Page 299 of The Mortal Trials

August nods from the doorway. He’d already worked it out. The gods’ cruel little game of distraction, and one we should have sprinted right through. Pausing this long might have cost us the win and our lives, but he didn’t want to rip me away from my sister again.

Carina stood and told me goodbye. She didn’t say that she’d check on me later or mention when she’d be home. My sister walked across the room and straight through August.

I should have known something was up when she didn’t say those things. She always said them. Always looked ahead to the next moment.

Outside, the sun violently shifted and shadows fell until the first stars winked through the window.

A pan clanged.

A keening wail came from the kitchen.

“Abuela?” I yelled from the bed, throwing back the covers and swinging my legs around.

When she didn’t answer, I remembered fearing the worst. That she was sick or had a heart attack or stroke.

Younger me rushed to don her repurposed leg, grabbed the crutches to steady herself, stood, and when her sleeve sank into the socket, she hurried to the kitchen.

We go with her.

Abuela was lying on the floor. A trembling hand covered her mouth and sobs wracked her frail body.

“Abuela, what is it?” I couldn’t crouch yet, so I just hovered beside her. “Please tell me what to do! What’s wrong?”

She pointed a knotted finger toward the telecaster.

August curses and catches me when I sway.

My sister’s beaten, bloody body filled the screen. Ares’s dark power held her to the outer stucco wall of The Parthenon Press building. With every painful breath, Carina painted it red.

She screamed as he grabbed her tongue and drew his blade across it, sawing before holding it up for her and everyone else to see. She choked on her own blood. It sprayed and burbled from her mouth as she tried not to drown in it.

He staked her tongue to the wall beside her head with the blade he carved it out with.

She stared into the camera – stared at me with swollen, bruised eyes, her mouth a thick, crimson waterfall – and shook her head.

Crutches clattered to the tile.

“I’m going after her,” I told Abuela, barely able to feel my hands and feet. Our grandmother was in shock.

She was in shock, and I was too, but Carina was still alive. She was alive and she needed me. “Cillian will be here soon. Stay right here. I’m going to get Carina.”

I turned and ran, pushing my way out the door, through the courtyard, and down the dirt road.

“Every time I fell on the way to Olympus, I got back up. For her,” I tell August as he watches the telecaster.

I hadn’t seen this part. I was running to try to stop Ares from killing her, when it was me he really wanted dead.

Carina was still alive when he drove a golden spear through her ribs.

A wail tears out of my chest and bile stings the back of my throat.

“She died before I got there.” My palms and knees were bloody from where I’d fallen and fallen and fallen again. “My brother was working on a temple – the same one he’s helping to build now – and a friend recognized Carina and ran to tell him about it. He reached her before I did. He took her down. I… I didn’t know Ares had used a golden spear.”

I try to break the offending spear over the kitchen table, striking the earth instead. “I didn’t know.” Slam. “It was a golden.” Slam. “Fucking.” Slam. “Gods damned.” Slam. “Spear!” I scream, spittle flying.

I hurl the gods damned thing through the window. The glass doesn’t shatter because it’s not fucking real. It’s not real. None of this is.

“What does this have to do with a trial? What competition is this?” I rage at the sky.