by Talia Vance
I know he means it literally, but part of me can’t help but wonder if it’s figurative as well—if she was betrayed by someone she loved. “Why didn’t you turn me in the first time you saw me?”
“It’s not my war. Besides, it looked like you were gonna take up with Austin. I didn’t think it was in the best interest of the Circle for them to get into it with him.”
He knows about Austin. “Why not?”
“He’s more powerful than the rest of you. You’d do well to remember that. He doesn’t see the world the same way. He won’t back away from a fight.”
“He backed down from Blake.” I think about how Austin left us alone in Avernus. He didn’t fight Jonah either. Not even when Jonah had a knife to his throat. What had he said the other day? That he couldn’t get directly involved?
“Austin doesn’t back down from anyone unless he’s got a reason.” Joe’s eyes travel to the bar. “Speak of the devil.”
We both turn as Austin walks into the room, his arm thrown casually around Haley’s shoulders. His brown hair falls across his forehead so that he has to tilt his head to look out from beneath it. He pulls Haley closer. To the casual observer, he appears harmless. Human. But if I look closer, I can see how he almost floats across the room.
It’s a second before Haley sees me. She immediately looks away and beams up at Austin, staking her claim.
“What’s he doing here?” I feel the moment when Blake sees him, his focus dissolving into a thick knot of animosity.
Austin removes his arm from around Haley and travels the rest of the way to the poker table. He pulls a wad of cash from his pocket and sets it on the table. “Room for one more?”
Blake glares up at him. “This is a private game.”
The other three players eye the stack of bills like a pack of stray dogs around a steak. “His money looks good to me,” Colonel Lydon says.
Austin nods at the Colonel, ignoring Blake’s hard gaze. The dealer counts out the cash and slides a stack of chips across the table. Haley comes up behind Austin and hangs over his chair, letting her arms fall across his shoulders.
He takes Haley’s hand and brings it to his lips, but he stares at me. “Lady Luck.” His voice is a seductive purr. “Just what I needed.”
I don’t know if it’s Blake or me, but I have to force myself to stay in my seat. The urge to drag Austin from the room is strong. I hate the way Haley drapes herself all over him. For a second I worry that I really am jealous. But it’s not jealousy at all. I’m terrified of what Austin has planned for her. Because the way he’s holding her hand while smiling at me is not some sick game to make me jealous. It’s a warning.
The dealer shuffles the cards and passes them around the table. Blake looks at his two cards and I feel him try to reign in the seething anger, to concentrate on the game. It’s a pointless attempt.
The betting starts. Mr. Stevenson opens with a bet of five hundred. The Colonel folds. Blake throws in some chips. So does Mr. Basker. Austin slides his entire stack into the center of the table. “I’m all in.”
Blake scoffs. “It’s a little early for you to throw it all away.”
Austin’s grin exudes confidence. “Why wait if you don’t have to?”
Mr. Basker and Mr. Stevenson fold. Blake hesitates, and I can practically feel the gears turning in his head. He doesn’t trust Austin, but he doesn’t know anything about his game yet. It’s too early in the hand to even guess what cards Austin might be holding. He should do what the others did, fold quickly. Instead, he slides the bulk of his stack of chips to the center of the table. “Call,” he says, not so much taking the bait as throwing down a challenge of his own.
The entire room falls silent. Everyone watches, holding their breath, as Austin turns over his cards. A seven and a three.
A stone-cold bluff.
Blake grins as he flips over an ace and a jack. The odds are in his favor. I let out a breath. Austin doesn’t react. He brings Haley’s fingers to his lips for one more kiss, winking at me from across the table.
I realize then what I should’ve known all along: Austin has already won. The odds may be small, but there’s still a chance that he’ll draw the better hand. That’s the thing with odds—no matter how small the probability, so long as it exists, the outcome is possible. Not just possible; it has to happen at least some of the time. And Austin already knows the ending.
The dealer lays three cards face-up on the table. A six, a ten, and a jack. Blake’s made a pair. Austin has nothing. Austin’s odds of winning just dropped into the single digits.
