“So he could see you manipulating the game.” Eva didn’t miss a beat.
“As you could as a valco! Cheat!” the man roared.
Javier placed his left hand over the hilt of his sword, lazily. “You don’t get many valcos around here, do you?”
The arbiter spat on the floor between them.
“Perhaps you need to be schooled in respect,” Javier said.
“Not here, he doesn’t!” the potbellied inn owner bellowed across the inn. “You can school each other all you want outside. Just take it outside,” he hissed.
“Yes,” Javier said with his lazy charm, “why don’t we deal with this without a spectacle. Or are performances all you know?”
“You shut up, you wretch!”
Javier’s scabbard clicked as he dislodged the sword, revealing polished steel. His jaw tightened.
“We will leave as soon as I have my escudos back!” The arbiter pointed at her, riling the beefy men who trailed him. “And if you can’t find them, then you will repay them.”
“You will leave now!” roared the inn owner.
“We want our gold back!” one of the arbiter’s followers said.
“That duskling robbed the whole town. Anyone who ever bet on Calamity lost their gold thanks to that half-breed,” the other one added, pointing a sausage finger straight at her.
The motion was close to Eva, close enough she would barely get a moment’s breath to sprint away should he try to hurt her. But Eva had already made her choice. She stood up, holding her head high. A proper valco, afraid of no one. “It’s called gambling—but you cheated.”
“Gambling with your life, you bitch.” The arbiter hollered to the three men, “Grab her!”
Eva gasped, and the whole world took an inhale with her.
The tallest gambler lunged at Javier, who stepped back with ease, like a bamboo leaf carried by a river current. In the same fluid motion, he rounded on the man, and the pommel of his sword met the man’s temple with a fleshy thud.
The impact sent the big man hurling across the room before crashing against two occupied tables. Patrons roared and jumped away, mugs spilling and food flying everywhere.
“Out of my establishment! Out!” the owner cried.
Javier’s hand clamped over Eva’s shoulder. He yanked her behind him. She crashed hard against a chair, the backrest bashing into her hip bone. Pain lanced up her side. She sucked in a furious hiss, her valco blood coming alive as the arbiter’s cane sliced the air right where she had stood.
The arbiter reeled back, composing himself with a mien of confidence as he prepared to meet Javier. Like he was prepared to walk away victorious. Eva’s stomach lurched as her husband straightened his lithe stance, ready for the next blow.
The arbiter swung. Javier stepped to the side, avoiding the sure shredding of his perfectly tailored garments. Then he whirled, swinging his left-handed sword to the arbiter’s undefended side. Steel hit flesh with a wet thwack.
Eva’s gaze jerked away as footsteps stormed at her. A member of the arbiter’s entourage, the man with the bismuto spell, ran to tackle her. She sidestepped him, but his swinging fist was made faster by the enhancement and caught her arm, making waves of pain shoot up her shoulder. She croaked, flinging the chair behind her to slow him down, and scurried out of reach. But his heavy hand clamped down on the leg of the chair. He took a massive stride forward with a vicious grin on his face. Instead of pausing, he grabbed the chair and grinned.
“I was hoping you could fight, if you had the nerve to steal from us,” he said before hoisting the chair high over his head and slamming it down at her with a roar.
Eva jumped to her left and knocked her shoulder on a wall as the chair whistled through the air beside her. A leg of the chair caught her on the side, ripping through clothes or skin—with her spiking adrenaline, she couldn’t tell which. Then the wall cornered her.
Ahead, the inn owner and another man wrestled, pummeling each other’s sides while knocking fleeing patrons and furniture everywhere. Javier’s and the arbiter’s steel rang from a parry. Javier leapt onto a chair as the arbiter swung for his calves. She didn’t have to worry for his safety—he stood so perfectly balanced, unfazed and without a single crease marring his clothes.
Rotting teeth grinned at her as the bismuto user raised the chair in the air in front of her, the threat of striking clear in his eyes. Eva’s heart migrated to her throat.
Then he swung.
She threw herself to the side, slapping her chest against the stone floor. Then she scampered away on her hands and knees, lashing out with her foot to kick her pursuer in the shin. The hit bought her just a few seconds to scramble to her feet and bolt to Javier.
Her pursuer followed, unsheathing a knife. Eva toppled chairs and tables behind her as she ran, her flitting eyes catching Javier slashing at the arbiter’s side. Blood spurting from the gash. The arbiter screaming like a butchered pig.
There was a swoosh behind her. Eva spun to see the man standing at arm’s length.
She was going to die tonight.
Eyes manic with adrenaline, the bismuto man swung a second time. In a flash of silver and blue, Javier materialized in front of Eva, his weapon raised like an afterthought, as if the motion were not for her but for the benefit of their attacker.
“Javier.” Eva’s whimper unmasked all the pretending she had done since she left her home.
The bismuto man eased back. He glanced at the bleeding arbiter, then at the other man wrestling the inn owner and at his fainted ally. They looked defeated.
He stepped back, raising his knife to yield.
Eva dragged in a sharp a breath of relief. They had won. It was over.
But Javier didn’t care. With a swift slash, his sword sliced the man’s hand holding the knife. Both bounced to the floor, detached.
The man doubled over in howls as hot blood hissed and squirted from the divorced wrist.
“Javier!” Eva cried, her eyes taking in the terrible bloody sight of the man. Her body shook. She tugged at Javier’s arm, begging, “He’s done! Leave him!”
Javier turned to her, glaring at her with eyes wholly infected by tendrils of black.
He shook her off and barked, his voice morphed to that of a demon, two superimposed voices in one, “Eva Kesaré—know your place.”
Fear rooted her to the spot. Strings of black magic invisible to human eyes snaked in and out of his eyes and skin, like a disease.
Javier’s lip curled at her hesitation. He approached the howling man, who cradled his fallen hand in a pool of his own blood. When he saw Javier, he whimpered and kicked back, but it was in vain.
With his fingernails pointed and sharp like steel, Javier lunged, impaling the man in the throat.
All who witnessed sucked in their breaths.
In a single sickening motion, Javier ripped through the man’s flesh and vessels, pulling out tendrils of once-living matter. The man gurgled noisily. Around them, people screamed. And Eva dug fingernails into her belly, the squeezing easing her shock, telling her it wasn’t a nightmare. This was real.
“You lunatic!” cried the inn owner, forgetting all about wrestling the arbiter’s second cohort. “Get him out of here!” he ordered his nozariel servers, who only watched, petrified.