by River Ramsey
“Of course it doesn’t,” I muttered under my breath as she walked off to supervise the others.
If everyone in this school was determined to put a knife in my back, I figured I had better learn to wield a sword.
8
I spent my second night at the Academy in my dorm room, and when Mom tried to call and ask how I was doing, I texted back that I was having dinner with friends. Lying to the Nymphs was a bit harder, but I’d put on a big show of being fine before I left so they wouldn’t worry about me. Admitting that everyone already hated me two days in and my fiancé was as big of an asshole as I’d always feared just felt like admitting defeat, so I texted them a few pics I’d snapped of the gardens and my lavish accommodations. They sent back pics of their shared dorm room.
What I wouldn’t have given for popcorn ceilings and wobbly bunk beds.
Sure, Olympus Academy was adorned in luxury from top to bottom, but the student body was rotten to the core and at the very pit of that rotten core were three bad seeds, one of whom I hadn’t even met. Not that it seemed to have stopped him from committing to make my life hell.
The most annoying part of it all was that Hades hadn’t even lifted a finger to do anything yet. He just relied on the influence of his adoring minions, and they did the dirty work for him.
I’d find a way to turn that against him soon enough, but for now, the plan was to keep my head down and learn as much as I could about how this school worked. I couldn’t very well use its machinations against him otherwise.
With nothing to do but study, I soon fell asleep with my political science book next to me and by the time I woke, the dim blue light of morning had arrived to alert me of a new day.
Wednesday wasn’t any better than Tuesday had been. This time, I got tripped in Runebinding and didn’t manage to catch myself before my books went everywhere. The professor did his best to silence the gale of laughter, but at least the class was probably the liveliest it had ever been.
By the time the next period came, I was looking forward to a much-needed break. The professor who led the Training class had been out for the last two days, but it seemed today just wasn’t my day. Not only was the Training room door open, but Thor was standing there in the middle of it, addressing a group of three. I recognized one of them as Daphne, the redhead from my dorm. She didn’t glare like the others, but I could tell she was wary of my presence. The other two were fraternal twins, a boy and a girl with the same ice white hair and eyes as black as coal. They looked me up and down with the same predatory intent I’d come to expect from other students.
“There she is,” Thor said in a tone far more pleasant than I’d have expected from someone whose little brother wanted to destroy my soul.
“There are only four of us?” Daphne asked.
“That’s right. Training is scheduled in small groups, and you’ll see why in a minute.”
He snapped his fingers and the door flew shut behind me. The room went dark, but the shift in light revealed the vibrant green grid covering every plain surface of the room.
“Whoa,” the white-haired guy said, looking around us.
“Welcome to the training room,” Thor said, watching our shocked reactions with a smug grin. “I think you’ll find it to be bigger than it appears. At least when a simulation’s loaded in.”
“Simulation?” I asked. “You mean like holograms?”
“That’s right. Over three million potential training scenarios and locations have been loaded into the computer. Once you have your access cards, you’ll be able to schedule timeslots in here as a group or an individual. The computer recognizes voice commands from authorized personnel, so you can ask it to drum up pretty much anything.”
I hadn’t expected Thor to be quite so tech savvy, but Olympus Academy was at once nothing and everything that I’d come to expect.
“And if we prefer to work on our own in class?” The blonde girl asked.
“Hey,” her twin protested.
“Shut up, Phrixus,” she snapped.
Thor already looked tired of them both. “Then as they say out in the real world, ‘Tough shit.’ You’re here to learn, not to be comfortable. If you want to train solo on your own time, so be it, but while you’re in this class, you’ll be learning to work as a team. I’ll go easy on you, though. First scenario’s gonna be a freebie. Halcyon, load Summit.”
A woman’s voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once in response to his request. “Loading Summit simulation.”
The grids vanished and an instant later, we were surrounded by white. Snow whipped around us, too biting and frigid to be fake, even though there was no other possibility. We were all standing at the base of a giant mountain so tall the peak was hidden under a thick layer of clouds. The twins were barely visible with their bone white hair, and the fact that the other three were huddled and shivering told me I wasn’t the only one who was freezing.
“This doesn’t feel like a simulation,” Daphne protested, her teeth chattering as she hugged herself.
“It’s a combination of technology and magic,” Thor explained, seemingly unaffected by the harsh climate.
Even though I knew we were in the same thirty-by-thirty room, the snowy cliffs seemed to continue on forever. Knowing it was an illusion did nothing to help my brain see through to reality.
“What are we supposed to do?” Phrixus asked, stuttering with each word.
“You’re supposed to get to the top,” Thor said, casting his gaze all the way up the mountain’s summit. “Together. If one of you falls, the lesson is over and you failed for the day. If you all manage to make it to the top, you pass.”
“And what happens if we fail?” the blonde girl asked, shooting me a dangerous look.
“Good question, Helle,” Thor said in a knowing tone. “Since this class is about training to win the Games--whether you ultimately choose to compete or not--losing is penalized harshly. Each time you fail, your class is assigned to kitchen duty.”
