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“You sure weren’t so sharp-tongued last night.” He trailed his fingers down her spine before he stopped at her lower back and spread his fingers wide, the possessive touch adding to the image of early infatuation for any casual onlooker.
“We weren’t exactly doing a lot of talking,” she said, hoping like hell Carlos missed the hungry hitch in her voice.
“True.” His gaze dropped to her mouth, lingering for a few heartbeats before rising to look her in the eye without any flirtatious pretense. “But one snide remark is all it will take to let whoever is behind this know we’re on to him…” His jaw tightened. “Or her. The attacks are getting more violent; we need to catch this guy before someone gets really hurt.”
And that brought everything home like a lead weight in her stomach. Boisterous laughter filtered out of the back room. These people were more than just her court. They were her family. After what happened to her sister, Hana, they’d circled around her and kept her from falling into depression’s deep black hole. Blame, regret, and guilt burned a hole through her heart every time she thought of her little sister, but she’d learned how to cope thanks to the members of her court. She’d do whatever it took to protect them. She wouldn’t fail them like she had Hana.
Mika forced her lips to curl into a flirtatious smile, praying it was good enough to fool anyone watching with a suspicious eye. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“I worry about everything. That’s my job.”
“Come on.” She walked to the back room. “Everyone’s back here.”
Everyone in this case consisted of three of her four-person royal guard and all of her ten-person court, not that they looked like the Silver Queen’s entourage right now, since they were dressed in their mundane clothes. She worked in a design world where Chanel, Dior, Prada, Gucci, and Armani were the labels of choice, but she played in a world where a worn T-shirt with Yoda on it beat out a designer label any day of the week. The irony wasn’t lost on her.
She sat down on the single ottoman available, scooting as far over to one side as possible so Carlos would have a place to sit. As soon as he did, her heart rate kicked back up as awareness of him sizzled against her skin. Inching away wasn’t an option on the small piece of real estate they shared, so she stiffened her spine and tried to ignore the way being this close to him magically made her lungs two sizes too small.
“Sorry I’m late,” said Ryan Hasley, the fourth member of her royal guard, as he hustled into the room wearing the silver vestment that marked him as loyal to the Silver Queen. In his rush, he accidentally nudged Carlos’s elbow. Coffee sloshed out of the opening in the lid. “Oh man, I’m really sorry— Holy shit, ’Los?”
“Ryan? Man, it is good to see you.” Carlos stood up and hugged the tardy member of Mika’s court, clapping him on the back. “It’s been what, a year?”
“There about,” Ryan said. “Good to see you back in the fold. Are you playing again?”
Carlos sat back down beside Mika and threw his arm around her waist, tugging her closer. “Let’s just say someone is working to change my mind.”
Her breath caught and she fought the urge to mold herself to his side. Just a cover, she repeated in her head, wishing her body would stop responding to his every touch like she’d spent the past six months in a sensory deprivation chamber.
“Mika, you have outdone yourself. There is no way we won’t get the Dyrnwyn sword now.” Ryan looked around at the others. “Don’t you guys know who this is? This is Zephyr.”
There was half a beat of silence before insanity ensued. Everyone started talking at once and trying to shake Carlos’s hand. Mika backed off, giving the others plenty of room to press the flesh with the man many of them considered a god. Many knew his stats by heart, others had virtually lived or died because of Zephyr’s game play. When he’d disappeared, the rumors in the community had ranged from him dying in real life to the theory that he had been a figment of the game and had never been real. From the corner, she watched Carlos’s initial surprise turn to embarrassment and then relax into the good-natured awkwardness of an introvert pushed into the spotlight.
If only her friends knew that he’d abandoned nerd heaven for a place at the jock’s table. Carlos was good, she’d give him that. He hid that little tidbit of truth so far below the surface that no one would be the wiser. The ease of his duplicity made her palms sweat. She’d never seen Keenan’s true side until his hands were soaked in Hana’s blood, and here she was foisting another liar with an ulterior motive on her family. If the stakes weren’t so high, she’d listen to the voice in her head telling her to blow his cover and order him to get the fuck out of here. Instead she smiled like an infatuated girlfriend and sipped her coffee while Carlos’s fans adored him.
It took ten minutes before things settled down and she took her seat next to her “boyfriend” on the ottoman. Her court and guard resumed their seats around the coffee table with the map of Central Square Park that had been divided into five sections. Each was shaded a different color. The purple represented the Silver Queen’s kingdom, the red was the Crimson Widow’s, the blue was the Cerulean Monk’s, and the green represented the Jade Emperor’s. All of those sections could easily fit inside the silver-shaded section in the middle. That was unclaimed territory. Somewhere within it was the Dyrnwyn sword. During the upcoming Battle Ultimate, all four kingdoms would search for the sword and battle to hold onto it. W
hatever kingdom possessed the sword at sunset would reign supreme over the others for the coming LARP season. It was the Super Bowl of Harbor City’s LARPing community.
Ryan turned to Carlos. “So you’re going to fight alongside us at the Battle Ultimate?”
Mika chewed the inside of her cheek, and the sharp pain stopped her from voicing her dislike of Ryan’s idea. Why get her court’s hopes up for something that wasn’t going to happen?
Carlos shrugged.
“Oh, come on. You’d be a huge strategy help. We’ll have to get you your own vestment.” Ryan flapped the long tail of his three-inch-wide, long, flat scarf-type accessory hanging around his shoulders so it hung down both sides of the front of his chest. “You could add it to the list of replacements you need to make, Mika.”
“Replacements?” Carlos asked, as if he had no idea about the muggings.
If she didn’t know better, Mika would think he was completely sincere. An uneasy silence fell over the room, the kind that screamed with tension. Carlos laid his palm on her thigh, right above her knee, and squeezed. Unbidden, desire sizzled its way up her inner thigh like she’d touched a live wire instead of a man—the absolute last man who should be able to make her feel this way. Liars as accomplished as he was didn’t just fib about one thing.
Sick of the deception even though it had barely begun, Mika flung out as much of the truth as she could. “It’s okay, he knows about the muggings.”
“Is that what we’re calling it?” Ryan scoffed. “More like sabotage.”
“What makes you say that?” Carlos asked.
Josh Cloak, second-in-command of her royal guard, waved his hand over the map of Central Square Park. “It has to be one of the other factions trying to mess with our headspace before the Battle Ultimate.”
“But people have gotten hurt,” Mika cut in. “Do you really think a player would do that?”
