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“Aella,” Theron bellowed, blowing me back. “Enough.”
Me? He was yelling at me?
Muscles jumping in his jaw, Theron pushed past me and stormed out to the platform. The fury on his face when he glared at me on the way stunned me into stillness. Theron Zervas did not want my help.
Theron was ten feet away and still walking to him when Alexander dropped him.
“Ahh!” Agony ripped from his throat, curdling my insides like I was contorting on the ground with him.
I bit my lip hard as the screaming went on... and on... and on.
“Stop it!” I screamed, blood dripping down my chin. “Damn you, stop!”
The cries cut off just like that. Expressionless, Alexander turned his back on the crumpled heap he called friend, and strode off without a backward glance.
Alexander had wanted to share another secret with me: his bottomless cruelty.
It was a while before Theron staggered to his feet—chest heaving. No one said a word or went to help him.
Theron didn’t return to his seat. He left the stadium and didn’t come back.
A hand rested over mine. “Don’t sit there with that guilt on your face,” Tycho whispered. “You were trying to help him. Where you’re from, that makes you a good person—as it should. But in Trono, you can’t show weakness. Once Alexander challenged him, it was either step up or be labeled a coward for the rest of his life.”
“Trono City sounds like an outhouse.”
He snorted. “There’s a reason the name Paradise was given to another part of Olympia.”
I sat through the next names in a blur. What kind of place have I come to? What kind of world did I live in? Demigods from every village, town, isle, and city of Olympia, and the only one who wasn’t shouting Theron down with insults was me. The only one to speak up and end his torture... was me.
Are these stone-hearted warriors my people? Did all compassion and kindness leave them at the age of eighteen?
But maybe I wasn’t the one with a right to say anything. I didn’t know what hardened them. I was taken out of Olympia long before I tried to escape it. The goddess saw to that.
“Aella Galanis.”
I didn’t fight it. Didn’t fuss or argue or hesitate. This was coming whether I wanted it to or not. I might as well get it over with.
I took my place on the platform, facing Vasili and his silent companions, and no one else. “I am Aella Galanis,” I said clearly. “I don’t have a power to show you. I don’t have power at all.
“I’m not a demigod.”
“What?”
“What did she just say?”
“Not a demigod?”
Muttering broke out around me while Commander Vasili slowly raised his head. “Excuse me?”
“I’m not a demigod.”
A frown marred his handsome features, shifting them into the unkind, hardened appearance that better suited him. “You mistake me for a man who likes his time wasted. Show us your power now, girl. I will not ask again.”
Raising my chin, I met his gaze steadily. “I’m not lying. It’s rare, but it happens. I was never chosen by a god or goddess. Not a drop of the divine lives in my blood. I am, for lack of a better word, a mundane.”
There it was, the only possible truth. I cursed, and raged, and cried about why the goddess chose me, but enough of her rants about parasites and filthy demigods cleared dust off the image. She chose me... because I wasn’t one.
A judge rose from the table. It wasn’t the commander. Smoothing down her white coat, the woman who had yet to introduce herself studied me up and down as she ate the distance. “My dear, what you’re speaking about is more than rare. In two thousand years, there have been four reported instances of this happening. An Olympian rejected by every known god. We’re to believe you’re the fifth when the most likely explanation is you’re lying because you want to be sent home.”
