I’m not so sure. I mean, yeah, I completed the obstacle course yesterday with flying colors, but that’s because I was totally concentrating. I didn’t have anything else on my mind. Like, say, the freakin’ Pythian Games trials!
This is the biggest race of my life, so I might be a little distracted.
“Please,” I beg. “Just for this race. Just to make sure I don’t . . . accidentally use them.”
“You won’t.” He presses his lips to mine. “Besides, I told you, I can’t.”
“But what if—”
“I know you’re worried about accidentally using your powers,” he says. That’s the understatement of the millennium. “I’ve been thinking about what you said about your dad’s record. How you’re afraid to read it.”
The record has been sitting under my bed ever since I got home from meeting Damian in the courtyard that night. Every time I catch a glimpse, it’s like it’s taunting me. Tempting me to face my fears. But I’m far too chicken.
“First of all,” he says, “I never knew your dad, but I can’t imagine a parent that selfish could have raised such an amazingly compassionate daughter.”
I give him a half smile, because I think he’s definitely overstating my compassion. After the way I’ve treated him and overreacted in the past, I think I’m currently pretty low on the compassion scale.
“And second,” he says, oblivious to my unspoken self-deprecation. “I want you to consider this: Would you give up the people you love for a cross-country win?”
“Of course not!” How could he even think that? “I would never—”
Griffin holds up a hand to stop me. “That’s my point,” he says. “I’ve never known anyone who loved their sport as much as you. If you wouldn’t make that choice, I can’t imagine your father would.”
My rant deflates. He’s right. I love running more than almost anything. But only almost. I don’t love it more than Mom or Griffin—or, on a good day, Damian and Stella. Dad must have loved us more than football.
“You’re right,” I say slowly, smiling. “I don’t think he chose football over me and Mom consciously or otherwise.”
My insides are calm—maybe for the first time in a long time. When Dad died, I remember being so very angry. At him, at Mom, at whatever deity or act of nature had taken him from us. At myself, too, for the possibility that I’d taken him for granted while he was alive. Then, when I found out that he was hematheos, that he was smoted for that, the anger had returned. Maybe I didn’t even recognize it, but it was there. Bubbling under everything.
Griffin made me see what I couldn’t—that the anger had come from fear.
Now, even though nothing has changed except my perspective on the situation, the anger is gone.
Maybe I’ll even read the record—someday. It suddenly doesn’t seem like such an important decision. I know and love and trust my dad. I don’t need to read a trial transcript to know that.
“Good,” Griffin says, tugging me to his chest and slipping his arms around my waist. “Because you have a race to run, and you won’t win if you don’t focus. And if you don’t make the team, Coach Lenny will blame me. He’ll probably make me run to Beijing and back.”
I love that my overactive imagination is rubbing off on him.
“Racers to the starting block,” Coach Lenny’s voice booms through the megaphone, “for the women’s long-distance trial.”
Griffin gives me a squeeze and a shove in the direction of the race.
My heart rate quadruples. People in the nothos world may not have ever heard of the Pythian Games, but in this world they’re the equivalent of the Olympics. Making the Cycladian team, competing against the best hematheos racers in the islands, is not going to be a cakewalk.
When I step into the starting box, though, my anxiety disappears. This is my home turf—literally, since we’re racing on the Academy course, but also figuratively. Distance running is my world, hematheos or not.
Coach Lenny lifts the starting pistol into the air and fires.
I turn on the autopilot, taking off with the two dozen other women competing for the three precious spots on the team. They’re all strangers, mostly older than me and from other islands in the Cyclades. There was no planning and strategizing how to beat the other racers ahead of time. This is just me, running my race. Five laps around the five-mile white course plus one around the yellow.
Tuning out everything but my feet and the course ahead, I run.
By the time I finish the fifth white lap, I can’t feel my legs. My lungs burn fire with every breath. I don’t know how long I’ve been running, but it must be over two hours. The end of my pain is just a mile and a quarter away.