I open my mouth, words clogging on my tongue as the tip of the octimar’s tendril flicks across my palm in etching trails, the pledge’s hot pulse sludging through blood and sloshing against bone.
Bastard.
The octimar finishes his prickly inscription while secrets squirm in my belly like a knot of worms.
I clear my throat, scrunching my tingling hand into a ball. “And if I win, we pretend we’re the ones who existed in that place I suspect you built for us, but only until next aurora rise. At which stage, you’ll owe me a single wish.”
Confusion swims in his eyes as the octimar scrawls upon his palm. “What happens once the aurora rises?”
“Not important.”
“What. Happens?”
I sigh, gather my allotted shards off the table and begin sorting them, stare cast on the vibrant illustrations. “I will have a Mindweft smudge you from my brain. Get back to reality. The wish is precautionary.”
I need a full stop in my back pocket. Something I can stake in the ground if it comes to it. He may think it’s cruel, but I refuse to barter with his well-being. And loving me?
It’s a fucking death wish.
I shift my hushling to the far left, move my enthu to the right, silence stretching for so long I glance at Kaan over my fanned deck.
He’s watching me, his stare so intense it almost siphons all the breath from my lungs—not that I let on.
“What?” I ask, tipping my head to the side.
“You lost someone …”
My heart splats against my ribs.
My mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. When I can’t forge my scrambling thoughts into a single word to throw at him, I slam my fan face down on the table and shove to a stand, stalking toward the exit.
Fuck this.
Fuck him.
Fuck everything.
Something long and leathery lashes around my throat—tightening. Snagging my ability to breathe or speak.
I try to weave my fingers beneath the noose and pry it loose but fail to get any traction, all the blood in my head threatening to burst my bulging eyes.
My mouth gapes, and I fall to my knees, mist wafting up like reaching claws.
A shadow shifts into my atmosphere, my gaze rolling to Kaan now crouching before me. Arms resting on his bent knees, he banks his head to the side. “You can’t leave, Raeve.” His finger comes up to support the underside of my chin, tipping my head so I’m forced to meet his blazing perusal. “We’re bound to the table until the game is through.”
I look at the octimar now shoved to its full, unimaginable height, the beast’s puckered lips pulled back in a gaping yowl that exposes hundreds of sharp teeth. Big and small. Long and stumpy.
Kaan helps me up, then nudges me toward my chair. Only when my hand slaps upon the back of it does the creature let me loose, breath heaving into my starved lungs.
“Sit,” Kaan growls from the other side of the table.
I swallow, rubbing my aching throat as I look at him, seeing a fire in his eyes that reminds me of the bulb of dragonflame nesting at the base of Rygun’s throat.
Chugging the rest of my Moonplume’s Breath in three deep gulps, I slam the flute back on the table, clear my throat, and obey—knowing exactly what Kaan is going to ask should he win this round.
What have I done?
Itoss the dice, rolling a four, deciding to pluck the twentieth shard from the top left corner—keeping my face smooth when my gaze coasts over the smox. A black swirling splotch that can transform into any creature, immediately inheriting its strengths.
Its weaknesses.
A risky shard that can’t represent the same creature as any other played in the final lay or else it’s immediately void, that play lost. Problem is, by the end, all the best shards are generally played, leaving it useless. A waste of space when you could be holding something genuinely valuable.
I pinch the flotti from my fan and set it back in the empty space.
“You know,” Kaan says, rolling the dice, taking a shard from the square and threading it amongst his hand, filling the gap with one of his previous shards, “I taught my sister how to play this game.”
“She any good?” I ask, scattering the dice.
“Excellent.”
I purse my lips, pick a shard, look at it. Set it straight back down again. “Better than you?”
“Hasn’t beaten me once,” he mumbles, tossing down.
My eyes almost roll out of my head. “How conceited of you.”
“Just hopeful, Moonbeam. Ever hopeful.”
I arch a brow in question.
“Unless you were playing Skripi with Slátra while you were balled up in the sky, I have at least an eon on you.” He shrugs. “I pray to the Creators that it gives me the advantage I need to win.”