Page 4 of Captured in Love
Apart from one very hot Icelandic contestant…
“Do you think we’ll have to go up against Einarsson again?” Raphaël asks.
It’s not the first time he and Levi have seemingly read my mind in the past couple of days, and I jolt to awareness, clicking off the screen of my tablet.
Isak Einarsson is a tall, blond, bearded Icelander who entered the Ballendial Games on his own, then brought a human henchman to Egypt for some unknown reason. The same human who then got eaten by Set. That’s not the issue, though. I had the strangest reaction to the guy when he asked me to dance at the opening ceremony, and he helped Raphaël and Levi dig me out from the collapsed tunnel in the desert when he could have just as easily left me there to rot. And there’s also the fact that he kissed me—thoroughly—then jumped into the Nile River and disappeared. So. I’m not sure what to think about him at all.
“We might?” I say, trying not to sound too hopeful. “Unless he is saving this location for last and went off somewhere else. Then we might be finished with this task before he even gets here.”
I try not to show that this bothers me. I should have put a tracking spell on the man when I had the chance. Then I wouldn’t have to hope and wonder.
Levi straightens in his chair. “Are you okay with going up against him?”
I hate that he hit the jackpot on my uncertainty. Levi knows me too well sometimes. My first impulse is to snap at him. Does he think Isak’s kiss was so amazing it fried my brain? But he’s right to ask this, of course, so I smooth out my ruffled feathers and blow out my breath.
“I don’t know. He helped save my life and gave us a lift out of the desert. But that doesn’t mean I’m willing to just roll over and hand the victory to him, you know?”
Raphaël leans in closer. “He proved himself to be a good man, but that doesn’t make him an ally. We have no idea what his endgame is for this competition.”
“That’s the big issue, though, isn’t it?” I grumble. “We have no idea why any of the other teams joined the Games. Even the friendly ones, like Aline and Helena. Those Dorokhovs were completely unhinged, like they’d kill us in a heartbeat if we stood in their way.”
The Russian couple attacked us in the Cairo bazaar and were probably the cause of the massive sandstorm that nearly buried us alive before we even reached the tomb. I really hope those two maniacs didn’t choose Iceland as their second location.
“What are they all looking for in that library?” I continue. “I mean, I want to get in badly enough to continue despite the danger, but I wouldn’tkillover it.”
“Yeah, but that’s because you’re a softie at heart.” Levi nudges my shoulder.
I arch an eyebrow at him. “Are you sayingyou’dkill to get in the library?”
“Nooo,” he drawls, “but not everyone is as pure as me.”
Raphaël snorts at this and tries to cover it up with a cough.
“What?” Levi says, feigning indignation.
I pat his hand. “It’s okay. We know you don’t have a pure bone in your body.”
Levi laughs. “But you love that about me, right?”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “Somehow, I do.”
The seat belt signs ping on, and the crew ask us to prepare for landing. I fold my hands in my lap and close my eyes just for a moment, calming my thoughts and my breathing with a simple meditation. Since the inaugural ceremony nearly a week ago, my life has become exponentially more complicated with every decision I make. And I suspect this new task in Iceland won’t be any easier to solve than the one in Egypt.
But as I open my eyes and glance first at Levi, then at Raphaël, I realize I’ve also gained something priceless.
“If you look out the window on your left, you’ll see a plume of volcanic ash,” the pilot announces over the speakers. “Which is why we had to do a little detour before descending into Reykjavik.”
He goes on to name the volcano currently erupting—a name so incomprehensible I have no hope of repeating it. I lean over Levi to see out the window, and true enough, a tall column of dark-gray smoke rises in the distance, and below it…
“Whoa, is that lava?” Levi crowds his face next to mine to see the volcano.
I kiss his cheek—I can’t resist when he’s so close and gawking so adorably. “Yep.”
“Man, when we finish this competition, I want to go see a volcano up close,” he says, echoing a sentiment I’ve been voicing ever since we started this journey.
I laugh. “Deal.”
But another thought sobers me up completely. We’re making so many plans for the future, most of them starting with ‘when we finish this competition.’ But the trouble is, I’m not sure we’ll get to the end at all.
