“Never felt important before.” I shrug, placing the huggin face down on the empty space on the grid. “Does now.”
“Okay, well … where is it?” He scoops the dice into the cup and rolls a seven, though he’s swift to discount the card he picks and leaves it face down on the grid.
“Think she took it back with her to Arithia,” I mumble, rolling a two, this time picking up the Moltenmaw.
Luck, it seems, is licking my ass.
“Over a hundred phases ago,” he says with a thick tone of sarcasm I certainly don’t appreciate. “It’s probably dust.”
“It’s cold there.” I watch him over my fan of shards, holding his stare as I set the flotti face down on the empty spot. “Perfect atmosphere for preservation.”
He looks at me like I’m daft, which we both know is far from true. “Think you can visit Tyroth and not cut off his head, forcing your only decent brother into a war that starts off on the back foot?” He slams a shard on the table, and I frown at the thieving woetoe leering at me from the painted side.
Cute. He thinks he’s got tricks.
“I’m not that irresponsible.” I ease my hand forward so he can blindly steal whatever shard he wants, smirking when he plucks the fog slug from the far right. “And you’re incredibly shit at this game.”
He scowls down at the shard, growling as he threads it into his fanned hand. “I hate playing with you. I’ve watched you play over your shoulder before. You usually stack your good shards from the right to the left.”
“Exactly why I stacked them left to right,” I tell him, draining my glass before thumping it on the table. “Skripi.”
“Already?”
“Want me to say it louder?”
“No,” he mutters, slamming down the Sabersythe I trump with my Moonplume, all the colors leaching from his shard—like the Sabersythe just perished. “Fucking knew it.”
I set my colk down, but he trumps it with a velvet trogg, also winning the following stomp when his miskunn trumps my enthu.
Perhaps high on the smell of impending victory, he slams down the doomquill I’m quick to trump with my hushling before I slap my Moltenmaw on the final slot, knowing there’s nothing left in the deck for him to beat me with.
“You lose.” I fill my glass and kick back in the seater, taking a deep draw, the brandy casting a fiery trail down my throat—my next breath hissed through clenched teeth. “I reserve my right to a favor. To be used at a later date.”
“I’m never playing with you on my own again.” He flops back on the seater, using his bent arm as a pillow. “It’s not so bad when you beat me and Grihm at the same time.” He spits a word beneath his breath that peels a whip of flame from one of the sconces. It flits into his hand where he twirls it between his fingers like a slithering snake.
I look to the ceiling, the pretty bronze, black, and red tiles making up the face of Pah’s snarling Sabersythe, Grohn. Constantly staring down at us. Constantly judging my indiscretions—or so Pah used to say when he discovered I was fucking one of the hutchkeepers after I’d given myself to the Creators to escape any future Tookah Trials.
He called it unbecoming. Disgraceful.
Embarrassing.
He also said Mah would be devastated to know she died giving birth to such a filthy whore.
I called it sweet, pleasurable revenge and decided Mah would’ve smiled at me, given me a pat on the head, and told me I could fuck whoever I felt inclined to fuck. Or nobody at all, if that’s what I wanted. Hard to know for sure since I never met her, but she made me, and I like to think I inherited all my fabulous traits from her.
Certainly not the asshole who sired me.
“Guess I’m going to The Shade,” I mutter, drawing another deep sip of my drink, the liquid burning a spicy trail down my throat, heating my belly. “Yay for me. Wanna come?”
“Shit no.”
“I could make you,” I drawl, lifting my glass above my head, closing one eye to look at Grohn through the fractals—the menacing fucker. “Call on the favor I just won.”
“You’re not that cruel.”
He’s right. I’m not.
Unfortunately.
Sighing, I turn the glass, further fragmenting Grohn’s horrific face, remembering the way Pah used to cue him to chase folk across the plains if they displeased him in any way.
I shiver.
“You’re not gonna wait until Elluin wakes? Reintroduce yourself?”