Austin puts his elbows on the table and leans forward. “Shall we raise the stakes?”
Blake laughs. “I don’t take candy from babies.”
“It’s not over yet.” Austin stares at me again. A chill runs down my spine, like someone dropped an ice cube down my back. I hope Blake feels the warning in my fear. Whatever Austin is up to, it’s not good. Austin squeezes Haley’s hand. She smiles down at him. It’s the same smile I’ve seen her bestow a thousand times, but there’s something off about it. The spark that is Haley Marvell isn’t there. She’s phoning it in. Weird. Haley is more into Austin than any of her previous guys. The least she could manage is one of the stock performances she’s perfected over the last few years.
The dealer deals a fourth card face-up on the table. A three. Austin has a pair of threes. Blake is still winning with a pair of jacks. There’s only one more card left for the dealer to turn over.
“Now it’s getting interesting,” Austin picks up a red chip and flips it back and forth through his fingers, weaving it over and under in smooth fluid strokes. It’s the kind of thing that takes years of practice to perfect, a way of communicating experience at the poker table without saying a word.
Blake’s mood shifts again, his blood pressure rising even as he leans back in his chair casually. “How much?”
No, no, no, no. I want to scream it across the room. There’s easily twenty thousand dollars in the pot as it is. It has to be a set-up.
Austin falls back in his chair, mirroring Blake’s relaxed pose. “You have something I want.” His gaze moves over Blake’s shoulder until he finds me again.
To his credit, Blake doesn’t take the bait. He smiles. “I don’t see how that matters, seeing as how you don’t have anything that I want.”
Haley doesn’t take offense at the comment, even though it’s exactly the kind of thing that should set her off. In Haley’s world, everyone wants her. She keeps her head down, her eyes following her hands as they weave patterns along Austin’s chest.
Austin drops the poker chip. It lands with a clatter that echoes across the otherwise silent room. Everyone is watching them now. “Naïve of you to think that I don’t have what you want,” he says. “I know things your half-breed brain can’t begin to process. And I can help you keep what you have.” His eyes get darker. He lowers his voice. “No one has to die.”
“Die?” Mr. Stevenson scoops up his chips. “What’s going on here?”
Blake’s heart races, sending waves of nervous energy pulsing through me. I can’t sit still. I stand up and cross the room to the table.
Blake doesn’t look at me as I stand next to him. He’s still focused on Austin. “You can stop it?” His voice is low, almost a whisper. But I feel Blake’s hope as it rises in my own chest. “How?”
Austin’s eyes are black as they bore into Blake’s. “There is a way.”
I feel Blake falling into the abyss, his energy focused only on Austin, on what Austin promises. A way for us to be together. A way for us to both live. An end to the war between our kind. I feel how impossible it all sounds, and I know that Austin doesn’t intend for any of the Sons to live.
I can’t reach Blake, even with my hand on his shoulder. Blake is already circling in Austin’s orbit;
he’s right there with Austin, not fighting him off at all, just wanting.
Mr. Stevenson stands up and stuffs his pockets with the cash in front of him. No one stops him as he hurries from the room. Everyone watches Austin.
Austin knows he has Blake now. His lips curve up into a crooked grin that now looks almost twisted to me. “Are you in?”
I squeeze Blake’s shoulder. Hard. “He’s lying.”
Blake doesn’t look up, his eyes still fixed on Austin. He wants to believe the lie so badly. The lie that we can be together. The lie that one of us doesn’t have to die.
I try another tack. “Haley,” I say. I have to call her name again before she finally looks up. “Don’t you see what your boyfriend is doing? He wants Blake to give up his claim on me.” The Haley I know would do something, say something. She wouldn’t sit by and let a boy insult her this way.
Haley’s turquoise eyes are tinged with black. “You,” she says. “When are you going to understand that Austin is not interested? It’s getting to be a little pathetic the way you pant after him.”
