Page 33 of Competing Against Thor

I smiled and followed her to the front of the room, where the others had already congregated.

"Things are going to be a bit different today," Rosie said. "Because your sculptures are so big, we aren't able to take them to the judging rooms, so the judges are coming here."

Interesting. I hadn't expected to see the judges at all, and it was probably best if they didn't realise I was me, or that would completely undermine my attempts to prove that I was good without anyone knowing who I was.

"You'll be sitting over here." She gestured to six chairs. "And the judges won't be interacting with you because it's still supposed to be a blind judging for the final next week." She ushered us over.

I went over to the seats and sat down, with Daisy sitting beside me. She bumped her leg against mine in a way that no one else would notice.

"You're going to have to tell me who is who," she whispered to me.

Ah, I hadn't even considered that she wouldn't know who was who.

Workers headed towards our sculpture and Daisy tensed as they moved it, no doubt worrying that everything was going to start falling apart when they did. The others weren't much better, and Brandon looked as if he was about to march overthere and start lecturing them about the proper way to treat a piece of art.

The change in position let me finally get a good look at what the others had done. I'd meant to go and check them out when we'd finished with our sculpture last night, but I was distracted by the way it had felt to kiss Daisy.

"I like Brandon and Kenji's willow," Daisy whispered to me.

I nodded. "I think there's a pond beneath it too."

"I wouldn't mind talking to Kenji about how he gets that water effect. Do you think he'd tell us?"

I looked over at the other man, and from the sour expression on his face, I had to assume that the collaboration hadn't gone as well as it had for us. "I don't think so."

"That's a shame." She sat back in her seat and waited for the judges to arrive.

Rosie went over to them and started talking to the nearest camera, but she was too far away for me to hear what they were saying.

"The woman on the left with brown hair and the pink shirt is Aine," I said to Daisy. "She's the CEO of Jinx, and a Celtic goddess of love, beauty, and a few other things."

"Right. So, not someone to get on the bad side of," she murmured.

I chuckled. "Aine is actually very sweet, you'd like her."

"Okay, who is the other woman?"

"Persephone."

"ThePersephone?"

I nodded. "Is that more impressive than the CEO of a successful company that's barely a year old?"

"Well, she's Persephone. Queen of the Underworld, wife of Hades..."

"Don't say that around her if you want to win the competition, they broke up a while back."

"Oh good to know. So who is the guy?" Her curious expression was adorable, and there was a part of me that couldn't wait to be doing this again at a future party.

"That's Xochipilli."

"You've lost me there," she admitted. "If I'm going to spend more time with you, I'm really going to have to study up on my mythology, aren't I?"

I chuckled. "Luckily, I know a lot of the gods, so I can tell you. We call him Xoch, he's the Aztec god of a few things, but art is one of them."

"Ah, so a god who actually knows what he's talking about. Unless he doesn't know anything about art."

"He knows plenty," I assured her.