Gauntlet: Chapter 9

She looked at her wrist and its four dangling charms. The joker in its foolscap caught her eye, and a moment of inspiration made her gasp.

Jokers are wild!

But when she tried to fit the joker charm into the heart indentation, her brief burst of hope died. It didn’t fit.

She definitely needed her heart charm back from August. It would let her into that elevator…and maybe let her out.

Maybe they could capture August and strap him to one of those chairs, so they could “soften him up” like he’d tried to do with her. She was almost frustrated enough to be capable of something like that.

Clio sighed. But not quite, she admitted. And it didn’t matter–they couldn’t even get to August, anyway. Chance said Sunshine was almost always with August, and when Sunshine was gone, a number of other guards took his place. August was never alone.

“Worry about that later,” she told herself, reluctantly turning away from the elevator. The important thing was that she’d found her next move.

Her luck with dry skies held on the way back, so she retreated to her outdoor sanctuary atop her tower. If it wasn’t going to rain, she wanted to wait there. She flopped onto the cushions of the gazebo gratefully.

She was a little winded, but not tired. She practically thrummed with excitement. Finally, things were moving again. She couldn’t wait to tell Chance. She got up and paced nervously, trying to walk off her pent-up energy until he arrived.

When the proximity alarm beeped, she pounced on it. Chance was there. She pressed the screen icon that she’d discovered could open the tower remotely. Chance disappeared from view, and she prowled the lawn as she waited for him to climb the stairs.

The sharp peal of a siren made her jump.

It sounded like the test alarm for an advance warning system…or when a disaster was imminent. For a moment, Clio jerked her face to the sky, half-expecting a black funnel to swirl down from the dark clouds overhead.

The clouds rolled, but not one drop of rain fell. Instead, the siren stopped and August’s voice took its place.

Clio went cold as she recognized the bright, smug tone she’d come to know so well. Even through the distortion of the broadcast, he sounded entirely pleased with himself.

Especially as he described his recent capture of Britt.

His voice cut off as his message to the “citizens” ended, but what he didn’t say came through to Clio loud and clear.

If she didn’t go back to him, Britt would suffer.

Britt would suffer.

Clio barely made it into the stairwell before colliding with Chance. He wrestled her out into the open, where the rain had finally began to fall in an irregular patter of drops.

“Let go!” she gasped. She fought his hold as panic bubbled words up her throat. “He can have it! I don’t care!”

“It’s a lie,” Chance hissed. “He’s lying.” His arms tightened around her, but Clio still thrashed in his hold.

“He’s been hiding things from you, Chance! Let go!”

A rough shake snapped her head back, and she stared at him wildly.

“It’s a lie. He just wants to draw you out. Listen to me.”

Clio took a shuddering breath, but the tension in her body didn’t ease. “Britt…”

“He doesn’t have her.” Chance looked directly into her eyes, and Clio searched them intently, her fingers digging into his biceps as she struggled to work out the truth.

“How do you know?” she breathed. Her throat felt raw, and she barely noticed the rain splattering on her head and arms.

“I know,” Chance soothed. “He doesn’t have her.”

“But–”

“You have to trust me on this one, Clio.”

She wanted to. She wanted nothing more than to believe that Chance was right. He didn’t elaborate, but his eyes softened in a way she’d never seen before. Desperate loneliness welled up inside her.

“He…really doesn’t have her?” Clio whispered, her voice breaking.

She let herself sag a little when he nodded. When his arms came around her, she couldn’t help the tears that came. She pressed her face against his chest, focusing on the tiny pats of rainwater that tickled her scalp until the relief sank in.

Britt…

She wiped her eyes and finally pulled away. The distress in Chance’s face shocked her.

“You were going to run out without waiting for me,” he accused. “You would’ve walked right into his trap.”

“I didn’t have any other choice!” Clio shouted.

“Yes, you did. You do! I thought you trusted me!”

Clio had never seen Chance so worked up. She pulled back from him and the hurt that radiated off him.

“I do, but this is different,” Clio countered.

“It’s stupid,” he snapped. “You think August would’ve let her go just because you showed up and offered to take her place?”