That wiped the conspiratorial smirks off the twins’ faces. “How are we supposed to climb a mountain when we’re freezing?” Helle protested.
“The atmosphere isn’t the only thing the computer can change,” Thor answered. “If you want to change your gear, all you have to do is ask. Who wants to go first?”
No one jumped to volunteer, so I decided I might as well. “Halcyon, give me a snowsuit.”
Even though I’d just seen a mountain appear before my eyes, I held out doubt that the computer could actually change what I was wearing until the particles of my school uniform slowly began to dissolve. In their place was a light blue suit made of a thick, weather-resistant material that dulled the cold to a more tolerable temperature immediately.
“Whoa,” I murmured.
“Let me try,” said Daphne. “Halcyon, give me a snowsuit, too.”
Phrixus soon followed suit, and Helle was the last to give it a try. She glared at me, like she was mad I’d taken the initiative to give it a shot when she’d had the same opportunity.
“Now that you’re all bundled up, go on,” Thor said, nodding as he began to disappear in the drift. “I’ll be waiting.”
I looked doubtfully up at the peak of the mountain. How the hell were we supposed to climb that?
“We don’t have any gear,” Daphne lamented.
“Halcyon, make us some climbing gear,” Phrixus ordered, his voice far more confident than before.
“Negative, Student ZA-7,” Halcyon answered pleasantly. “Climbing gear is not within the permitted modifications for this simulation.”
“Of course not,” Daphne muttered.
“Maybe we’re supposed to use our powers,” I suggested.
Helle shot me another glare and I was done keeping my mouth shut. “If you’ve got any better ideas, you’re free to voice them,” I snapped.
“It’s worth a shot,” said Daphne. I knew better than to count on her as a potential ally, but out of the four of them,
she seemed the least likely to risk an evening of kitchen duty for the pleasure of sending me tumbling down the snowy mountainside. She turned toward the summit and studied its peak for a moment before raising her hand. The snow along the mountainside began to let off steam and formed a slush that pooled at our feet.
“What are you doing?” Phrixus asked, watching her closely.
“I control water. I thought I could melt it, but the ice is too thick,” she muttered. “It’s just making the surface slipperier. What are your powers?”
“We’re telepathic,” Helle answered, planting a hand on her hip. “Not much use here.”
“My power might be,” I said at risk of the dirty looks I wound up getting from the twins.
“What, are you going to bitchslap the mountain out of the way?” Helle asked wryly.
Her brother snorted.
“Oh-em-gee, you’re so creative,” I said, mocking her valley girl accent as I brushed past. “I can control plants, and create them to a degree. If I sprout vines, maybe we can use them as climbing ropes.”
Helle was still fuming, but Phrixus at least seemed to be considering my idea. So did Daphne.
“Don’t you need to be around actual plants for that?”
“No, not for limited use,” I told her, letting a fresh vine coil from my vein and pool on the snowy ground beneath me.
Helle grimaced. “Nasty.”
“Shut up, Helle. I don’t want to wash dishes,” Phrixus mumbled.
I ignored them and made a makeshift lasso with one end of the vine. I tried to toss it, but my calculations were a bit off.
“Here,” said Daphne, holding out her hand. “Let me give it a try.”
I offered her the end of the vine and stepped back to let her do her thing. She looped it over a sturdy-looking crag in the mountain on the first try.
“Impressive,” I remarked.
She gave me a half smile before she looked Helle’s way and it disappeared.
“Let’s see if this holds,” she said, looping the other end of the vine around her waist. I watched nervously as she began to climb, but to my surprise, it was actually working.
“Make another one,” Helle ordered, stepping up beside me.
I shot her a dirty look of my own. “In the spirit of teamwork and not scrubbing dishes, I’m going to pretend you asked nicely. This time.”
She rolled her eyes and waited impatiently as I produced another vine. When I made one for Phrixus, he looked squeamish and seemed like he’d rather run off than take it, but he finally grabbed it and began the upward climb behind his twin.
So far, so good. And I was actually proving myself useful. I knew better than to think that meant they’d go easy on me outside of the classroom, but Mom’s favorite joke came back to me.
“How do you eat an elephant?” she’d always ask when one of life’s little frustrations that had seemed monumental at the time had pushed my patience to its limits.
“One bite at a time,” I muttered under my breath, flinging the loop of my latest vine. This time, it actually caught on a rock and I tested its security before I put my weight on it. Slowly but surely, I was making it up the mountain and the only thing keeping my fear of heights, which was a lot worse in practice than in theory, at bay was the knowledge that we couldn’t actually be as far up as it felt like.
“I see the summit!” Daphne cried. She was already so far up I couldn’t even see her feet through the clouds, and Helle wasn’t far behind her. Phrixus disappeared next, leaving me a few yards below.
By the time the clouds closed in around me, I was starting to be able to breathe. A pity, because the oxygen was far from optimal. I took it one step at a time and when the mountain’s summit finally came into view, I realized the others must have gone up ahead. The only question was, where?
The silence was my first cue that something was wrong. Not the auditory silence, since the whipping wind made that impossible, but rather the absence of good energy that should have huddled around three people who’d just climbed a mountain together.
