The Goddess Test Boxed Set: Goddess Interrupted\The Goddess Inheritance\The Goddess Legacy (105 page)

“Trust me. Or at least try. I'm on your side.”

“No one's on our side but us,” she said, and she finally looked
up, her fingers clutching the pendant. “No one.”

“Then let me be one of you. I can help hunt, I can gather, I
can do whatever you need me to do, and I
will
be
your subject, not the other way around. I promise.”

“Yeah? What's in it for you?” said Tuck. By now the boys had
finished packing up the loot, and Mac lumbered toward us, carrying a good
two-thirds of our take. “You could survive in these woods for the rest of your
life without any help from us. So why bother sharing?”

I hesitated. Not because I didn't know what to say, but because
my answer was too close to the truth for me to swallow. But it was either that
or lose everything. “I've been alone for a long time, and I'm sick of it. I
won't take advantage of you or rob you blind or ditch you, I promise. I help
you, and in return, the lot of you won't give me the cold shoulder whenever I do
something wrong. Which will be as infrequent as I can manage,” I added. “That's
all I want. Friends. A family. Somewhere to belong.”

Tuck's expression softened, and her grip on the necklace
loosened a bit. Silence hung between us, but before things got too awkward,
Perry moved beside me and slipped his hand into mine. “We're all family,” he
said in a shy voice. “You can be part of it, too, as long as you don't eat too
much.”

I managed a chuckle. “I'll do my best to gather enough game so
none of you will ever have to worry about portions again.”

He beamed, and all four of us looked at Tuck. For a long
moment, no one said a word, and at last she sighed. “Oh, fine. As long as you
hold up your end of the deal, you can stay.”

The boys burst into cheers, and I gave her a pat on the
shoulder. “You won't regret it.”

“I better not.” She slipped into the woods, leaving the four of
us to trail after her. I grinned. No matter what she wanted me to think of her,
I knew the truth: she wasn't nearly as bad as she pretended to be.

* * *

We spent the rest of the day in camp. I showed Mac how
to make sure a cooked rabbit stayed juicy; Perry and Sprout tidied up in between
wrestling matches; and Tuck examined our bounty, though her hand was never far
from that pendant.

It was nice—almost domestic, something I'd never had before.
The council rarely spent time together in groups of more than two or three, and
the way the boys laughed and played—it really was a family. Tuck was more an
older sister than a mother, but they all deferred to her regardless, and while
Perry occasionally called for her to join them, she stubbornly remained
sitting.

There was something different about the way she held herself,
too. A secretive smile danced across her lips, and she was more relaxed, more
confident, not as nervous as she'd been before. Almost as if she'd conquered the
unconquerable. I slid closer to her.

“You look happy,” I said, and her smile vanished. “So how do
you know that earl?”

“What's it to you?” she said.

I shrugged. “Just curious. You don't seem to like him
much.”

“Not many people do.”

“So what's your reason?”

She sighed. “You're obnoxious, you know that?”

“So I've been told. You still haven't answered my
question.”

She tugged on her braid, staring into the fire. It was twilight
now, and if I'd wanted to, I could've gone back to Olympus. But as far as I was
concerned, I was staying right here for the foreseeable future.

“He killed my mother,” she finally said. “And he's the reason
their fathers are dead.” She nodded to the boys, who either were ignoring us or
couldn't hear her soft voice over their own laughter. “That's why we all banded
together.”

“How did he do all that?” I said, and she gave me an odd
look.

“The war? Weren't the men of your village recruited? Weren't
you?
”

I frowned. “Why do you assume I lived in a village?”

“Well, you weren't raised by wolves, were you?”

In a manner of speaking. “So this man—this earl, he sent all of
your fathers off to war?”

“And killed my mother,” she added. “That's important.”

“So what does the pendant have to do with it?”

She stared down at the necklace, brushing her thumb almost
wistfully against the blue jewel. “I already told you. It's—”

“Worth more than I could possibly imagine,” I finished. “I
still don't believe you.”

