Page 77 of I Summon the Sea

Great.

Hastily, I sit down, gathering my long skirts around me as Tru pushes the chair from behind, the legs screeching on the bare floor. The bodice is digging into my ribs and stomach, pinching my hips. I’m as uncomfortable as I can possibly be without being mortally wounded.

It feels like a close second.

Around me are vaguely familiar faces, drawn with lingering fear and unease, or perhaps even pain. The Sleeping Gods know my arm is still a steady ache, my bitten leg a constant throb, and that’s without the routine aches in my legs and the cut-up soles of my feet.

“Don’t I know you?” the woman on my left asks, and I recognize her as the one who tried to shove me out of the dragon’s mouth.

Lovely.

Recognition flares in her gaze a moment later, and she gives me a flat look. “You’re the girl who’s friends with that prick, Athdara.”

I shake my head, glaring at her.

“Sure, deny it all you want.” She leans back in her seat, a satisfied gleam in her eyes. “He joined the games the moment you did. And then spent his time saving you over and over.”

Just twice. But who’s counting?

The man on my other side seems more interested in his goblet filled with wine, but I think I recognize him, too. He’s the man who knelt beside me in that building on the temple island, praying for Athdara to help us.

“Nothing to say?” she hisses.

I go back to glaring at her, flattening my mouth and lifting my chin.

“She’s mute,” a pretty, dark-skinned woman I think I know says from across the table, barely visible between the white-and-gold flower arrangements. Her pale eyes are hooded. “Didn’t you know?”

“Oh, fantastic,” the woman beside me mutters, “I’m stuck with the mute girl.”

“Drop it, Mera,” the man says, taking another deep draught from his goblet.

“Youdrop it, Axwick. This is our only chance to find out what the next trial will be about.”

“Then ask the others. Leave her be.”

“Want to save her, Ax?” Mera mocks him. “Like Athdara did? Men, honestly… Always taken in by a pretty face.”

Grabbing the folded white napkin sitting by my plate, I prepare to launch it at her face.

“She’s one of us,” Axwick says.

“No, she isn’t,” Mera retorts, “she isn’t like us, and if you haven’t figured it out yet…”

I’m frozen, my hand clutching the napkin, scrunching it up. What does she know? How?

“How do you mean?” he asks slowly. “She was with us in the trial, she?—”

“She’s ontheirside,” Mera hisses.

Oh.That’s what she meant. I put the napkin down.

“No, she isn’t,” the woman sitting across from us says. “They wouldn’t let one of their own enter the Death Games.”

“They let Athdara join!” Mera snaps.

“She saved my life.” The woman nods at me. “In the arena. She’s on our side. I’m certain of it.”

I recognize her now. It’s the lady I saved from the tritons.

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