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I stepped forward again, turning toward them but keeping my head at an angle so they didn’t look over at me. Not that there was much danger of that happening. Aside from the gods who were groping, fondling, and fucking the concubines, none of them seemed to pay the girls serving them any attention.
“That’s the problem, isn’t it? Omari is pressing for a more permanent solution, where Ryker argues that will result in an uprising. And most of those fools out there don’t know how to decide anything for themselves,” the first god said, waving his hand in the direction of the court.
What? What?! Tell me.
Just as Cassius opened his mouth to speak, a strange feeling washed over me. I watched his mouth move but could only hear muffled noises as blood rushed in my ears. Then there was a familiar feeling in my stomach, a tug. It was as if someone had gripped me around the middle and was pulling me backward.
I shook my head, knowing exactly what was happening. No, no, no, no. Not yet.
But there was no resisting the pull.
I growled as I was yanked backward, feeling my feet leave the ground as I catapulted through a portal. It spat me out, and I bounced on the hard ground of the stadium on The Hill, on the earthly plane once more.
Instantly, my body seemed to drain of power, losing the added boost it’d had in the godly realm.
For a second, everything whirled around me as I fought to get my breath back. A dozen emotions cascaded through me, but one burned hotter than all the rest.
Disappointment.
Godsdammit. I was so fucking close.
Chapter Twenty
I stared up at the sky, cursing under my breath.
Noises finally began to filter in around me. Cheering from the crowd, whoops and hollers. I craned my neck, glancing around to see the other competitors arriving as well.
Of course, not all of them.
It appeared that this semester, just like the last, several of them hadn’t made it back.
My three men popped into existence, thrown through their portals slightly less violently than I had been. They all hurried over to me, and Merrick put his hand down, helping me to my feet.
I stood, taking in a deep breath and shaking my head. When I focused on the men, I realized they were all staring at me, a slight bit of heat in their eyes.
Trace cleared his throat, glancing around at the other contestants on The Hill and the crowd around us. “Uh, what the hell happened to the rest of your clothes, Ari?”
Merrick and Lachlan stepped in front of me, and as they did, I realized that all three of the men were still wearing stolen messenger robes.
Fuck.
“Your clothes!” I hissed. “The robes. Get them off.”
They all picked up my meaning immediately, shrugging off their stolen robes as Dean Frost greeted the other contestants. Merrick waved his hands at the piles of blue fabric, and they seemed to dissolve, sinking into the earth and disappearing.
“Still doesn’t explain where yer pants went, lass,” Lachlan murmured as Dean Frost approached us, and I elbowed him in the ribs.
“I’ll explain later.”
He shot me a look that was part possessive jealousy and part amusement, then all four of us turned to face the dean.
The dean nodded to us and greeted us in a low voice as she passed. Her gaze ran up and down my nearly naked form, an expression I couldn’t read passing through her eyes. She didn’t ask any questions though, she narrowed her eyes slightly and kept going.
Fuck. I probably didn’t match what my decoy illusion had looked like—if the illusions had still been functioning at all by the time we were yanked back to the earthly realm.
Did she know where we’d been? What we’d been doing?
I wasn’t sure she did, or I was sure she would’ve called me out on it. Unless she had good reason to want me to think she didn’t know.
