“They won’t make it through this section without needing help,” she says with a wicked curve to her lips.

My own smile grows when a bowl of popcorn appears in my lap, and Lamar appears next with a purple, leather upholstered throne with black trimming.

“It’s beautiful,” I state in slight awe as I hurry to take my seat.

His lips twitch as Hera shoots him a look, but he stands stoically at my side otherwise.

“Be glad my brother is devoutly in love with you,” she says through clenched teeth.

I’m confused about their stare-down, but he cordially bows to her at last. “I can assure you I’ve done nothing to interfere in your match,” he tells her.

She cuts her eyes away, returning her attention to the match below. They’ve begun fighting with some creepy crawly skulls on spider legs that have some blue goop spraying from their mouths. The guys dodge the blue goop, sliding over the ground and striking from whatever angle they can.

I’m now wondering if these four really are my guys, given the weird tension between Lamar and Hera and the mention of some bet between herself and Manella.

Some of their moves seem so familiar, but there are a lot of ways they move that I’ve never seen my guys do. Considering I’ve studied them more intently than anyone, I’m the resident expert.

Still, I can’t actually tell if they’re—

“Let’s see how they fare with the vortex keepers,” Hera says, cutting through my thoughts.

My gaze darts to Lamar, who bristles as though he’s suddenly uneasy.

“What’s a vortex keeper?” I ask him.

“A desperate ploy to win Manella’s crown,” he mutters under his breath.

“That doesn’t tell me anything,” I point out, really confused now.

A raging battle cry has me jerking my head back toward the fight, while shoving popcorn in mouth, because this fight just got good.

The vortex keepers are apparently black knights. It’d be anticlimactic…but…as the scythe wielder manages to slice through one’s torso, it splits and quickly regenerates. Only it regenerates two knights instead of one.

“That’s going to be impossible,” I say, moving to the edge of my seat as the triton wielder and swordsman make the same error with two others.

Now there are six knights attacking instead of three.

The staff wielder does the same thing, causing another split. The more they fight, the more knights seem to form.

I hear a grunt of frustration that sounds very Jude-like, but surely not. They’d be smart enough to figure out when to quit slicing and come up with a new plan of attack.

They switch from offense to defense, fending off the knights’ unified attacks without splitting them into even more. I see the stern concentration in their eyes, and this close up, seeing those more and more familiar skills, I blow out a long breath.

Damn it. These are my guys.

“There’s no way to fight something that only multiplies when it should die,” I say as more and more dread creeps up my spine. “Will my fire burn them, or will they just regenerate again?” I ask Lamar, looking over at him.

“I’m sure they can handle it,” he says, as presumably Kai swings the triton at the front line that closes in on them.

It splits a whole bunch of them in two, and he gets cursed when the multiplication-regeneration crowds the increasingly small space.

“Can they do this without my help?” I ask, darting a worried look over to Hera.

I have a feeling they’ll be pissed if I interfere, since they’ve figured out what I’m up to and have gone to the trouble of showing up all the less than sub-par candidates, who are…officially recycled.

Oops. I forgot to pay them any attention, and apparently Hera forgot them as well.

I guess she did make that part of the course too hard for most. My guys really are that much stronger than even her hand-selected warriors.

Not important.

“Answer me,” I say, turning a glare on her when the guys are forced to fight back and end up multiplying their foes even more.

Hera smirks as she looks over at me. “Without you taking care of things for them, they’d need to summon their collective power—the Unity Strike.”

“What is that?” I ask, annoyed that I’m still getting information I should have already had.

I cut my eyes toward Lamar, and he gives me a timid smile. “It’s been a while. I struggle to recall all their details. They always seemed far less important to me than you,” he says in his defense, doing the thing where he flatters me to cushion my anger.

“They haven’t achieved that level of power yet, so it’s not like it matters,” Hera cuts in. “Don’t worry, Paca. You can step in and save them whenever you please. In fact, I encourage you to do it now that you see there’s no other way. No need to be hostile.”

“I’d like to advise against that course of action and think of a way to counteract the multiplication attacks until they wear them down. Vortex keepers don’t have the ability to sustain their power for longer than a few hours,” Lamar goes on. “If they can hold out, they can cut them down—”

“I increased their stamina levels. This could go on for days…if the guys don’t die first,” Hera adds in a rather chipper tone.

Lamar’s look changes, and he shoots me a small grimace. “Never mind. You really should step in, even though I hate to say that and cost Manella his crown.”

“What’s a Unity Strike?” I ask him, trying not to panic, now that I realize these things have the ability to actually do real harm to my guys.

“The Unity Strike is a collective power they have to summon with a simultaneous thought, something only a strong bond can help wield. They were only able to do it once, even when they were at their strongest,” Lamar tells me, which forces me to exhale harshly.

“And goodness knows their bond is definitely weak, given all the fighting that’s been going on lately,” Hera adds.

There’s a winning gleam in Hera’s eyes, and a prideful piece of me wants to let them figure this all out on their own.

They may be fighting a lot, but it’s the tension, hesitation, and conjoined fear of losing it all to a battle we shouldn’t have to fight that’s causing the discord.

At the end of the day, Jude is going so far as to force himself to love me just to make me stronger. Even though he cares for me, he’s not doing that for me. He’s doing that for them, in spite of the struggle it’s clearly become under the time crunch.

My lips tug up on one side in a sad smile, because I went and made myself important to them. It’s all I wanted.

Now I wish I never had, because it’s possibly put their lives at stake.

Yet the old me wanted me to fall back in love with them, and them with me, or she’d never have tethered me to them in the first place.

This hesitation is mine. That Paca had a plan. I just…don’t know what it was.

A remembered verse from my journal flits through my head as if prompted.

You’ll need answers to the puzzle you’ve laid. To seek such, refer to all things from your favorite decade.

“That doesn’t help,” I say to myself, chewing on my nail as Jude gets really pissed off, releasing his power in a dark funnel that tears through the multipliers…and creates so many new ones that the guys are down to one last corner of the room, fighting off the stabbing forces of endless knights.

Kai’s face piece gets ripped away as he narrowly dodges one man’s sword, the fabric catching on the tip of the blade.

As if seeing proof of their identity is what I needed, a song starts playing in my head. I can’t remember where I’ve heard it, and I can’t really remember the lyrics either, but it seems damn important if it’s just springing up in my head during an anxiety attack that is taking place at a moment when I find myself being hella indecisive. Considering I’m torn between trusting the old me and second-guessing the old me’s plan...this really upbeat melody doesn’t make much sense.

I think the song’s from a boy band. A boy band from the nineties.

Hmm…

Boy band from the nineties…

That doesn’t narrow it down a damn bit.

“Lamar, give me some help. What are the names of some boy bands from the nineties? More specifically, boy bands from the nineties with four members,” I tell him.

“You think now is the time for pop music trivia?” he asks in confusion. “I think the temperature here is affecting your brain now that you’ve been back in Hell for an extended period of time. You need to be helping to figure out what would prompt their next level—”

“What do you mean the temperature here?” I ask him, brow furrowing as I look over.

He frowns. “Purgatory is like an ice wasteland caught between the planes of the surface and Hell.”

“That’s because you never leave Hell. The surface is much cooler,” Hera drawls. “Well, in some regions during certain seasons, anyway. In fact, it’s a nightmare up there.”

She shudders.

“What’s the temperature?” I ask like that’s somehow important information.

“Currently, it’s what it usually is. Ninety-eight degrees,” Lamar answers.