again.
We were coming upon a clearing, and I fully expected that we would stop there and rest, maybe eat some of the last bit of food contained in the pack.
I wasn’t sure how everyone was doing on the tiny rations we’d been spreading out as long as we could, but I was hungry all the time, never satisfied—even two minutes after eating. We’d run out of rations in a few days, and I wasn’t looking forward to hunting or foraging in this place. None of the plant life looked edible, and I had no desire to eat anything we’d killed so far.
As they stepped into the clearing, Trace and Lachlan came to an abrupt stop. My pulsed picked up.
Ah, fuck. What now?
“What? What is it?”
I picked up the pace to join them, Merrick right behind me.
Trace pointed forward as I stepped up beside him. “Well, at least we know what that fucking riddle meant now.”
My gaze followed the line of his finger, and my mouth dropped wide open. Beside me, Merrick made a strangled noise in his throat.
Holy shit.
We had definitely reached what we’d been searching for, but it was nothing like what I’d expected to see. Not even close.
It was water.
And fire.
Chapter Sixteen
“Fire and water,” Trace repeated out loud. “At least they weren’t speaking in metaphors. I half expected it to have nothing to do with fire and water, just some poetic god speech to throw us off. I have to admit, I was completely wrong.”
My mouth was still hanging open. A literal river of flame flowed past us. It moved like water, but it looked like fire—and it burned like fire, if the crispy foliage at the banks of the river was any indication.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is exactly what the clue meant,” I murmured, finally managing to get my jaw to close. Then I swallowed. “But I’m not real sure how to get around it.”
Merrick shook his head and pulled the scroll out again, reading it over for what had to be the dozenth time. “This doesn’t make any sense. What the hell are we supposed to do with a river of fire? We have magic, but we’re not invincible. I thought the Gods’ Challenge was supposed to be hard, but I didn’t think it was meant to be a guarantee of certain death. This is too fucking much. I mean, have you met some of the other con
testants? They have talent, sure, but they’re dumber than a box of rocks.”
I chuckled, wiping the sweat from my forehead. “You are so judgmental, Mr. I-Graduated-College-At-Eighteen. Maybe they just like to hide their intelligence, play dumb so you underestimate them.”
Lachlan had a confused look on his face. “What I don’t understand is why the fire hasn’t spread beyond the banks. Some of the boys from the club and I used to work as volunteer firefighters, and the first thing ye learn is that, as long as there’s shite to burn, fire will spread. So why hasn’t this?”
Trace walked a few steps closer and carefully reached out toward a small divot on the charred bank that had filled with the fiery water. He hovered his hand over the liquid flame, almost touching the surface before quickly yanking it back with a pained hiss.
My heart lurched in my chest.
“Fuck, Trace! Be careful!”
“I’m okay.” He shook out his hand, flexing his fingers as he grimaced. “There must be something about the magic that keeps it contained. It definitely feels the same as sticking your hand over an open fire.” He glanced back at the rest of us. “So, since that useless as fuck scroll doesn’t say what to do once we reach here, anybody have any ideas?”
I stepped up beside him, taking his hand in mine and running my fingers over the skin to make sure he wasn’t badly burnt. The skin was a little pink, but he hadn’t held it near the fire long enough for it to blister or anything.
“I’m okay, Snow. Really.”
His voice was low and soft, and when I looked up into his eyes, it struck me in a rush how close we were standing… and how intimate it felt to hold his hand.
I’d done it without thinking, the movement completely instinctual, but now that I was aware of it, everything suddenly felt horribly awkward. I gave him a stilted smile and released his hand, taking a step back as the other two men joined us at the fire water’s edge.
Struggling to regain my composure, I put my hands on my hips and turned back toward the river, leaning forward a little and craning my neck from side to side, looking up and down the banks. There was nothing of note that I could see, and the river seemed to go on forever.
“Oh, shite. I think we have our answer,” Lachlan murmured, staring out at the river.
I glanced at him quickly, then turned my head to follow his gaze. “What? Where?”
“There. Do ye see it?”
He pointed, and I narrowed my eyes as I searched for whatever he was trying to point out on the opposite shore.
Then I saw it.
A boat.
It was small and dark, the wood singed just like everything else along the banks of the river. It was so unremarkable that my gaze had skipped right over it the first time I’d looked that way—and the second time too. I’d thought it was a rock or something.
“That?” Merrick snorted a disbelieving laugh. “You know I’ve got your back, Lach, but there’s no way I’m getting in that thing. It looks like it’s been fried to a crisp.”
“Yeah, it does,” Lachlan admitted, his Irish brogue thickening in his excitement. “But it hasn’t. It’s still floatin’. Sure, the outside is charred, but it must have some kind of magic on it just like the river bank. It hasn’t burned up on the river.”
“Holy fucking shit.” Trace’s eyes went wide, and he leaned forward a little, trying to get a better view of the small, dark boat. “I think you’re right.”
“’Course I am.” Lachlan nudged me just to make sure I caught his cocky smirk, and I rolled my eyes. Gods, he really was impressed with himself.
Not that he didn’t have some pretty solid reasons to be.
He had the body of a rugged male model, green eyes that would make emeralds look dull, and he was smart and resourceful on top of it.