“Too bad.” She glanced into the purple sky. The stars were just
beginning to appear. “Can you keep an eye on the boys? I have somewhere I need
to be.”

“Yeah? Where's that?”

“I know a guy who will buy the loot we can't use.”

“Like your pendant?”

Her fingers tightened around it. No way was she letting that go
anytime soon. “Yeah, like the pendant.”

“Let me come with you. You shouldn't go on your own.”

Her eyes flashed. “Why? Because I'm a girl, and I need your
protection?”

I snorted. “The day you need my protection is the day the sun
rises in the west. I'm good with trade, that's all. I could make sure you're
getting your money's worth.”

She mumbled a curse under her breath. “If I let you come, will
you stop asking stupid questions?”

“Only if you promise to be honest with me from here on
out.”

“When have I not been honest with you?” she said. I nodded to
the pendant.

“Right there.”

Tuck stood. “I'll think about it. Are you coming or what?”

Leaping effortlessly to my feet, I gave her a grin. “You won't
regret this.”

“I already do. Mac, you're in charge,” she called, trudging
into the woods. I gave the three boys a wink and followed.

For most of the journey, silence hung between us. Tuck looked
about as willing to talk as Hades did most of the time, and I tried to come up
with a way to ease her into it. There was a reason I'd wound up here with her,
and if she wasn't willing to talk to me, then I might as well accept the
imminent death of my entire family.

Right. Not gonna happen.

I cleared my throat as we worked our way over a fallen tree.
“It's great of you to take care of the boys like you do.”

She shrugged. “We take care of each other.”

“What's your plan?” I said. “I mean, are you going to be
robbing the wealthy when you're eighty?”

Tuck let out a hoarse, almost violent laugh. “Please. At this
rate I'll be lucky to see twenty. In three years,” she added before I could
ask.

“How long have you been out here on your own?” I said.

“Six months. We make do.”

Six months—so the spring and summer. Persephone's seasons.
“What about the cold months?”

She slipped in the narrow space between two trees and said
nothing. I walked around them to rejoin her.

“Have you thought that far ahead yet?”

“I've let you join us, haven't I?” she snapped. “How do you
survive the winter?”

I shrugged. I'd never actually spent one this far north. “Guess
we'll see.”

Without warning, she grabbed my elbow and spun me around to
face her. “If you turn us in or abandon us or do anything to hurt them, I will
hunt you down, carve out your eyeballs, feed them to the dogs and flay you. Got
it?”

“Is that all?” I said lightly, and she glared at me. “Tuck, I'm
on your side. Believe me. I meant what I said this morning, about family and
all.”

“Yeah? What's someone with your skills doing anyway, running
away from yours? Aren't they starving without you?”

“Hardly.” The idea of Zeus wanting for anything was laughable.
“They know how to take care of themselves.”

“I bet,” she muttered. “Still, you know why I ran. Why did
you?”

I didn't know her reason why, actually, but it didn't seem like
the time to correct her. Not when she was finally talking. “How do you know I'm
running from anything?” I said, and she rolled her eyes.

“You're not nearly as mysterious as you think you are.”

I set my hand over my heart. “You wound me.”

“Not as badly as I will if I find out you're a spy. No one
walks around in the middle of these woods without so much as a satchel or a skin
of water.”

“I've already promised to show you how I do it,” I said. “This
would all be a whole lot easier if you at least tried to trust me.”

“The last time I trusted someone I didn't know well, my mother
wound up dead.”

I was quiet for a long moment. “How did it happen?”

Tuck shook her head, her gaze distant. “It doesn't matter
anymore. Come on, it's just up ahead.”

She changed her angle, as if she was circling around something,
and I followed. Right—she didn't want anyone to know which direction she was
coming from. She was smart, smarter than the rest of the council would give her
credit for, but I still had no idea what answers she was supposed to give me.
And it wasn't as if I could come right out and ask. She'd think I was crazy.