I want to shake her out of it. “Pay attention to what he’s doing. I’m the prize he wants.”
Her eyes narrow to black slits, and for a second she looks exactly like her mother. I back up a step. “You’ve always been a loser when it comes to guys, Brianna. So you’ve had one boyfriend for a whole week. Don’t let it go to your head.”
I know that Haley is trapped in Austin’s spell, with limited control of her own mind. That doesn’t stop the words from ripping fresh wounds over scars that should be healed. I’m still standing tall, but on the inside I’m laid open, bleeding profusely.
Haley lets her hand trail down Austin’s chest, kissing his ear as she whispers something to him. He smiles again, then looks at me and laughs. He’s got my best friend, and now Blake. Pulling my strings in the most painful way possible.
Then there’s a roaring in my head, a cacophony of waves and wind. It’s coming from Blake, and I realize he’s finally trying to push back against Austin’s pull. I have to grab the back of his chair to keep from collapsing on the ground. I summon what strength I can. But I can’t reach him, not with Austin there. I feel the shadow of false promises as they grow. And then there’s silence.
Blake leans forward in his chair, fingering his two cards. “I’m in,” he says.
THIRTY-Five
The truth has never seemed clearer to me than it does right now. We cannot change the past. We cannot change our future. The ending was written the moment Blake kissed me on the beach. Sooner. We might fight against it, but Austin’s twisted smile tells me everything I need to know. I can’t stick my head under my pillow and wait for this to go away. The war is coming. It’s coming for me.
Austin looks at the dealer. No one moves as the dealer removes the top card from the deck and starts to turn it over.
Before he can lay it on the table, there’s a sharp wind that starts at the center of the room, whipping the cards into the air and sending them flying in every direction. The card in the dealer’s hand flies into the melee as the entire deck is blown around the room, along with cocktail napkins, straws, and assorted scraps of paper. But not before I see the card.
A three.
Austin stands, glaring at me. I shake my head at him—it wasn’t me.
There’s a movement by the doorway, and everyone turns to look. Sherri and Sasha walk in with the grace of supermodels, wearing crimson red gowns that cling in all the right places and heels that are impossibly high. They’re dressed for sipping champagne, not fighting demigods.
Sherri Milliken laughs as Rush and Jonah surge toward them, outing themselves as Sons.
Sasha smiles her gorgeous smile. “Hi, boys.”
Austin is still watching me, but his face changes as he laughs. “Juliet, you’ve been holding out on me.”
Haley looks confused. She watches Sherri and Sasha circle Rush and Jonah.
Sherri looks over at me and winks. “Nice work, Paxton.”
Blake rises from his chair and grabs my arm. His eyes are dark, green with a hint of silver. I wish to God I could blame the look in Blake’s eyes on Austin, but Austin’s not influencing him anymore. The raw emotion in Blake’s eyes is nothing compared to the lancing pain that slashes through me as I feel Blake’s anger. More than anger—betrayal. My heart sinks, plunging with the weight of all that Sherri just implied in her statement to me.
I should have told Blake about Sherri and her death squad. But I couldn’t tell Blake about her any more than I could tell Sherri about Blake. I walked away from Sherri and her bloodlust. But in the process, I led her straight to the Sons.
I need to say something now. The window on Blake’s willingness to listen to me is closing even as all hell is about to break loose. “I can explain,” is all I manage to blurt.
There’s a flash of silver light, and Rush and Jonah vanish. Sherri and Sasha are in trouble. They’ve lost the element of surprise; their advantage is already gone and they’re about to find themselves on the business end of a very sharp knife.
If I don’t do something, Sasha and Sherri will die. I can’t sit back and wait for it to happen.
Blake lets go of my arm abruptly. The flash of silver light is the only warning I have before he disappears into thin air.
“Holy crap!” Haley is finally coming out of her Austin-induced coma, her eyes bugging out of her head.
“Stay here,” I say, as I race toward Sherri and Sasha. Austin’s laugh is the only sound I’m aware of as I launch myself at Sherri, knocking her to the ground.