I reached up to find my next handhold, but something wasn’t right. It was solid enough, and well within my grasp, but I couldn’t gain purchase. My hand kept slipping off and even with gloves, I was too numb from the cold to realize it was covered in a slick, oily substance until my feet slipped out from underneath me. My left hand released the vine as I reached for another handhold in panic, but my right was slick with whatever substance had been on the rocks and when I finally caught it again, it slid from my grasp so rapidly I felt a vine-shaped burn gliding along the inside of my palm.
As I went tumbling toward the ground, I could hear the twins’ laughter ringing in my ears through the howling wind. The last thing I heard as I hit the ground was bone snapping, but unconsciousness mercifully closed in before the pain could come.
Maybe the drop was further than I’d thought.
9
The first thing I remembered after falling was the sound of a machine beeping incessantly. Every needling high-pitched chirp sent a fresh wave of pain through my head, which already felt like it had been taken apart and pieced back together with superglue. The cheap kind that just sticks fingers together forever and doesn’t even hold a jewelry clasp together for long.
I heard voices, but it took awhile for my head to clear enough to make them out and opening my eyes was a lost cause.
“Don’t lie to me.” It took me a moment to recognize why the harsh voice sounded so familiar. I’d heard it recently, but the jovial tone Thor had used in class was long gone. “I know this is about your stupid little game.”
“It wasn’t us,” Loki answered, his voice smooth with indignation. “And even if it was, don’t pretend like you never took part in the Hunt while you were a student.”
“Shaving cream in the target’s locker, love letters with forged signatures. Kid stuff,” he shot back. “No one ever ended up in the hospital. Certainly not an eighteen-year-old girl.”
“Then perhaps this generation is simply more evolved than yours, brother,” Loki said in a snide tone. “Women being equal and all that.”
I heard the sound of a struggle followed by a heavy thump. Someone being shoved up against a wall?
“I’ve had enough of your bullshit, Loki. You screw this up, it’s your head on the pike,” he growled in a tone far more menacing than I would have imagined him capable of, especially toward his own brother. “You can tell your little friends that, too.”
Loki didn’t respond for a long moment. I was finally able to open my eyes, but I was keeping them shut.
What the hell were they talking about? Screw what up?
“It’ll be handled,” Loki finally said. All the snark in his voice was gone and what was left behind was almost human.
“It had better be,” Thor grunted. The door slammed and I laid there, contemplating just how long I was comfortable being alone with Loki when he thought I was asleep. Before I could come to a decision, his voice let me know I wasn’t alone with my thoughts, and it had returned to its usual seductive, teasing quality.
“You know, if you’re going to pretend to be asleep, you might do it less gracefully,” he mused. “A drool bubble here and there. It’s more convincing.”
I opened my eyes to glare at him, but when I sat up in the hospital bed, everything ached. I looked down at myself and realized my arm was the only thing in a sling, even though from what I remembered of the fall, I’d expected to wake up in a body cast if I woke up at all.
“You wanna tell me why you’re in here, or should I just strangle you now and let security sort out the details later?”
He snorted, leaning casually against the wall with his arms folded and his hair obnoxiously perfect. Seriously, how did he even get it to be that shiny without making it greasy?
“You’re welcome to, but I think you’ll find them woefully unresponsive. Bunch of potheads, the lot of them.”
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, not in t
he mood for games. Especially since I was already involved in one I’d never asked to play.
“Can’t a guy check on an injured classmate out of concern?”
“A guy could. You’re more in the cockroach category, as far as I’m concerned.”
He chuckled, sidling closer to me. “Touche,” he purred, running a finger along the outside of my sling. “Can I sign your cast?”
I batted his hand away with my good one. “I’ve still got one arm left, Loki. Don’t try me.”
“Relax,” he said, holding his hands up innocently. “I’m not here as a hunter, I’m here as a friend.”
“Friends don’t set the hounds on friends, last time I checked.”
He let out a low whistle. “Demeter really has kept you sheltered from the world of the gods, hasn’t she?”
There was something melancholic in his tone that kept me from taking it as another jab at my mother. “What do you want?”
“I heard about the accident and I came to see how you are,” he said with a shrug. “You can believe me or not.”
The problem was, I did. That just left more questions than answers. “Why do you even care? You’re with Hades on this whole stupid Wild Hunt thing.”
“The Triad is always a united front,” he informed me. “But we don’t condone physical violence. That takes all the sport out of it.”
“Glad to know you draw the line somewhere,” I muttered. “That was sarcasm, in case you’re as used to people blowing smoke up your ass as Hades.”
He actually laughed, and for the first time, it seemed genuine. Not just another part of his charming devil routine.
Damn, he played the role well, though.
“At least admit you liked the rose.”
“So it was you.”
“It’s school tradition, but I saved the most beautiful for you,” he purred, sweeping his long fingers down my cheek. I hit his hand away again, but he seemed to anticipate it. “I must admit, I’ve lost my taste for the sport, but you’ve rekindled it in a short period of time. We’ve never had a Rabbit quite so… spirited.”