So for now, all I could do was watch her. Not that that was the
worst job in the world—there was something inherently pure about her, despite
her sharp edges. She cared for those boys more than Zeus had ever cared for me,
and the thought of staying here with them in the woods sounded a hell of a lot
better than returning to Olympus.

I still had to find the answers—no matter how my family treated
me, I couldn't walk away from them. But in the meantime, I could enjoy this
life, too. I could enjoy being part of something, being appreciated, being
needed. Being more than the one who constantly made mistakes everyone else had
to clean up.

We arrived in a clearing alive with chirping crickets. Tuck
lingered on the edge, cloaked in darkness, and I remained behind her. Together
we waited, letting the forest drown out the sounds of our breathing.

At last something rustled in the trees, and a weedy young man
stepped out from the other side of the clearing. He was older than Tuck, but
still gangly, as if he hadn't adjusted to his long limbs yet. Or maybe he was
just too thin.

“I know you're here,” he said. “I haven't got all night.”

Tuck held her finger to her lips, and we remained still. The
young man paced up and down the length of the clearing, sighing often and
dramatically.

“I heard 'bout your job this morning. The whole bloody village
has. I've got buyers, so how about we stop all these games and get down to
business?”

Even in the darkness, I saw Tuck's posture change. Crooking her
finger at me, she stepped into the clearing, her shoulders square and her blue
eyes bright in the moonlight.

“What kind of buyers?” she said, and I followed a few paces
behind.

“The kind that pay with anything you want,” said the young man
with a gap-toothed grin, and he trained his focus on me. “You must be the thief
I've heard so much about. Seems you gave our dear earl a right scare. I don't
see it, personally.”

“Yeah, well, wait until he has a knife to your throat, Barry,”
said Tuck. “Now let's talk price.”

I stayed quiet as the two of them bartered. Tuck only accepted
food that would keep and things we would need to survive in the forest—clothes,
weapons, the essentials. Anytime the young man, Barry, mentioned gold or silver,
Tuck shook her head and steered him back toward useful trades.

There had to be something I was missing—something the Fates
needed me to see—but what was it? A thought nagged in the back of my mind, but
every time I tried to get closer, it moved just out of reach.

Perfect. Wasn't as if the entire fate of my family was on the
line or anything.

At last they seemed to reach an agreement, and Tuck moved back
toward the trees. “Meet me back here at dawn with the goods. I'll bring the
loot. If anyone follows you, I'll hang you from a tree using your own
innards.”

Barry grinned, and there was something unnerving about it.
“Couldn't possibly turn you in, m'lady. That wouldn't be at all chivalrous.”

He slipped back into the darkness, and as Tuck and I headed
through the trees—a hundred and twenty degrees in the wrong direction—I realized
what felt so wrong about this whole thing.

“He didn't mention the pendant,” I said as we started to turn
back toward camp. “He knew exactly what was taken, down to the bean, but not a
word about the earl's most prized possession.”

A line formed between Tuck's eyebrows. “Because he knows I'd
never give it up,” she said, but there was doubt in her voice.

We walked the rest of the way in tense silence, both
undoubtedly contemplating the same thing. Did Barry know she wouldn't give the
pendant up? Or was there another reason?

I should've known—mortals weren't that difficult to figure out
most of the time, but when Tuck wasn't willing to give me all of the
information, I didn't have a chance. Hard to put the pieces together when they
weren't all there.

Less than fifty paces from camp, I heard it—the faint sounds of
rustling behind us. I froze and held up a hand to Tuck, and she stopped
midstep.

Climb a tree.
Never in a million
years should I have talked to a mortal like this, but we didn't have much
choice. Her eyes widened, and all the color drained from her face.
Do it. We're being followed. I'll explain later.

To her credit, she only hesitated for a split second before she
soundlessly climbed the nearest tree. I didn't have time to admire her skills—I
scampered up after her, and together we balanced precariously on the highest
branch that could hold us. She clung to the tree, her nails digging into the
bark, and I wasn't sure which she was more afraid of: me or the people following
us.