And in this case, he was right.
If the boat had truly been burnt by the river, it would be no more than ash. The fact that it still held any form at all meant that it must be repelling the fire of the river somehow.
And we were talking seriously about getting inside that thing and paddling down a river made of flame.
Dammit, this might actually be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.
“Yeah, okay,” I said grudgingly. “But how do we get it? Anybody volunteer to swim over there and bring it back?”
Merrick stepped up, shooting me an amused and only slightly worried look, like he wasn’t one hundred percent sure I was joking. “I don’t think it’ll come to that, Ari. Help me.”
With that, he extended his hands, sending out lines of energy that crept in a slow arc over the surface of the river. I caught on to what he was doing quickly and mimicked his action. My lines of energy weren’t nearly as strong or steady as his, but they reached the boat only a few moments after his did.
Focusing hard, I convinced the electric rope of magic to latch onto one end of the boat. I had no idea if it was the bow or the stern—or if those were even the right terms for the two ends of the craft. I’d never been on a boat of any kind before.
“Good. Nice work.”
Merrick’s voice was tight with concentration as he wrapped his ropes around the other end, and I felt a flush of pride rise up in me. This kind of shit would’ve taken me a lot longer to master a few weeks ago, if I could even do it at all.
I appreciated the fact that Merrick had asked me to help him, giving me the chance to try my hand at the magic without mansplaining the whole thing to me or bypassing me entirely by recruiting one of the other guys to do it.
He was surprisingly thoughtful like that.
And even when he’d hated me, I was pretty sure he’d never thought I was weak.
The two of us began to pull, and the boat slowly pulled away from where it was wedged into a nook by the shore. As soon as it reached the middle of the river, it got a lot harder to keep my magical grip on it. The current tugged at it, trying to rip it away from me.
I could feel the two other men standing tense and alert nearby, magic at the ready in case they needed to help, and the second the little blackened boat bumped against the bank on our side of the river, Trace leaned down to grab onto the middle with one hand.
“Trace!” I released my magic, stepping forward to help him before he fell in and shooting him a look. “You really are gunning for a fire bath, aren’t you?”
He chuckled. “Nah. Not my thing.”
Lachlan had been right. The inside of the boat was only blackened in a few spots, as if sparks or small licks of flame had singed it here and there. But there were no holes in it anywhere, and it bobbed gently on the surface of the water-like flames.
Merrick and Lachlan grabbed onto the boat’s edge too, and I glanced over at them with a shrug.
“Well, this is insane. But we don’t really have any other choices. I’m pretty sure this river of fire probably runs the entire length of this jungle, if there is even an end to the thing. If we’re hoping to get closer to the gem, this is the way we need to go.”
They all nodded, but none of them looked happy about it.
I wasn’t thrilled either. I hated fire, but I also hated the thought of what might happen if we tried to cheat by walking alongside the river or something. Either some worse threat would ambush us, or the contestants brave enough to dare the flames would beat us to the prize.
Neither of those options were acceptable.
We all climbed in the boat, which was both terrifying and awkward as fuck. I would’ve laughed at the sight of Merrick trying to keep his balance as he stepped inside the small craft—if it weren’t for the fact that going overboard would mean a painful, nearly instant death.
A little less funny in that context.
Lachlan hopped in last, catching his balance with Trace and my help as the boat drifted away from the shore.
Trace moved over as far as he could on one of the seats, letting me squeeze in next to him. The thing was small, maybe the size of a small rowboat, and though there were only four of us, the t
hree guys were pretty big. Lachlan looked like a giant in the thing and had to sit in the middle to make sure he didn’t tip it one way or the other.
As soon as we were all seated, the boat began to pick up speed, rushing over the fire water almost faster than the current around us. My stomach dropped as I realized we had just walked into something we had no control over.
Trace realized it too, and I felt his body stiffen beside me.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” he murmured. “How do we stop this thing if we want to get out?”
Merrick looked out at the flowing fire river below us, his face a hard mask. I had a feeling he hated this the most out of all of us. “Yeah. I don’t think we do get out. Not until the boat is ready to let us out.”
“Well, keep your eyes open, because I don’t trust this even for a second,” I put in, staring around as we made our way down the river. “This whole challenge has brought nothing but danger, and I have a hard time believing the gods would let us have a boat that doesn’t burn just to take us to wherever we need to go. There’s gotta be a price built in somewhere—for everything they give, they take something else away. The gods can be real dicks.”
Merrick’s gaze darted over to me. “This whole realm is their home. You know they can probably hear you, right?”
I glanced up at the sky as if I expected to find a god floating up there, ready to smite me.
But all I saw was bright, clear blue, a strange contrast to the fiery blaze all around us.
Was he right? I knew students back at the academy could peek in and see what we were up to via that magical sort of livestream that covered the contestants’ movements. But were the gods actually watching?
How was this fun for them?
Unless they really were assholes, and they just got off on watching a bunch of barely trained mages flounder against the insane challenges they kept throwing at us.
Yeah, that sounded pretty believable, actually.
Not that I liked it. I wasn’t big on my life-or-death struggles being used for someone else’s entertainment. Even if the someone was a god.
