Page 84 of Flame and Fury

“Only a bit farther.” I feel her patience waning the longer we walk. Finally, we reach a set of wooden steps that lead up to a red door.

“Are we going to end up in Wonderland?” Wren eyes the door. She’s adorably disheveled. Her shoulders sag as if the weariness has finally conquered her. She’s still stunningly beautiful. Regardless of how tired she looks, she never loses that fire in her eyes.

“Nothing so extraordinary.” I knock on the door with three short raps followed by three spaced out ones. It feels like we wait an eternity, but it’s closer to two minutes before the door opens. Nico is on the other side, grinning at us.

“Took you long enough to get here.”

“Did you leave the safe house the second we left?” I ask.

“Pretty much. We were too far away from the action.”

“That’s sort of the point,” Wren says as we step through the door and inside the basement of another one of the Underground’s safe houses.

“You’re talking to a champion of the Olympus Games. What do you expect?”

Wren and I both make sounds of agreement. I get it. I couldn’t sit back and watch while others were in the thick of things either.

“What is this place?” Wren asks as we cut through an old limestone basement and head toward another set of steps. These lead to the main floor of the house.

“Another place for us to hide out.”

It's an old town house that looks rundown on the outside. Vines climb up the red brick and even obscure the windows. The whole neighborhood is like this, so it's not as if the house stands out. Inside is a different story. This house is one of many that the Underground uses as needed. There are multiple bedrooms, a functioning kitchen, and a meeting space.

The door at the top of the basement steps opens into a hallway. Nico leads the way and we follow him into the living room where Lark and Estella are sitting, looking clean and comfortable.

Wren smiles in greeting before spinning around to take in the room. “What do we do now?”

“Now we wait,” I say.

CHAPTER43

WREN

It feels wrong to be sitting on the couch, in comfortable pajamas, watching the Olympus Games. I've never even done this at my own house. I don't own a television. But here we are. Me, Atlas, Lark, Nico, and Estella glued to the screen like everyone else in the world.

Thaddeus’s voice is narrating what’s happening on screen. I’ll begrudgingly admit he has a way of making everything sound intense and high stakes.

“Our champions are just now learning about their next challenge.”

Once again, the remaining champions have been brought to a theater. I don’t know which city they’re in for this challenge. On stage Greer, Jasper, Drake, Preston, and Jade open their envelopes. They’re all dressed up in formal attire, like they’re about to head to one of the gods’s parties.

It’s strange to experience the games from this side of things. While we were all opening up our fancy envelopes that held our clues, the audience was seeing an elegant digital version and getting an entire history lesson in the process. I read the clue and have no idea what it means.

We’ll smile sweetly and eat up your every word. But have no doubt, our mercy is fleeting. One wrong move and we’ll feast on your flesh. Four sisters, four lovers, four beasts at your door.

Atlas scoffs and Lark smiles at him like it’s a no brainer. Shit, why can I never remember Heracles’s trials.

“Which one is it?” I ask with a huff.

Atlas turns a smug smile on me.

“I think I liked it better when you didn’t have emotions,” I grumble.

Atlas throws an arm over my shoulder and hauls me into his body. Dipping his head, he murmurs so only I can hear. “It wasn’t that I didn’t have emotions. I couldn’t show them. It was never a challenge until I met you.”

I breathlessly pant, pushing the hair off my face that Atlas messed up with his embrace. I’m not going to respond to that, because nothing coming out of my mouth will be appropriate for other people to hear. As if Atlas can sense as much, he chuckles. He shifts our bodies so that we can both sit up straighter, even though his arm never leaves my shoulder.

“It’s the Mares of Diomedes.” Atlas finally answers my question, and Lark nods in agreement.

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