Authors: Amanda Bonilla
One by one the players at the table raised their glasses in a toast. I cringed as Sam downed his drink, knowing all too well that he’d be out of his mind in less than an
hour. Dinner and a show. I tossed my own drink back in a single swallow, the thick, sweet nectar clinging to my mouth like honey.
“Now that the ice is broken,” Kadambari purred, “it’s time to play.”
Chapter 8
“You’ve all been invited to play in tonight’s game,” Kadambari stated. “Now, it’s time to buy in.” She motioned to the Sylph who brought her a golden dagger on a flat, onyx tray. Unlike anything I’d ever seen, instead of a single flat blade, the dagger was multi-dimensional: four blades joined at the hilt that came together to form a single, sharp point. Kadambari took the dagger from the tray and pointed it at each of us in turn. From this angle, it formed a strange diamond shape, one blade for each player.
Sam swayed in his seat as he dug in his suit jacket for presumably his wallet. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the guy. He had
no
idea what tonight was all about. “What’re we talkin’ here?” Sam asked, his voice already starting to slur. “Hunred bucks?”
Kadambari laughed, and I swear Sam’s eyes rolled back into his head at the sound. “No need to bring out your wallet just yet, Sam. You’ll be buying in with something more valuable than money.”
While Sam just looked confused, the other players eagerly held out their hands, palms up. Sam looked around the table and followed suit, a silly grin plastered on his face. I alone didn’t readily offer up what Kadambari asked for. In one form or another, blood contained power. After everything that had happened over the past year, I was a little more than reluctant to offer up my blood to anyone. Especially a ghoul who glutted herself on the stuff.
“You’re not afraid, Jinn,” Kadambari stated. “So why the hesitation?”
“I thought you said his name was Tyler. . . .” Sam interjected with a drunken chuckle.
I sighed. Gods, what a mess. “No, I’m not afraid,” I said. “Just . . . untrusting.”
“You’re here to play.” Kadambari’s tone became diamond-hard. “There’s no backing out now. I’m not interested in whether or not you trust me. The buy-in has been set. Pay up or pay the consequences.”
The Ambrosia had finally begun to hit me. I wasn’t getting stupid like Sam—yet—but the table definitely tilted at an odd angle, and I couldn’t quite shake the buzzing in my brain. I wondered . . . who protects the protector? I mean, I didn’t exactly have anyone watching my back. Too late to worry about it now, I guessed. The unease drained out of me as my muscles relaxed. Time to ante up.
I held my palm out to the Raksasha, unable to muster the worry that should have been spreading through my veins like ice. Faolán had been granted full access to fuck with me through Darian’s blood. What if I was handing over access to
her
through mine? I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to her.
Really?
A voice—my voice—echoed in my brain like a shout down a long corridor. The part of me that was still angry with her reared its ugly head, heightened by the drug.
She didn’t give a shit about you when she teamed up with Faolán and left town, more interested in finding Raif’s daughter than taking care of you. Why should you give a shit what happens to her?
Good point. Turnabout was fair play. This was about helping Levi. It had nothing to do with her.
Kadambari smiled as if she’d heard my thoughts. One by one N>
She made a silent toast and brought the glass to her lips. Head tilted back to expose her throat, eyelids drooped as she drank, the act was so sensual that I had to look away. The sight of her made me hard, and my stomach clenched with lust. Fucking Ambrosia. The drink had lowered my inhibitions and heightened my arousal. Kadambari had no intentions of letting any of us out alive, and she’d drugged us to make sure we wouldn’t resist. The Ambrosia made us careless. Reckless, desperate gamblers. Drunks with nothing to lose. Fucked up as I was, I didn’t know if I could manage to save myself, let alone anyone else here tonight. When she’d finished drinking, Kadambari licked the inside of the glass with sensuous strokes of her tongue. Sam groaned and leaned over the table, his mouth agape as he watched her.
“Freya, escort our guests to the wheel,” Kadambari said to the Sylph who bobbed her head obligingly.
“Follow me, please,” she said. Her voice was soft like a spring breeze. Pretty. She opened her arms, inviting us to follow, and I wondered what it would be like to have that lovely breeze of a voice whispering my name as I pumped into her. The Fae to my left must have been thinking the same thing, but he’d gone beyond mere fantasy, reaching out to cup her face in his large hand before she could pull away.
