the fallen checkers and swallowed with my paper-dry throat. “It’s already starting.”
“What happens if Life wins?” Cassandra asked. “What happens if we turn it all around somehow?”
“The desert continues,” I said as Asa coughed a plume of smoke. “Elysium continues. This world continues forever.”
“So even if Life wins, we’ll never rejoin the real world?” Judith asked.
Beside me, Asa shook his head sadly.
We looked at each other, all the plans we’d made for what we’d do once the Game was over deflating like day-old balloons. More of this world? Forever?
“Those options are bullshit,” Olivia spat. “Ten years of pain and death and suffering… for what?” She shook her head. “If only there was another way to win. A way we could win and beat the Goddesses at Their own stupid Game.”
We were all quiet then, all somber. All angry. And we were right to be. It seemed that every way we turned, death awaited us. Oblivion awaited us. We were nothing but playthings of Goddesses who cared nothing for our own lives, for Their own creation. My stomach churned. My head throbbed. But beside me, Asa’s eyes were on the checkers that he’d knocked to the ground.
“What if…” Asa said quietly. “What if we… break the Game?”
Every head raised. Every eye turned to Asa.
“What do you mean?” Olivia asked.
“Ten years,” Asa said, a delirious smile beginning on his thin face. “The terms of the Game were ten years. What if we—” But before he could finish, he bent double and retched violently, vomiting more white, sulfurous smoke.
“Break the Game by prolonging it…” I breathed. My heart raced, my aching brain whirred, but this new thought rose like the sun in my mind. “It’s supposed to be just ten years long, but if it runs past the ten-year limit, both Goddesses will have to forfeit, and then… then we could win!”
“And how do you suggest we do that?” Zo asked.
My eyes fell on the scimitar Susanah had brought back from our battle with the Dust Soldier.
“We fight,” I said. “Fight the Dust Soldiers! They’ll come at sunset of the last day to destroy Elysium. If we resist them, keep them from destroying Elysium, just until sunrise, then maybe… maybe we’ll have a chance. We fought them before—”
“We fought one before!” said Judith, exchanging looks with Zo. “One!”
“I think that we can do it,” Susanah said. “I’d have to have more horses, make modifications.…”
The penny thrummed on my breastbone, warm, full of truth, and my heart trilled in my chest. “See?” I said, holding the penny out. “This is it! This is what I was supposed to find out here. This is what can fix everything!”
“No,” Olivia said. “I know I promised to take you back to Elysium, and I will. But I’m not going back there and fighting an army of those things for the people who kicked me out. Elysium is nothing to me. Everyone I loved there is dead.”
I thought of the voice, that familiar, familiar voice I heard in my glimpse of Olivia’s truth. That voice that cried out whenever Olivia was coming to Elysium. I steeled myself.
“Are you sure?” I said. The room went completely silent.
Olivia’s face went ashen. Her mouth was a straight, tight line.
“What do you mean?” Olivia said quietly.
“Are you sure that Rosa is dead?” I pressed. “Because I’m not. Not after what I saw in your memory.”
“Don’t you dare lie about my sister to get me to go back there.” Olivia came toward me, stood tall as though challenging me.
“I’m not, Olivia,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “I don’t know that it is your sister I’m thinking of. But I can let you see what I saw. Decide what you want to do then, but let me show you.”
Olivia regarded me for a moment. Then she extended her hand to me.
“Show me,” she said.
And never taking my eyes from hers, I did. I took her hand and sent everything I had into her, all my memories of the girl in the room. The closed door. The sounds of things being thrown. The breakfasts half-eaten. Her crying, her laughing, her murmuring to herself. Her crying out whenever Olivia was coming to Elysium. Me trying to talk to her through the closed door late at night. And when it was over, I pulled my hand out of Olivia’s and we sat back, gasping.
“Is it her?” I asked.
“… Yes,” Olivia said, her voice raw. “It’s Rosalita. Mi hermana. She’s alive. After all these years, she’s… she’s