“I had to do something!”

“Yeah, turning yourself over to August–great plan.”

His scathing disapproval hurt her, made her feel even guiltier because she could see how much she’d freaked him out. But her pride hurt, too. She hadn’t planned to waltz into August’s clutches, but clearly Chance was going to judge her on her first reaction.

She clenched her teeth. “I found the way out,” she said flatly.

His eyes flew wide as the scowl dropped from his face. The rain had grown harder; rivulets dripped down Clio’s face, and she had to blink water from her blurring gaze.

“It’s in another tower,” she clarified. She added, a little anxious, “But we need the heart August took from me.”

She assumed Chance would yell at her for taking another stupid risk, but a resigned expression passed over his face. “Yeah,” he murmured. “I figured it would come down to that.”

“I…I was thinking…about how we could get it from him,” Clio said tentatively. “I know he used to be your friend, and maybe he still is, but–”

“I’m going to steal the heart,” Chance interrupted.

“Wh-what?” She could barely get the word out, she was so floored by his sudden certainty.

“It’s the easiest way.” He looked up into the pattering rain, his eyebrows drawn together in thought.

Clio wiped water from her own face as she felt her clothes soak through. “Y-you can’t steal it,” she gasped as the rain pelted her with new fervor. “You told me yourself.”

Chance shot her a sad grin. “I never said you can’t.”

“You said there are consequences!” Clio cried. “What are they?”

Chance sighed. “Rumor is you become an unwilling test subject to the powers that be.”

“You’ll become a drooler?!”

“Or worse.”

“No!” Clio shook her head frantically. “Don’t be stupid! We’ll find another way!”

“It could just be a rumor,” Chance murmured. “Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

“Chance, I mean it. No.”

He had to be kidding. It was too crazy of an idea, and it didn’t make any sense. He wouldn’t do that for her. Not even if…

He leveled his dark eyes on her, his long eyelashes batting against the torrents of water from above. “Sometimes you have to sacrifice a piece to win the game.”

“It’s not worth it!”

“I saw this coming. And it is worth it if it’ll get you out, Clio.”

“Not to me!” Clio stepped forward and clutched his arms. “Why would you even think about doing something like that?!”

“Why would you think about rushing off to help Britt?” A tiny, self-deprecating smile curved Chance’s mouth. “August wasn’t wrong about everything.”

Clio’s stomach rolled. “Was it you?” she asked, her voice unsteady. “Was it you who kissed me at that weird feast with all the people in masks? Were any of them you?”

A look of regret passed over his face, and Clio wanted to cry. He wouldn’t see it in the rain.

“No,” he breathed.

“But you got me away. That was you,” Clio insisted.

“Yes.” His eyes seemed to light up, and Clio watched in fascination as his features softened. “When you asked me to kiss you–even though you didn’t know who I was–I was tempted. I wanted to…but not when you were half out of your senses.”

She was hit with that sweeping sense of déjà vu that she’d felt with him before; it brought fragments of memories she couldn’t quite clarify in her mind. But she remembered the feelings from that night. She had wanted him to kiss her, not because she was drugged and half out of her senses, but because he’d wanted to. She’d felt that. Because he’d wanted to and hadn’t.

Clio laughed weakly as the sky opened up and seemed to dump all its contents on them at once. Chance looked at her like she was crazy, and that made her laugh harder. She reached up on her tiptoes and wound her arms around his neck.

She kissed him when his arms tightened around her, drawing her against his chest.

His mouth was warm and soft and eager, and despite the rain that made her break out in goose bumps–was it the rain doing that?–she didn’t stop to breathe until she began to shiver. Chance pulled her into the shelter of the stairwell.

He started to speak, that obstinate cast spreading over his features, and Clio knew he would say this didn’t change anything. He was still going to steal the heart.

She interrupted him with another kiss, unwilling to let him say it. Maybe she couldn’t change his mind. Maybe he was going to be his typical hardass self and run straight into his doom.

But she’d be damned if she let him go alone.

She grinned against his lips. “Let’s go find August,” she breathed.

Concluded in Chapter 10.

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