in such a nasty mood all the time.
“What do you say, people of the Underworld? Do you want to see them fight?”
Okay, I officially wanted to punch that announcer in the face. My heart sunk when the entire crowd started chanting for them to kill each other. Why couldn’t one person step up and say no? If the crowd stopped betting and refused to attend, then Demeter wouldn’t make any money off these fights. Would she stop then?
“Begin!” the announcer screamed.
I knew I couldn’t look away. I had to take this all in. I’d scouted the crowd. I knew Demeter was here. Now, I needed to watch the fight. I needed to see how Kimon was injured so I could treat him. Kimon was mostly human. Only his head and neck were a bull. I wasn’t sure how much I could help him, considering I’d only ever patched up animals before. My clinic wasn’t like the movies where shady criminals came to me to patch them up because they couldn’t go to the hospital.
Kimon and the giant circled each other. I’d never been much for watching fights, but it seemed to me more like they didn’t want to hit each other rather than looking for an opening to strike.
The crowd hated it. The longer they circled, the more unruly the crowd got. They started throwing fruit into the ring and booing. I jumped to my feet when a tomato struck Kimon in the chest. Hades yanked me back in my chair.
“Don’t draw attention to yourself, River. Don’t speak, don’t rage, just watch.”
I think this was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my entire life. Vet school was hard. Losing an animal on the operating table was hard. But at least I tried as hard as I could to save them. It felt like I should do something. I felt like I should be charging down there and stopping this.
The crowd was screaming for blood. Kimon and the giant couldn’t put this off much longer. What would happen if both of them just refused to fight?
I didn’t get to find out. I couldn’t help it. I clenched my eyes shut and clenched the armrests as the giant swung that giant spiked club right at Kimon.
Chapter 11
Kimon
I
hated this. This was worse than the labyrinth I spent centuries in and met my death in. At least in the maze, people were stupid enough to stay away unless they had something to prove. Asking them not to try to fight me was pointless. I would have shown them the way through the maze just to fuck over King Minos for trapping me in there.
But no. I was part of the game. Solve the labyrinth and kill the minotaur. Minos was a sore loser. He only stuck me in there because I won a ton of drachma off him at cards. That mother fucker never beat me, and I always caught him when he tried to cheat. He loathed losing at anything.
I was pretty sure he was plotting my death, but I outmatched him at fighting, and I could beat any of his soldiers. What he did to me was much worse. He drugged my wine and stuck me in the labyrinth. He set up a game he thought was impossible to lose, and he used me as a pawn.
I was a pawn again, but this was much worse than being trapped in an endless maze with heroes showing up to try to kill you. This hadn’t been going on nearly as long. This only started two months ago, but it felt like an eternity.
This was different. It wasn’t nameless demigods and heroes I was killing this time. It was my friends. All of us vanquished monsters who ended up in the Underworld because demigods felt like the only way to get daddy’s attention was to take on something bigger and more powerful than them had become a community.
I didn’t want to kill Porphyrion. I was on suitable terms with all the giants. Porphyrion and I liked to watch sports together. We could get stations from all the realms now. We liked human rugby and Fae wrestling. Some demons live-streamed their torture, but neither of us had the stomach for that.
We didn’t have a choice. We could fight each other, or Persephone would die. I’d been her bodyguard since she came to the Underworld. I never kept her captive here. She wanted to be here. I was protecting her from people who were sympathetic