Rhanes squinted, unsure whether this foggy haze was real or only his imagination. A tall blond male with a razor-sharp smile cut through the crowd.
Recognition slowly filtered in. Alexei. The prince’s second-in-command.
If the vampire was here, His Highness was likely nearby…
A flutter of panic stirred in Rhanes’s belly before his attention was yanked to the sudden tolling of the clock tower’s bells. The witching hour was upon them.
Voices, hundreds of them, began whispering as each stroke of the second hand brought the top of the hour ever closer.
Are those memories? Are they purging at last?
Why had he thought such a ridiculous thing? He struggled to recall the last time he’d drunk from the chalice. Perhaps that would make this end. Whatever this was.
Rhanes covered his ears and squeezed his eyes shut as the cacophony grew.
The voices unified and that same odd phrase broke free, loud and clear.
Same lie Lilac. Same lie Lilac. Same lie Lilac. Same lie Lilac.
“Shut up!” he yelled, earning a few more jeers.
Rhanes cracked an eye. Bloody hell. He was drunk as sin. No one else was speaking now.
He staggered up toward the throne, willing to take his chances with angering his prince in favor of stopping the room from spinning. He just needed one moment of stillness, one beat to breathe, to think. If he could only remember…
Everything screeched to a halt the moment he sat.
Each lord and lady crumpled to an unmoving heap on the checkered floor, like chess pieces knocked astray.
A game. That had to be what was happening. The prince would know for certain. And Alexei would find the prince.
Rhanes stiffened, searching for the vampire, but Alexei was nowhere to be seen.
“What the—”
The bells stopped ringing. Midnight had finally come.
Dark smoke suddenly twisted up and around the throne, forcing Rhanes to hold his sleeve to his nose, eyes stinging. He searched out the source and caught sight of himself in a mirror across the chamber, his mouth falling open in horror.
Half the throne was untouched and the other half, the part where he sat, now chained by magic, was engulfed in flames.
He was burning.
Whatever fog had been hovering vanished and reality hit Rhanes hard and fast. He screamed as the very real flames whipped him like a sadistic lover, melting his flesh.
He wanted to save himself, run far from the deadly flames, but for some reason, all he could scream was “SAME LIE LILAC!”
As the blessed darkness of unconsciousness slowly descended, Rhanes could have sworn the prince finally emerged from the shadows, emerald eyes glittering.
A tiny spark of hope lit within him. The prince was stronger, he’d resist the madness before they were all damned. He had to.
“Same lie. Lilac,” Rhanes whimpered.
Same lie Lilac. Same lie Lilac. Same lie. Lilac.
The prince stood over him, merely surveying the scene, as if committing it to memory.
With Death hovering seconds away, Rhanes finally gathered the last of his will. “What… does… it… mean?”
“It means the game has finally begun.”
Anger flickered in the prince’s face before he strode from the chamber.
Soon Rhanes was alone. Or maybe he wasn’t…
He closed his eyes, his mind growing dark. Still.
Maybe Prince Envy had never truly been there and maybe he wasn’t burning on the Hexed Throne at all.
Rules of Conduct
No magical persuasion will be used to influence nonplayers who directly relate to your clues.
Each player will have three chances to move to the next clue. Failure after the third means disqualification.
The punishment for disqualification will be determined by the game master, including but not limited to death.
The prize will be tailored to the individual winner. Everyone has something at stake.
Players have been personally selected by the game master.
By agreeing to participate in the Game, you hereby bind yourself to its will until a winner is chosen.
Mark the below line with a drop of blood to activate the bonding spell.
Once activated, the Game will keep track of your progress, reporting directly to the King of Chaos.
Good luck.
ONE
MISS CAMILLA ANTONIUS had very little patience for fools, even handsome ones.
And Lord Philip Atticus Vexley—with his golden hair, tanned skin, and roguish grin—was among the finer specimens in both areas. Especially if he thought she’d create another forgery for him.
Which, as he swept into the art gallery just as the sun was setting—in his buffed riding boots, burgundy swallowtail jacket, and close-fitting camel breeches—Camilla knew was precisely the reason he’d come.
It was almost closing time, and the secretive glint in Vexley’s eyes was most unwelcome; they were not friends or confidants. Nor were they lovers. In fact, if Camilla never saw him again, she’d host a soirée fit for the crown to celebrate her good fortune.
“Working on anything intriguing, Miss Antonius?”
“Just a landscape, Lord Vexley.”
It was not the truth, but Vexley didn’t deserve to know that. Camilla’s art was deeply personal to her, drawn from her mother’s warnings, her father’s stories, and her own loneliness, which helped her see the world as it truly was.
Her art was often her soul laid bare, a part of her she hesitated to share with just anyone.
Thankfully the easel faced away from the door and Vexley would need to walk around to view it. He rarely put such great effort into anything but his own scandalous reputation.
Camilla pushed the stool back from her easel and quickly abandoned her painting as she moved to the old oak desk that acted as the register and a wonderful partition to keep the irksome lord at bay.
“Was there anything I could assist you with, or are you simply admiring the art this evening?”
His attention dipped to her paint-splattered smock. She hadn’t removed it upon his arrival, and the slight pressing of his lips indicated that he wished she would.
“Don’t play coy, darling. You know why I’ve come.”
“As we’ve previously discussed, my lord, the debt has been paid. I’ve even secured a memory stone for you. All you have to do is feed that particular memory to it.”
Or so Camilla had been told by the dark-market dealer she’d purchased the alleged magical stone from. She hadn’t felt any buzz of magic, though that wasn’t exactly a surprise, all things considered. Still, Vexley refused to accept the stone.
He gave Camilla a bemused look as if her denying him something he wanted were more outrageous than a magical stone that could withdraw any memory he chose to give it.
Lord Vexley wasn’t quite a dandy, but he certainly spent money like one. He was the firstborn son of a viscount and as such had indulged in only the finest things for the whole of his spoiled thirty years.