Furious

Chapter Thirty-Two

Lindsay made a few verbal noises of discontentment but made no move to force me to stay behind. Gregory protested me putting on a uniform. And by "uniform", I mean a few leather pieces and some spandex.

My shirt, like Lindsay's, covered me from my neck to my belly button, leaving my midriff exposed and vulnerable. Why I couldn't have a uniform like Alex's—which covered her entire body in one slim piece of tightly woven fabric—I didn't ask.

Melding to my shape as if it were made to my specifications, the thick woven fabric was unlike anything I had worn before. At least it felt foreign; I didn't know if it truly was a new tactile in my unreliable memory. With my torso covered so entirely that the fabric felt like a second skin, the actual leather felt bulky and restricting.

Lindsay laughed at me; turns out I had the armor on backwards.

I shrugged out of the breastplate in favor of the pants—same thick weave as the shirt, same second-skin feeling—and tied the cuffs around my forearms before letting Gregory help me into the dreaded shell that would protect my chest. In the mirror my reflection looked too much like Lindsay's, down to our bare feet.

A lone pair of boots remained where Alex had dropped her bundle; I snatched them up before Lindsay had the chance. Upon reexamination of our identical reflections, I looked like the cheap version of Lindsay, who looked every bit a warrior queen.

I no longer cared that Hector had kidnapped me. It didn't matter what memories I had forgotten and it wasn't frightening that I might never remember them. Tomorrow I would worry that Jasper had been feeding me Lindsay's blood. Tomorrow I would wonder why Hector suddenly didn't want me to be the motivational mascot he had encouraged me to become. I would force someone to tell me who stole the Nectar—tomorrow.

This is what I was meant to be doing today. Destiny, you know how it goes.

What mattered was restoring the Nectar to wherever it belonged. What mattered was keeping the peace between the gods. Keeping Hector happy mattered.

We were dressed and ready but the war had not officially begun. "We wait until he calls us," Gregory had said both times I asked, now what?

So we waited.

We each fell into a sort of comfortable anticipation. The leather on our bodies looked sturdy enough to take a hit; it didn't hinder Alex from lounging on the floor or Gregory from polishing his blades. I tried to determine the effectiveness of the armor. If I were the enemy, I would aim for the unprotected middle—it made an easy target, my stomach was definitely not bulletproof.

It didn't matter: the gods wouldn't use bullets. Everybody knows that.

We had covered swords and whips and staffs. We went over the different gods who might be there and what they were most known for. I read up on the various creatures who might be part of either army, many of which I would not want to meet in a dark alley. I even, briefly, got a little practice driving the Fury. But still, I was outlandishly unprepared for battle. If this were a test, I'd fail fabulously.

But that was okay: I wasn't supposed to be more than a symbol of the army anyway, right?

We all had different ways of coping with our potential and near-future deaths. Finished polishing, or perhaps too anxious to stay still, Gregory picked up two practice swords and swung them in the drills he taught yesterday.

Alex had her dagger out—no, there were two, three of them—and she ran her finger across the sharp edge, checking on the lethality of her weapons. She did this for all three blades and tucked them away, one in her boot, the other two at her hips. Needing something to do with her jittery hands, she took them out again and repeated the process.