“Your turn to draw the card.”
She purses her lips, shoots me an unsatisfied glance that promises she’s not going to drop the subject, and picks up the card. Seven of Cups.Interesting.
“Let’s make a deal,” she says. I arch my eyebrow. “If I win this hand, you’ll tell me everything about Caligos and your deal so I can find a way to at least ensure you don’t die here while I find a way to get you out of prison.”
Oh, my sweet Phoenix is getting ahead of herself. I love how confident she is. She burns as intensely as a flame.
“Sure,” I say. “Anything you want from me, you’ll have.”
Her gaze darkens, and she forgets to breathe for a heartbeat.
To add more fuel to the fire, I wink and then pick up the next card. Nine of Dragons.
Now that Phoenix is determined to win, and the stakes of her win are high, she wastes no time. She picks the last card from the deck and sets it on the floor.
Seven of Bones.
With a happy squeal, Phoenix fans out her hand in front of us. “Take that!”
I chuckle, and shake my head. Slowly, I reveal my hand to her. With each card I set down, her excitement dims.
Until it’s gone completely. She stares at my winning hand, bewildered.
“Maybe next round will be your lucky one, General.”
“Shut up.”
CHAPTER TEN
VERA
Isit on a hard, damp floor surrounded by darkness. My back rests against a cold stone wall, the uneven edges pressing uncomfortably into my aching muscles and bones.
Time doesn’t exist here.
Not a single sliver of light leaks through the heavy iron door that’s supposed to be on the wall opposite me. After they threw me in here, I tried to map out my cell with my fingertips. Memorize my surroundings, so even if I can’t see it, I can feel it.
But the thing about being in the darkness is that after some time, your mind starts playing tricks on you.
The door that was in the middle of the wall in front of you starts appearing on the wall on your right. Or maybe your left. It’s disorienting.
After a while, I stopped trying. Instead, I found a corner and folded myself into a ball.
While I know I’m alone, sometimes the heavy air shifts. The hairs on the back of my neck rise, and goose bumps skitter allover my skin. I swear, I can feel something out of this world breathe down my neck.
In those moments, I hug my knees tighter to my chest and hum a tune under my breath. A soothing, nostalgia-drenched melody that conjures images of me and Kitajo, on the roof of my studio, counting the stars while he plays the guitar.
Seeing him hold in his hands a guitar carved out of ivory bone instead of his broadsword always jarred me, even as I got used to it. Despite that, the way his fingers caressed the taut strings, drawing the tune out of them, hypnotized me every time.
He played that guitar just as sensual and gentle as he played my body. Each caress of those long, quick fingers taunting gasps and moans out of me like nobody else ever could.
Under the sky full of stars, we wore no armor around our hearts. They were bare and open for each other. The way Kitajo’s gaze lingered over my face…as if I were the one who put those stars above our heads in the dark night’s sky.
In those scarce moments, he wasn’t the great General carrying the weight of the world on his broad shoulders, and I wasn’t the highly esteemed Caetra by day, and justice-seeking vigilante at night.
It was just him, and me.
Two souls in love, desperately clinging to each other, despite the odds stacked against us.