“Now, Rylon, is that any way to behave?” Kadambari chided as she disengaged his palm from her minion’s face. “Touch my property again and I’ll have to remove your intestines with a dull, rusted blade while you watch. Understand?”
“I want her,” he said gruffly, his voice full of barely restrained passion. “I’ll pay extra.”
Kadambari laughed and somewhere behind me, Sam started back up with his groaning. I
really
hoped this wasn’t about to get freaky. I didn’t sign up for an orgy. “Let’s see how you fare at the tables tonight, shall we? If the gods show you favor, perhaps we can make a deal.”
I was too busy watching the Sylph who’d come to tonight’s game to notice Rylon’s reaction to Kadambari’s offer. She hung back from the group, visibly shaken, leaning against a table for support. Fighting an internal battle, no doubt, against the effects of the Ambrosia. “What’s your name?” I asked as I helped her to stand straight.
“Mithandra,” she said. “My sister is the Raksasha’s slave.” She laid a hand to my chest to steady herself and looked up into my face. Wide, green eyes drank me in. Eyes that reminded me of Darian’s. Her lips curved into a sweet smile before she buried her nose in my shirt and inhaled deeply. “You smell good,” she said dreamily. “I can’t think straight. I know what I have to do . . . but—all I can think about right now is touching you.”
I knew what she meant. Her hand on my chest was like a brand, stoking my desire. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew this wasn’t right, but my body wasn’t really talking to my brain anymore. In fact, I was pretty sure my dick had switched over to autopilot about Stopeen five minutes ago. “Let’s just get through this, okay?” I said as I tucked her under my arm and led her toward the group. The last thing either of us needed was undue scrutiny. Or to keep touching each other like we were . . . “Give yourself a few minutes and you’ll be thinking more clearly.”
“The Fae—Rylon—I’m worried he’ll try to force himself on my sister before my mind is clear enough to do anything about it.”
I gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t worry,” I said close to her ear. “Our hostess isn’t going to let anything happen to your sister.”
Yet
. “I promise.”
She looked up at me again with those wide eyes and I swallowed down the emotions rising up in me like bile. I didn’t usually drink because I wasn’t one of those jovial drunks who everyone loves to see get schnockered at their party. No, I was more of the angry, emo drunk who ruins everyone’s fun. The Ambrosia made me as horny as a bull in rut, but it also made me want to tear this place to the ground and take every living soul with me as I wallowed in my sorrow. As it was, I was having a hard time keeping my shit together. And I wished to hell Mithandra would quit looking at me, reminding me of
her
.
“Broken-hearted gamblers are my favorite,” Kadambari mused as we approached a table that had been set up in the dead center of the dance floor. “And you’re quite the jilted lover, aren’t you, Tyler? I think you should place the opening bet.”
I looked up from Mithandra’s face, only slightly aware that I’d been stroking her red hair. “Sure, I can start the ball rolling. Why not?” I had nothing to lose. Not really. Darian didn’t need me, making me as useless as a third testicle. I’d honored her with the highest gift my race could bestow: unequivocal loyalty and protection. And she’d taken a dump all over my sacred gift. So, yeah, I’d place the first bet. Bring on the gambling. “Chips?”
Sam shouted and jumped as if startled, swatting and brushing at his arms. “Holyfuckingshitonashingle! Where did all of those spiders come from?”
Kadambari smiled hungrily as she watched Sam’s fear-fueled exhibition. She looked like a diner gazing into a lobster tank at a seafood restaurant. “Through your various contacts, you’ve all proven you’re good for the money. I’ve issued everyone one million dollars in credit for tonight’s game. Freya will distribute your chips.”
In the center of the table sat a large golden contraption that looked very much like a roulette wheel. Humans had no problem bypassing the wheel for a partially loaded revolver cylinder when playing with their lives. Supernaturals, on the other hand, weren’t quite as fragile. The roulette wheel seemed innocent enough, but it was just as good as a revolver when the stakes were this high. A Smith & Wesson had nothing on a death marker. At least with the gun, it was over quickly.
