Cupid’s Match

I sprint down the tunnel after Cupid, my heart pounding against my chest. The screech of the walls fills my ears, so close to me now that my sides ram against them as I stumble forward. My leg muscles are screaming with the effort and my breathing is hard and fast.

We’re getting closer to the opening at the end, but it’s still a good fifty feet away. Panic fills me. I’m not sure I can make it.

Twenty feet to go.

Cupid glances over his shoulder as he reaches the end of the tunnel. The walls are now almost touching me.

“Lila!”

I’m almost there.

With a spurt of strength I thrust myself forward. I can hardly breathe—the air is close and I have a stitch in my side.

Five feet to go.

The tunnel walls have almost closed in on Cupid’s broad frame. With a screaming effort he twists his body to the side and grabs my arm so hard that I feel my shoulder wrench in its socket. He pulls me forward and together we burst into the light, our sides scraping against the narrow edges of the walls as the passage clamps shut behind us.

For a moment we find ourselves falling through the air. Then pain explodes through my body as we hit the floor hard, in a crumpled heap of arms and legs.

Cupid groans as I disentangle myself from him, then rolls onto his back and pushes himself up so he’s leaning on his elbows. I kneel on the floor beside him, trying to catch my breath.

“Pandora’s box,” he says. “I should have guessed there would be some claustrophobic element to her Sim. Are you okay?”

I nod, glancing down at my body; my once-white suit is covered with a thick layer of dust and rubble. I brush off my arms and look around us.

We’re in a small, square room filled with flickering torchlight—it makes the eerie carvings in the stone walls seem like they’re moving. I try to make them out; there’s a strange horned goatlike creature on one side and what looks like a human heart carved on the other.

Across the room is a metal door, a letter L imprinted on it in ancient-looking calligraphy. Around the frame the numbers one to seven are repeated in flourished carvings. I remember Cupid saying something earlier about Pandora keeping sins in her box.

Seven sins?

I turn back to Cupid, who is still reclining, propped up on his elbows. I wonder why he hasn’t got up yet. His gaze catches mine and he holds it. The black top beneath his leather jacket is damp with sweat, and it clings to his body. Even though I know we should move through the marked door, I feel strangely reluctant to go. I kneel beside Cupid. I can feel heat radiating from him.

“What is this place?” My voice comes out croaky and breathless. I’m hot, and I feel different.

Cupid doesn’t answer me. His eyes burn into mine, almost feverish, and his breathing intensifies. Though I am close enough to touch his skin, he is not close enough.

Suddenly he grabs the back of my head with a large hand and pulls. I fall into him and he kisses me; the movements of his mouth are hot and heavy as his arms encase me, pulling me closer as he parts my lips with his tongue. I run my fingers along the back of his neck then grab at his hair. A small groan escapes him. With a sudden movement he seizes me and flips me over onto my back, pressing his body against mine, thigh to thigh.

Then, just as suddenly, he propels himself away from me. Looking astonished, he leaps to his feet and plasters himself against the far wall. His breathing is heavy and his eyes wide.

I scramble to a sitting position, trying to control my racing pulse. His skin is flushed and I don’t feel right. What’s wrong with us?

“We need to get out of here,” says Cupid.

His voice sounds different; lower and rougher.

“What’s going on?”

“I told you that Pandora could control the sins,” he says between hard and heavy breaths. “There are seven in total. Lust is one of them.” He gestures to the door. “L for lust—it’s controlling us. We need to get out of here.”

I lurch to my feet and try to walk toward the door, but somehow find myself approaching Cupid instead.

“Lila,” he says, his breathing still heavy, “you need to stay away from me. It’ll work on us like the Ardor. Drive us mad. We’ll never get out.”

When I try to move away, I somehow end up touching his arm. There is an ache inside of me that only he can ease.

“Lila,” he warns, alarm in his eyes. His jaw is clenched, like he’s waging some kind of internal battle. Then suddenly the resolve dissolves. He grins, but it’s wider than usual, and there’s a flash of white teeth.

“Could have been a worse sin to be stuck with, I suppose,” he says mischievously as he steps toward me. He loops an arm around my waist and I stagger forward, bracing my palms on his chest, my fingers curling around the fabric of his top.

He tilts his head to me, leaning in for another kiss.

His words repeat in my head.

The lust will drive us mad. We’ll never get out.

I wrench myself away and bolt toward the door, ramming my shoulder against the metal. It gives way, screeching against the floor, and the spell is broken. I lean my back against the carved metal and, panting, catch Cupid’s gaze.

“Well, that was interesting,” he says, striding toward the exit. “Though as I said, it could have been worse. Sloth, wrath, greed . . .”

“Gluttony might not have been so bad,” I say, my voice still a little croaky. “Maybe we’d have just got to eat a load of pies.”

“You’re thinking about pie at a time like this?” He chuckles. “Come on,” he says, and we walk through the door together.

Almost instantly I feel the wind get knocked out of my lungs as something hits me, throwing me to the hard ground. I hear a woman’s voice raised in a war cry, and the sudden clash of metal against metal.

Cupid is fighting an athletic-looking female.

Her hair is long and black, and whips ferociously around her face. She wears a light dress, which moves and flows with her quick, fluid movements. She’s wielding what looks like a samurai sword, which Cupid deflects with an arrow he’s brandishing with both hands, like a shield.

I glance around hurriedly. We’re in a vast arena. There are seven doors around the circle, including the one Cupid and I just came through. In the center of the arena is a hatch in the floor.

My body tenses. Behind the sound of fighting, I hear something worse; something that makes the hairs on my arms stand on end. It’s the weird squelching sound I heard earlier in the tunnel.

What is that?

The girl has pushed Cupid up against the wall, his arrow at their feet.

“Pandora,” he says, raising his hands in defeat. “Hey, Pandora, it’s me.”

She stares at him for a moment with ferocious, catlike eyes. Then she furrows her eyebrows.

“Cupid?” she says as the noise sounds again—closer this time.

“Yes, we’ve come to get you out of here.”

She looks at him suspiciously. “There’s no way out of here.”

The noise is loud now, coming from the hatch at the center of the arena. I stare as the doors begin to move; something is pushing against them. There’s something in there.

Pandora finally notices me on the ground, and then turns her gaze coldly back to Cupid.

“Every hour,” she says, “every hour for as long as I can remember, a sin comes out of that box, and I have to kill it or be killed myself. Next one is Gluttony.”

She strides toward the hatch which is now rattling, and brandishes her sword.

“If you really are here to help me, then get ready to fight,” she says. “I’ve been here a long time, and I’m tired.”

My heart races as the hatch suddenly bursts open.

“Oh,” she adds, “and don’t get eaten.”