“What the hell, Paxton?” Sherri pushes at me but stops when Rush appears right where she’d been standing, his dagger drawn to slice at just the level of her neck.
Jonah stands with his arms around Sasha, his bright silver light only serving to illuminate the dark crimson that spills from Sasha’s chest where his knife plunged. Sasha falls to the floor soundlessly, blood pooling around her in a dark circle.
“You can’t stay in one place,” I tell Sherri. “Get up and get moving.”
I hear screaming from the back of the room. Crap—Haley’s still in here.
I send a gust of wind at Rush, throwing him off his feet before he can disappear again. His back hits a stuffed moose head hard enough to make a cracking sound. He lands on a table, unmoving. Sherri is back on her feet but Jonah has already disappeared. Then there’s a flash of silver near Sherri’s back.
“Move!” I scream.
She’s not fast enough. Blake appears behind her, his sword poised at her heart.
“Don’t,” I plead. “Blake.”
He stares at me like I’m a stranger. Like he doesn’t understand a thing about me. “Please,” I whisper. There’s a flash of silver behind me and I concentrate on water, bringing the icy cold to the surface as quickly as I can.
I feel the blade of Jonah’s knife at the base of my throat, but it’s gone just as quickly, as Jonah recoils from the freezing cold of my skin.
Blake’s face changes. He lets go of Sherri and lunges at Jonah. There’s a clattering of sword and knife and then a blur of movement. They move so quickly, the only way to follow the path of their fight is by the crashing tables and smashing glasses.
I seize Sherri’s arm and drag her from the room. We run to the parking lot. We go as fast as Sherri can manage in her five-inch heels, anyway.
“Get out of here,” I say. “You saw what they did to Sasha. You can’t win this fight. There’s too many of them.”
“No duh, Einstein.” She pulls off her heels and runs toward a car parked near the front entrance. She has the door open before she realizes I haven’t followed.
“We don’t have much time, Paxton. We need to disappear for a while.”
I’m tempted. I’ve never wanted to run away more.
But I can’t leave Haley in there. I can’t leave Blake. “I can’t.”
They’re the words of a coward, but they might be the bravest words I’ve ever said.
“It’s been nice knowing you.” Sherri slams the door. She starts the car and peels out of the parking lot, disappearing in a cloud of smoke, leaving only the smell of burned rubber in her wake.
I’m running back toward the restaurant when I feel the first blast of pain, so strong I fall to the ground. The pain isn’t mine, but it might as well be. My head snaps back like it’s been hit. Blake is hurt. I have to get to him. I force myself to my knees, crawling along the sidewalk into the front door of the restaurant. I try to block the pain from my mind. I don’t have much time.
Joe meets me halfway to the back room and helps me to my feet wordlessly. I lean on him for support as we work our way inside.
Jonah is standing over Blake, his shirt bloodied. I pray that it’s Jonah’s blood. Blake lies on the ground, his sword a few feet away. I feel how weak he is, nearly unconscious. Before Jonah can raise his knife, I send a ball of ice at his wounded leg, hitting him square in the shin. Jonah collapses to the ground. I turn on Rush.
Rush seems to have recovered from his run-in with the moose head. He looks at me and then looks away, and I realize why he hasn’t attacked me yet. I’m still wearing my bracelet. Even when he knows he should look at me, he can’t.
Blake stirs beside me, rising to his elbows. When he sees me, a vein in his neck twitches. “What are you still doing here?”
“Saving your ass.” I can stand up without Joe now that Blake is out of danger.
Joe laughs and removes the arm he’d draped around my waist. “I knew I liked you.”
Jonah scowls at me from the floor but doesn’t strike, and I know the immediate danger has passed. Haley is huddled in a corner with her face buried in Austin’s shoulder. One look at Austin’s face tells me everything I need to know. Austin is not happy.
Sasha’s body lies on the floor, her crimson dress stained black. Blood coagulates around her. I cover my hand over my mouth, fighting against waves of nausea.
