Zara yawned. “I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted and there’s a fireplace in my room calling my name. That fireplace’s name is Hektor,” she added with a grin.
“Same,” Elian said. “But not the fireplace named Hektor part.” He paused, looking at Liora. “You coming?”
“I think I’ll stay a bit.” She glanced around the den, still buzzing with activity. “We should probably enjoy the hospitality while he’s offering it.”
Elian shrugged. “Don’t stay up too late.” He waved at them, then followed Zara toward the stairs.
Maldenis watched them go. “Drink?”
“Drink,” she agreed.
The bar ran along the back wall of the den carved from the same dark wood as everything else. They found two seats at the far end and the bartender—a young minotaur with a silver ring through her nose—set two heavy glasses in front of them without being asked, filled with something amber that smelled like peat and honey.
Liora took a sip. It reminded her of whiskey, but stronger. She took another sip, hoping it would give her the courage to bring up what she wanted to say.
For a while they just sat with the noise of the den around them, the fire crackling at their backs.
“So,” she said, finally feeling the effects of the drink. “Magic.”
Maldenis put down his glass on the bar top. “Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting anything. And Brontaios said it by the way. He seems like the kind who never misses a thing.”
“I wasn’t using magic. I was just talking to them,” he said, defensive.
“You asked a minotaur what else he was hiding in his hand and heshowed you.” She raised an eyebrow. “And then that Fenlas guy announced his entire hand to the table. Then there was the waiter earlier.”
“Pressure can make you do strange things.”
“Maldenis.”
“Liora.”
She swung around on her stool to face him. “You’re the son of Zeus.”
“So?”
“That’s not a small thing.”
“Maybe everyone here is just really nice and friendly, have you thought of that?”
“Nobody here is just friendly.That waitress told us that the Reaping ruined lives. You think those players would just hand the game to you on a platter?”
He didn’t answer that.
“I think when you ask something directly—really directly, looking them in the eye—they can’t not answer you.” She paused. “Or at least that’s my theory.”
“How come I’ve never done it before? Don’t you think I’d have used this ‘magic’ by now? Think of all the fun I could have had when I was a punk kid.”
She tapped a finger on her chin. “Maybe basilisks are immune to it.” She ruminated on it some more. “Didn’t your ancestors, back when they lived in the Upperworld, have the power of mind control over humans and other races?”
“The original creature we descended from did, supposedly,” he said.
“Have you spent a lot of time around other monsters or humans?”
“No.”
“Then you couldn’t have known until now if you did have magic, if you spent most of your time around your kind.”
