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A soft snowfall lingers on my spine, no inferno. Oh, he’s bluffing, but I mask my grin behind faux fear of trembling lips.
I don’t hesitate. Confident, I slide my king forward.
The champion’s eyes widen the moment my king arrives at the other end of the board, and our audience cheers, deafening. Disbelief clouds his face. Relief sinks my shoulders. He will honor the games because it is the Talahn-Feyal way. Even in illegal sport, we honor ancestral bones. He reluctantly surrenders the prize: a velvet satchel bearing the victor bones. Franzy’s black market trader friend will know what to do.
“Care for another game, little Cock-Cross girl?” the champion tempts me, brows bobbing.
I smirk to one side and shake my head, taking Franzy’s hands. “Ascocksureof myself as I am, I have a festival to get to.”
No sooner do I speak the words than the blackwood door crashes to the ground. Chaos erupts from the elder guild soldiers mobbing the chamber with skull insignias etched onto their armor. Panic spears my spine. Countless players knock over tables, scattering lamps to the floor, and scramble for the passage exits leading to deeper avenues of the mountains. Fire catches onto the blackwood. It flares to provide a flaming net barrier. Adrenaline courses into my blood, thrashing pain in my chest.
Grabbing Franzy’s wrist, I gather my gown ends, leap over a fallen table, and haul her toward the far-left passage. Soldiers pursue us as we weave around the Hollows old manor. We won’t get far...at least not without a diversion. Dizzy with the realization, I thrust the bone pouch into Franzy’s hands before she can protest, grip her cheek, and command in a low whisper, “Run. Hide the bones. I’ll meet you in the dance hall.”
“But?”
I kiss her, then shove her down the dark alley to the bridge leading back to the Hall of Heroes. “I promised you I’d dance the night away with you. I’m counting on you, Franzy. My family needs those bones. Go! I’ll be fine.” And I will. With no bones in my possession, the most I should get is a sharp reprimand, a warning. Perhaps a small fine. But Franzy is underage. She can’t be here.
I turn and flee, moving as fast as my legs can carry me...back to the manor entrance while Franzy dashes to the bridge. Heat from my Nether-mark rears, pulses along my spine. Closer to the soldiers who surround me, but all I care about are the gaps between them, gaps betraying Franzy who scurries across the bridge and ascends the staircase.
Relieved, I shift my eyes upward in a silent prayer of thanks. Meanwhile, the soldiers force me to my knees before the kindled inferno of the Hollows manor. Smoke blows around me. Strands of silver hair eclipse my eyes, breaking my vision into pieces, but I recognize the cowled figure moving through the smoke toward me?the one studying me earlier.
“Lift her,” he directs the soldiers in a low voice.
Where are all the other players? Am I the only one caught? Something tightens behind my ribcage. Swallowing the dry lump in my throat when the soldiers haul me to my feet, I take a deep breath while my beastly mark scalds my flesh as if sensing a powerful presence.
Too much power for the transgression of an underground fydthell game.
The figure creeps his fingers, laden with bone rings, to his cowl. Cold sweat coats my hands and the back of my neck. The rich scent of incense and lantern oil cloys the air from his robes.
As soon as he removes the cowl, my heart plunges into my stomach. Tremors assail my body, my breath rasps, and I squeeze my eyes shut, wishing I could deny whom I’ve seen. The Ith man casts the outer robe aside to reveal his inner ones as red as pomegranate seeds. A status symbol of the highest Feyal-Ithydeir elder: Elder Kanat.
I lower my head in a respectful albeit feeble bow.
He is younger than expected, but I’d wager no less than ten years my senior. Woven into his long, dark braid are colorfully-painted wishbones. The most powerful elder. Will he detect my Void scar and call for my public burning or throw me to the Void, to the eth-gharym? I wince at my earliest childhood memories, of refters who’d sunk their teeth into my flesh. I’d survived them, run from them, and plunged into my Fathyr and Mathyr’s garden, growing corpus roses to lap the blood streaming down my skin.
I will not survive Elder Kanat.
Upon his approach, I dip my head, grateful for my silver-white hair shrouding my face. My lips tremble when Elder Kanat’s fingers settle beneath my chin. The Nether-mark responds with a surge of frost to nullify the flames while the Elder’s fingers heat my skin.
“Isla Adayra,” Elder Kanat greets me while raising my chin to his eyes. The flames from the burning Hollows catch the irises: they are deep and verdant green, contrasting the Underworld’s decay. The black veins in his fair skin remind me of spider silk strands?a sign of the bone magic coursing through him.
“H-how do you know my name?” I force the dry words in a croak.
He grins and thumbs my chin, revealing, “A bone-ritual. A mere test if someone forges my summons.”
My knees weaken.A fool, Isla! A desperate fool.I gasp for air while vines and leaves tickle my naked legs beneath my gown.Not now!I strive to quell the corpus roses growing through the stony ground.
“Your father, Iayn, speaks highly of his accepted daughter,” continues Elder Kanat, pacing before me, his boots trampling unaware upon the rosebuds. Yes...Fathyr and Mathyr accepted me into their family, and this is how I repay them.
“Please, Elder Kanat, I can explain?” I pronounce, lifting my neck where his eyes linger upon my arched throat.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk, Isla,” he clicks his teeth, inhales me through his long, curved nose, and sets his proud, thin jaw. His voice darkens in a chastisement, “This is a disappointment but one I may forgive, given your family’s deep misfortune. Hard-working and valued citizens such as yours pay the price for the King’s rebellious testing of the gods.”
More roses grow, curling toward the limbs of the soldiers surrounding me.No...I close my eyes, wishing them away, but once I open them, more vines and thorns shoot through the cracks.
Elder Kanat taps my cheek, summoning me. His eyes narrow, more vulpine than I’d first registered, causing me to lean further away. His fingers traverse my cheek, but I ban the internal shiver from the intimate action. And how he’s insulted the Corpse King...even if all of Talahn-Feyal know the Void encroaches closer, spitting out refters like the ones who attacked my father.
Elder Kanat tilts his head toward me, fingers descending to my chin. Whichever soldiers don’t surround me tend to the Hollows fire which silhouettes the elder, making him more specter than Ith.