“Tyler?” Kadambari said with amusement, pulling me out of my reverie. I shook my head as if that would clear my muddled thoughts. I caught movement from the corner of my eye, a shadow slinking along the wall. My mind reeled as I squinted into the dark, convinced Darian watched me from the shadows.
Impossible. Just an illusion
. My eyes once again wandered to the Sylph, who was now leaning against the table for support, head bowed between her slight shoulders. “Perhaps you’ve found something more worthy of your attention?”
Was it simply a side effect of the Ambrosia, a figment o S, a wof my imagination that Mithandra reminded me so much of Darian? And why, at this moment when I needed a clear head, was she all I could think about? “Let’s get started,” I said as Freya approached me with a tray of chips. “I’m not interested in wasting any more time.”
Taking the tray into my hands, I stepped up to the table. The wheel glowed like the morning sun, marked with interspersed black and white notches. I noted that there were far more black notches than white. Great. The odds definitely tipped in favor of our deaths—not that Kadambari would have it otherwise. As if of its own accord, the wheel began to spin, rising up off the table until it was almost level with my torso. Sam let out a sort of half-whimper, half-scream. I didn’t have time to waste on him right now, though he’d secured a moment of our hostess’s attention. His fear must have smelled like a tray of fresh baked bread to Kadambari. An appetizer to the main course she’d consume once the game concluded.
“Your bet?” she asked as politely as if she were inquiring as to my health.
No need for an actual wager board for tonight’s game. We didn’t need a board with numbered squares to mark our bets. There were simply two options: life or death. And only a fool would bet against his life. I plucked five ten-thousand-dollar chips out of the tray and winced as one of the razor-sharp disks bit into my skin. With a flick of my wrist, I tossed the blood-smeared chips onto the table. So that was how the ghoul bound the gamblers to their life debt. Blood magic. Gods, how I hated it. “Fifty thousand.”
Freya dropped a golden sphere, not much bigger than a marble, over the game board. Anxiety knotted my stomach as I watched the bead roll counter-clockwise to the wheel. I wondered with every turn if my luck would hold tonight, or if I was simply digging myself a grave beside Levi’s. The
click, clack
of Kadambari’s stiletto heels mingled with the bounce of the ball, barely registering in my brain as she walked behind me. Her breath tickled my ear in a pleasant, intimate way. “I hear you’re after a king’s ransom tonight.” Her voice was like a caress and my spine wasn’t the only thing that stiffened. “To think of your lover in another’s arms . . . must be torture.”
My vision clouded as images of Darian lying beneath Xander, her body writhing in pleasure, appeared before me. The bar, my one safe haven, had officially become my personal hell as the illusion came to life: Xander holding her, caressing her, tasting her. Darian screaming
his
name as she rode him. Gods, my worst fears and insecurities I’d had about our relationship over the past few months buffeted my mind, tying my emotions into an unyielding knot.
“Sometimes, death is the only escape,” Kadambari whispered. “Your fate is bound to the wheel, Tyler. The freedom of death or the pain of living . . . I wonder, where will the ball stop?”
If I had to live in a world where Darian’s love belonged to that arrogant bastard of a king, I’d rather be dead.
They’re visions, nothing real. Just the effects of the Ambrosia
. Reason scratched at the back of my consciousness.
Darian is yours. She’ll always be
yours.
The wheel slowed to a stop, the ball bouncing twice before it landed on a white square. A sigh of relief escaped my chest. “Life,” Kadambari said simply, and motioned for Freya to dole out my winnings.
I’d made twenty-five grand on my bet. Most people would have scoffed at the odds. But when the alternative was death, th Swasaceose odds suddenly didn’t look so bad.
“Rylon.” The Fae looked away from Freya at the mention of his name, a snarl curling his lip. The thing about consuming Ambrosia: It not only lowered inhibitions, but enhanced certain personality traits. Rylon must have been a disagreeable motherfucker on a good day, because his aggression was off the charts right now. “Step forward.”
Freya held a tray of chips under one arm, the golden ball in her opposite, outstretched hand. She bent her elbow in toward her body as if she feared getting too close to the Fae. For good reason too. He’d made no secret of the fact he wanted Kadambari’s slave, and instead of plucking the roulette ball from her palm, he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her hard against his body.