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“Haden!” I called over my shoulder. “Who are you talking to?”
His eyes shifted to me quickly like I had broken a trance. His head shook slightly before looking in front of him again.
“Della,” he said, a smile breaking across his face.
“Haden, we only did five tasks. This is a trick,” I muttered.
“No, she’s here.” Haden took a step forward toward this invisible woman he was smiling at. Shit. What the fuck was going on? All of the contestants were walking towards the trap when I glanced over at them.
“Thea, baby, it’s me,” Cassius said again, but I still wasn’t convinced by his smile.
My face scrunched at the nickname. It sounded so weird coming from him. It wasn’t something he would say. My eyes drifted over him looking for anything else that wasn’t right. I couldn’t see but his eyes were slightly off.
“Take off your shirt,” I demanded. Cassius stopped and smiled like a predator who was catching his prey. He ripped his shirt off and my eyes scanned over him. Something had to give away what was going on.
“You want to touch me?” He cocked his head to the side with a wicked gleam in his eyes. I looked over his tattoos and immediately noticed that the green T hidden amongst his black swirls was missing. This was not Cassius. Closing my eyes, I felt for his magic, but it wasn’t close to me. It was high above me. I pulled on it and I could feel his shadows caress me gently. Cassius. I smiled when his shadows settled in my veins with my fire.
My eyes snapped open when I heard the scream of one of the men being ripped apart by whatever invisible thing was in front of him. My nose crinkled at the fake Cassius, and I realized what these creatures were. Sirens. Showing us our biggest desire. They couldn’t hurt us unless we touched them first. Haden lifted his hand as if he was about to reach for someone.
“No!” The ground shook when I screamed. My hand shot out a swirl of fire and shadows cutting in front of the contestants like a giant wall, hopefully blocking them from their sirens. The man who had touched his siren was dead. All the contestants looked at me as they shook their heads in confusion.
“They’re sirens,” I yelled. “Do not touch them.”
Haden observed the wall of black and red swirling in front of him. His hand reached out and touched it softly.
“How’d you do that?”
I ignored his question. We’d have time for that later. “Maybe if we're all blocked from them, we can be done with the task.” We waited for a few long minutes, but nothing happened. We weren’t being pulled from the simulation. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to think of what we were supposed to do.
“Maybe we need to kill them?” Kace muttered. “It would make sense. We have to kill someone we want the most.”
“Sirens can’t attack unless you touch them, so kill them without touching them, and do not fall under their spell again.” Haden sighed.
Tossing the magicless fae one of my daggers, he nodded for me to drop the wall.
“I’m dropping the wall,” I called out. As soon as I did my siren, who still stared at me like Cassius would, stood close by smiling at me. His shirt was off, and my mind flashed to touching him, kissing him, holding him. My mind clouded with images of us touching each other and I took a step forward. I heard someone yell in the distance. No, I heard them scream before a horrible noise of flesh and bones being ripped apart. It was enough to jar me from whatever hold the siren had had on me.
Lifting my eyes away I formed a ball of fire within my hands. The siren didn’t falter when he saw it. My eyes shifted to the color of fire as it overtook me. An overwhelming need to protect myself ran through my veins. The real Cassius’s shadows wrapped around me as if to coax me and calm me. I focused on the siren in front of me and saw its fake smile falter when a dark glow started forming deep in its chest under the skin.
The image of Cassius flickered into something horrific. A green-skinned man now stood in front of me with beady black eyes and qualities that resembled more like a fish than a human on its face. The siren couldn’t move as my fire burned him from the inside out. Just to make sure he was truly dead I pulled my hands out in front of me to expand the fire in his chest and watched him explode in front of me.
I turned to see who was still standing, but before I could I was pulled back to the colosseum. I was somewhat dizzy from using so much magic, but I wasn’t nearly as weak as it had made me before. Maybe because I had been using my magic more and the tolerance was higher. An arm flung over my shoulder, and I smiled up to Haden. My eyes shifted to see who else was there. Kace. I smiled at him and the magicless fae but frowned when only three others stood.
My eyes shifted to the leaderboard, seeing only our seven names in red. The others had died. The sirens had still gotten them. My stomach sank, but I couldn’t think about it. My name was second, behind Haden. I smiled as I gave Haden a hug.
“We fucking did it.” Relief overtook me. For the first time, the roar of the crowd comforted me. The weight of the trials slipped off my shoulders because I had a real shot now at getting that wish. I would think about how difficult the final task would be after I celebrated how far I’d come. My mouth was dry from the poison and mud clung to every part of me, leaving proof of what I had done today.
I was ripped from Haden’s hug and pulled against a hard body that smelled like forest and rain. Cassius. The fae watching us roared as he hugged me tightly. He pulled me back and I saw relief in his eyes. Pulling him down to meet my lips, the crowd roared louder.
“You did so fucking good, Little Viper,” Cassius whispered as he pressed his forehead against mine.
“We have a top seven!” the king bellowed into the colosseum. The group exploded in excitement louder than they had ever been before. Cassius pulled back and held my hand firmly as the king smiled down at us and I smiled back. “For your bravery and hard work, we shall have a ball tonight in your honor.”
The roaring of the crowd died out as the ground trembled below us and we all stood in the hallway of the Crimson Kingdom.
“There is food and refreshments in the dining hall. You will all have clothes sent to your room for the ball tonight,” Cassius said to us. His hand still held mine tightly. When the other contestants wandered to the dining hall I turned to Cassius.
“I thought I was going to lose you when the siren showed me in front of you.” Cassius frowned.
