Page 53 of Winterveil

When he felt her presence at his back he looked up, startled. Klaudia stood at a slight distance, arms folded over her chest. He was reminded of their first meeting, when she had ordered him to get out of her seat. Only her gaze now wasn’t cold and set. Something wavered in it, darkening the usual icy gray.

Julian opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Debate team captain, precocious teenage politician, but Klaudia always made him so tongue-tied. He felt both chilled by her stare and electrified by it.

Before he could react, Klaudia turned. Quickly, almost flustered, she stalked out of the dining hall. By the time she vanished through the doors, the unspoken words were burning in Julian’s throat.

Wait, he wished he had said. Come here. Come back.

But Klaudia, as ever, accepted help from no one. After that, in fact, Julian barely saw her over the next few days. She emerged only briefly at mealtimes, ate little, and then disappeared back into her dorm room.

Over and over again Julian rehearsed what he might say to her, but she never gave him another chance. Maybe that was for the best. What could he say? Sorry for what Carter did. You’re welcome for stopping him. Shame how it all went down, but I’m still going to try to beat you. She didn’t want his mealymouthed apologies, and he didn’t want her gratitude.

The memory of her on her knees played over and over again in his mind, and Julian found something viscerally repugnant about it. That Klaudia could be brought low by cheap tricks and guileless cruelty was disgusting. Because Carter couldn’t match her on the cerebral realm in which she operated, he had tried to pull her down to the mortal, corporeal world.

Julian knew he had no high ground on honor, but it was so fundamentally wrong that anger continued to seethe within him. He envisioned an alternate timeline where he had beaten Carter to a pulp. It was a pointless thought exercise. For better or worse, Julian had no constitution for violence.

But the game was different—or at least he tried to convince himself it was. If he beat Klaudia there, he would do it fairly, in her realm, on an even playing field. Yet as the final phase of the tournament approached, Julian couldn’t shake the sickness he felt at the prospect.

It was the afternoon before the tournament and Julian was poring over last-minute calculations with Mikhail. They’d played dozens of games by now, testing their matchups, and while Julian had won consistently, there was still something missing.

“It has a good matchup into all the other major threats in the tournament,” he said. “Except for Klaudia’s.”

“I told you, just accept it. You’re playing for second. I swear, I’m removing Psycha from the game with the next balance patch. Clearly I didn’t consider all the possible niche interactions between different pieces and mechanics.”

But Julian refused to accept that. He went back through the handbook, reexamining every single piece. He analyzed every ability, every move, every base stat total. He just needed something—anything—that gave him a chance against Ghostly Trap.

It was an hour later when he finally saw it, a maligned piece that he had overlooked again and again. Tradecrafter, a massive arthropodin creature with what looked like a spy mask and headset. It seemed rather unimpressive at first glance, but its ability caught Julian’s eye.

When he pointed it out to Mikhail, his roommate laughed.

“You’re kidding,” he said. “I literally designed it as a joke. To make fun of the espionage students. You know, because of bugging . . .”

But while Mikhail trailed off, Julian was studying Tradecrafter closely. And all of a sudden, everything came together in his head.

Midnight. There was surprisingly little fanfare to the actual moment the tournament began. Julian was refreshing the page, and then all of a sudden a notification blipped across his screen.

Matteo Alemu Sorensen is challenging you to a Wi-Fi battle.

As he loaded into the game, Julian felt only minimally nervous. He had practiced every matchup multiple times. When he saw the pieces Matteo sent out, his opponent’s entire strategy unfolded before him. Pattern recognition, visualization. Just like chess.

Julian won his first game decisively.

Jane Lin is challenging you to a Wi-Fi battle.

Moonlight washed through Julian’s window, casting his room in silver. It reminded him of—well, nothing he could afford to think about right now. But it compelled him to look down at his watch: 3:16 a.m.

Emile Vo is challenging you to a Wi-Fi battle.

With every game he won, Julian’s pulse ticked up. He was getting close, so close. Winning gave him a high comparable to any he’d experienced with Landon’s uppers. He never wanted to come down from it.

The way the tournament matching system worked—the pairings were random—he didn’t end up facing Klaudia during the first phase. It left him both disappointed and relieved. Yet each time he allowed himself to dream of home, of the weekend furlough, thoughts of Klaudia crept into the corners of his mind. He no longer knew what he wanted more.

The next morning, in the dining hall, the other students were in an uproar. Their pale faces and dark circles showed their exhaustion, but their eyes gleamed with bitter suspicion. Every single one of them seemed to be staring at Julian’s table.

Did you see their teams—

Not fair—

Rigged—