Their Vicious Games(74)

“You’re okay. You’re okay,” she whispers. “Close your eyes. Sleep.”

Reagan dies much quicker than Margaret. And when she does, Penthesilea looks up to meet my eyes.

“We have to keep moving,” she says, like nothing happened and nothing could touch her, and it makes me realize—Penthesilea Bonavich has never been bland or unaffected. She is lethal and always has been.

“I don’t know if I should be going anywhere with you,” I whisper.

Penthesilea’s eyes narrow, “Are you going to try to kill me, Adina?”

“No.”

“Then I have no reason to do what I did to Reagan to you. Let’s go,” Penthesilea says, turning and abandoning Reagan’s body. She grabs my arm, and I follow her because I don’t want to stay with Reagan’s corpse and I don’t know where to go.

Again and again Penthesilea slices through the hedges, drawing her machete back and forth. Everything is a blaze of green and red, and then we finally come to a path where I see an open mouth of white at the end. I find it alien and yet recognizable—we’re to exit where we entered. An endless cycle, another metaphor. Penthesilea chases it without fear, but I lag behind, terrified to my bones of what awaits on the other side. If I stay here, in the maze, I won’t need to go to the next round. I won’t have to be confronted with any more broken girl corpses or the way terror has sewn itself to my soul.

But there is still as much danger in here as out there, so when Penthesilea walks into the sunlight and disappears, I force myself to follow.

When I emerge from the maze, my hands fall to my knees and I heave, but there’s nothing left in my stomach, not after earlier. I hear the sound of applause and I look up.

The Remingtons and their staff are standing up on the deck, clapping politely, like it’s a fucking golf match. The family even grins, huddled by the surveillance station. Third looks grudgingly approving, Leighton is smug, and Pierce beams.

Graham isn’t there at all.

My eyes keep searching for him as I’m swept up in the bright orange of a shock blanket by one of the staff, but he’s nowhere to be found.

“Your weapon, Miss Walker,” Mr. Caine says plumly, offering the open gun case. I stare at him stupidly, then my hand flies to the holster, not to give it back but to secure it to me just a second longer. The weight of it in my hand means that it isn’t in someone else’s. “Miss Walker.” His brow arches, voice growing higher with irritation, enough to call attention both to the Remingtons and to my common sense.

I unwrap the holster from around my waist, drop the gun into the case. I never want to see it again, even though I can still feel the shape of it in my palm.

He leads me over to the seating area below the Remingtons.

“Admirable performance,” Third allows, and he casts a warning glance at Pierce, who is beaming, as if to say, Don’t start.

Leighton murmurs, “Well done, Miss Walker.” She is watching me, looking for something—blood or gunpowder or anything that would indicate that I’ve done what she intended me to. She finds nothing.

I glance quickly at the group sitting on wrought-iron patio furniture. Penthesilea’s gaze cuts over to Pierce, but he isn’t looking at her. He looks at me and he smiles, sticking up a thumb. When I look down at Penthesilea again, she’s looking at the maze almost wistfully.

“Lucky, lucky,” Esme tuts from her own shock-blanket burrito. She shivers hard as she comes down from the high, tucked against Hawthorne, the only other two to emerge so far. Blood drains from my face.

“Where’s Saint?” I whisper hoarsely. “If you hurt her, I’ll kill you.”

Hawthorne squints up at me. “She didn’t touch her.”

“I was convinced that you both weren’t worth it, not when I already had the prize and could get out in first,” Esme says through chattering teeth, still managing to sound like a bitch. She lifts her hand, displaying the diamond ring that fits too tightly, only going past the first knuckle. She looks at me slyly. “Reagan, though—”

I flinch.

“I took care of it,” Penthesilea says dully. “Sit down, Adina. Now we wait.”

And so we do.

We wait for a long time, the sun beating harshly on us. We receive the finest treatment, offers of grapes and strawberries and sparkling waters like any of it could make this better. Esme requests a bottle of Mo?t. She doesn’t share, of course, just takes swigs from the bottle like she means to be drunk. Like she has to be drunk after the maze. Her gaze never wavers from the entrance, like she can’t look away. She looks… fragile, despite her talk. I have never seen her like that. To me, she is like the diamond on her finger. But now she looks like glass.

With Hawthorne’s arm threaded through hers, they look like kintsugi, broken pottery mended with liquid gold, a formerly shattered piece made whole again.

Finally, thankfully, Saint emerges from the maze, looking wild in a way that I’ve never seen her. She stumbles and then she collapses to her knees and very visibly swallows back a scream. The moment she looks at me, I know.

She’s finished.





CHAPTER 26





IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE RAID, I expect a rundown. A declaration of our ranks and what it means to win this particular challenge.