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She’s not wrong. “It’s the one you’re going to get.”
She narrows her eyes and stares me down for a long moment, but finally huffs, and it seems she’s deemed it sufficient. “So how’s this whole thing going to work? I accept the bargain, and then what?”
“I give you the puzzle. You solve it. We all live happily ever after.”
Her face is the definition of if looks could kill right now. “Can you be serious for once? This is my life you’re toying with. Do me the decency of pretending it matters anything at all to you.”
It’s not that her life doesn’t matter to me. I like Esmeralda, I’m drawn to her, more than I’ve been with another challenger. Her death would be… regrettable. But if there’s a chance she could get me a step closer to breaking the curse, I have to try.
“I don’t have a lot more to give you. I’m going to hand you a box. The figuring-it-out part is up to you. You get two months to find the solution to the puzzle.”
Esmeralda nods. “And nobody’s done it before, right?”
I shake my head.
“How many years has this been going on for, exactly?”
Too many. “Would you like to play or not, Esmeralda? You can turn this down, and eventually, someone else will be chosen.”
I’ve never said that out loud to any challenger, but then again, none of them needed this much convincing. Maybe Mei is right, and I should move on to the next person.
If only this didn’t feel so right.
Esmeralda sits quietly, her gaze fixed on her laced fingers which she pushes against each other, making her knuckles crack. After what feels like an eternity, the hearth the only sound in the room, she lifts her head. “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s do this.”
The curse’s pull snaps like a taut rubber band, and I recoil against the couch. It’s happening.
With a snap of my fingers, I materialize the box. Its weight, its chill, even the pattern drawn by the decorative inlays all feel familiar against my fingertips. I’ve felt them more times than I’m willing to count. I say a silent prayer to the Void to let this be the last, before sliding the box over the coffee table toward Esmeralda.
She picks it up, inspects it from all angles, then flips the metal clasp with her black fingernail.
The deal is made. Let the game begin once more.
part two
the game
chapter 18
rules of the game
esmeralda
I don’t feel immediately different after opening the box. For some reason, I thought I would, like bargaining with a monster would leave some sort of mark. Yet, I’m still the old me. Except for the two-month ticking clock hurling toward my demise.
Teizel eyes me with an intensity worthy of the most dangerous of predators as I reach my hand inside the small, ornate jewelry box and feel around. A set of small keys on a metal ring is the most prominent object. I pick them up and start to count.
Twelve, thirteen, fourteen.
Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine.
Shy of thirty keys, all with different designs and barely different teeth. They’re not meant for the box itself, because it doesn’t have a lock on it, so I keep searching.
My attention lands on a locket, cast in a metal so black barely any light reflects off it. At first glance, it looks as though it’s shaped like an anatomical heart. The more I look at it, the more I realize there’s slight fallacies to it; three ventricles and three atria instead of two, and in place of the large vein and artery, an intricate web of multiple smaller tubes.
“This isn’t a human heart,” I muse out loud.
Teizel’s poignant gaze is answer enough.
