He must’ve dipped out during that last round while I was slapping down my Moonplume, Moltenmaw, and Sabersythe to the tune of disgruntled mutterings. Too bad, considering I drew most of my delight from the fact that those assholes had somehow wronged him in the past.
The last male disappears down the frail pathway, leaving only myself, Kaan, and the octimar still seated in the dealer’s throne—apparently exempt from the King’s ferocious order.
Kaan moves around the table, gripping the back of the seat opposite mine, knuckles so blanched I imagine the piece of furniture seconds from shattering. Everything about him is immense, like a shadow that eclipses every light source, swaying my ability to see anything other than him.
My small stint alone with the memories of us gulped me into his gravity. Now I’m falling—too heavy.
Too fast.
The sort of plummet that ends with a crater large enough to swallow half the world.
“This is not what I meant when I asked you to dance,” he says, stare dropping to my pile of gold.
I draw my lungs full of his drugging scent, flashes of memory carving into my chest like razor blades:
Me, planting a constellation of kisses upon the scars on his back and arms, pretending I could mend them with my lips, while he chopped vegetables for our soup.
Him, teaching me how to shape clay into bowls, mugs, and plates, his hands and arms smothered in so much of it that eventually made its way onto me.
Us, moving together beneath a shaft of silver light, my chest pitted with a noxious seed of fear. Like every touch, every kiss, every whisper of breath on my skin brought us one step closer to an unknown end.
“I was someone to you,” I whisper. “Someone important.”
“Correct.”
“Until?”
The word is a stab—the sort of offensive motion that comes before my mind catches up to the shift of my surroundings or truly registers the lurking danger.
“You bound with another male,” Kaan answers equally fast, and my lungs empty in a shuddered exhale as all the warmth escapes my cheeks. As I try and fail to grapple that prickly reality into a shape smooth enough to swallow.
That piece of puzzle feels jagged and abrupt. Ill-fitting. The sort of piece I’ll need to hammer into place.
“Would you like to know who?”
“No,” I say, my gaze dropping to chase the octimar’s slithering motions, the creature gathering shards. Shuffling them.
Over the past who knows how long, I’ve become fondly familiar with the us that existed within the jungle home.
With Kaan.
You don’t simply scratch an itch with Kaan Vaegor, then throw him away and move onto another. You peel back your skin and open your ribs to the male. You tuck him somewhere deep and safe, fight others off with weapons forged from secrets sharp enough to slice, then perish with those secrets clutched close to your chest.
There is no way I gave him up for anyone else … willingly. And there’s only one answer to that particular riddle.
Elluin had secrets just as barbed as my own.
But secrets earn their title for a reason, often painted in an illusionary veil because they’re painful to look in the eye.
Kaan hasn’t felt the shape of my emotions while we were together in that place, but I have. And I’m almost certain my lost memories are a blessing in disguise. That Elluin’s secrets hurt.
I have no desire to uncork that bottle and condemn myself to sipping the poison it undoubtedly holds, if even for a moment.
“After all that,” I say, lifting my stare, “you still saved my life.”
“Yes.”
“Twice.”
The right side of his mouth kicks up in a half smile that wrestles with my heartstrings. “Hard to turn down an opportunity to gift you the severed head of a male who made you bleed.”
I open my mouth, close it. My next words are rasped past a dry throat. “I don’t understand how you still look at me like you want me.”
Silence prevails, tension thickens, his eyes burning embers when he finally says, “Raeve, you could flay me down the middle and I’d still fucking love you.”
All the breath shoves from my lungs.
Love …
The word is a quiet death that slips away without so much as a whispered goodbye—an abrupt shove into an eternal loneliness I’ll never deign myself to claw free of.
“Such a waste of that big, beautiful heart,” I whisper, and his eyes flare.
I sever our eye contact, looking down at the shards the octimar has been collating into shuffled piles. Kaan makes a deep rumbling sound, and I swear the entire world shudders around me.
Creators …
I think I missed the meaning of the note, mask, and gown. I don’t think he wants to pretend at all. I think he asked me to come here hoping to rekindle whatever we had in the past—back when we thrived within those hallowed walls—hoping I’m still the same female beneath the shell.
I’m not. There’s nothing there but scorched stone, heartbreak, and a million reasons why I can’t.
But perhaps …
Perhaps this magical send-off that Elluin and Kaan deserve can still be salvaged?
“There are two options.” I signal for the octimar to deal a round.
Kaan’s gaze follows the creature’s slithering motions before impaling me with another stare that promises everything I want.
Everything I don’t.
“Which are?”
“I leave right now with this pile of gold,” I say, eyeing my impressive stack, “and hire a Moltenmaw from your carter hutch for the foreseeable future.”
“So you can hunt the one who turned your back into mincemeat?”
“Among other things,” I grit out past clenched teeth.
A moment of perfect stillness while he studies me with such precision I’m certain he’s hunting for answers in the flecks of my eyes. “Or?”
“We play.” I gesture to the spread laid out between us—already dealt. “A wager.”
Kaan looks from me to the octimar, down at the shards, before pulling his chair into place and taking a seat. My brow bumps up as he presents his left palm to the octimar.
I follow suit, but with my right.
Holding my stare, Kaan says, “If I win, you will answer three questions from me. Truthfully.”
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.