The Fake Divination Offense (Magic and Romance #2)

Chapter One

“Five.”

“One.”

I think for a minute. Or, more accurately, the buzzing under my skin thinks for a minute. The whipping epidermal hurricane of emotions I’ve been carrying around most of the day.

And it decides: “Five.”

To which Seb responds, “One.”

Thio, from his barstool on Seb’s other side, snorts into his wineglass. “I don’t think you two understand how negotiating works.”

Seb leans back against him. “Yeah, I do. First rule of negotiating: never back down.”

“Second rule of negotiating,” I add, “never apologize.”

And I scroll through the bar’s karaoke sign-up sheet on my phone to quickly claim five slots. Maybe six. Oops, seven?

But we’re celebrating tonight.

We’re free.

Seb’s slow smile is all the further argument I get. “Eh, go crazy, big guy.” His eyes dip past my shoulder and his grin sharpens. “I won’t be the one using my body as a human shield to stop you, anyway.”

He raises his cocktail glass for a sip, the new ring on his finger flashing in the low light. We’re celebrating more than one thing tonight, and I go to add an eighth slot—

When someone bats my hand away from my phone. “No.”

Ah. That’s who Seb was looking at.

Darian Callabrass—human, with thin black locs pulled into a topknot, and a very deliberate rock-star vibe from his leather pants, ripped white T-shirt set off against his dark skin, and the guitar strapped to his back—has been a bard on the Hellhounds for the past three years.

While I’ve only been part of the team for two months, he’s good people.

Mostly.

“I swear, Monroe, if you bastardize another Queen song like you did at practice…”

I give Darian my most innocent, wide-eyed sulk. “Excuse you, I was singing along to my personal workout playlist, so fuck off. Your patron god loves me appreciating his music.”

“My patron god has made it my new mission on this plane to get you to stop inflicting emotional damage on the unknowing public by screeching his songs.”

I cut a smile I know won’t faze him. “Just one Queen song tonight?”

A sudden lurking presence at Darian’s shoulder has both of us glancing over. I’m rather used to these antics, getting teamed up with Marlow in practices, but Darian jumps in surprise.

“Fucking hell, you’re as bad as Phei,” he gasps. “I’m going to put a bell on you.”

Marlow, one of the Hellhounds’ rogues, slowly flips Darian off and holds out her other palm, where a cluster of clip-on earrings sits. The motion wafts the smell of saltwater that always permeates the air around her, an overpowering wave of, well, waves.

Darian snatches an earring, attaches it, and repeats, “You’re as bad as Phei. I’m going to put a bell on you.”

Only now, thanks to the enchanted earring, his words are subtitled below his face in slightly neon-blue script.

I take an earring, as do Seb and Thio, but they’ve turned to watch something on one of the TVs behind the bar.

Marlow’s tan skin reddens. “A bell? Do you have any idea how offensive that is?” she signs. It, too, is converted into subtitles, though hers are due to a ring she wears.

Darian blanches. “Oh gods. Is that some mermaid thing?”

“No.” Marlow beams, all sharp white teeth. “It’s a screwing-with-you thing. Put a bell on me. I dare you.”

Darian shoves her.

“Where is Phei?” I ask, cutting my gaze around. Though, from what I’ve learned of the Hellhounds’ dryad healer, they don’t exactly hold to things like schedules. Or time. Or humanoid forms. But they’ve surprisingly never missed a practice, so.

The bar’s filling, evening swelling the crowd, chatter rising with the temperature as sweat slicks my navy Henley to my back.

“No clue,” Marlow says. “They said they’d try to come, though.”

At which point, conversation flatlines, and it’s painfully obvious that only Darian, who was assigned to show me the ropes when I got traded, and as such got stuck being my friend, and Marlow, my training partner and the other newest team member, came out.

Despite my invite to the whole team that drinks were on me at the Silver Hound.

“I’m sure they just had other plans.” Darian adjusts his guitar’s strap with a shrug. “There’re only a few weeks ’til the first game. Everyone’s busy before the season starts.”

Marlow’s crystalline eyes flash with her smile. “We’ll still party.”

That buzzing energy I’ve been riding high on threatens to morph into something other than cheerfulness, but nope. It doesn’t get to do that tonight.

I’m staying in this moment. Living in this victory. It was a hard-earned win, no matter what other people might think, and enjoying the release of this stress is a necessary part of the healing process.

So says my therapist at the more frequent appointments we’ve had the past few months in preparation for not only the lawsuit ending but me starting a new rawball season. Lots of beginnings, lots of healing, lots of good things.

I power back the rest of my beer and flag the bartender. “What are you guys drinking? Sky’s the limit.”

Seb whirls on me. “I’ll get their drinks. You need to go up for your first song, right?”

The stage is at the rear of the bar, but they haven’t kicked off karaoke yet and I’m not the first slot. That was already claimed in the app by someone who put their name down as Alexo the Magnificent. Sounds more like a kid’s magician than a karaoke name, but whatever, I don’t judge.

Lies.

I totally judge.

If you’re gonna go to all the trouble of coming up with a karaoke nom de plume, then my gods, commit.

Seb nudges me toward the stage, but I brace myself on the barstool. There’s a weird look on his face, like he’s trying to cover something. Or distract me from something?

He lists to the right and sits up taller—trying to block me from seeing over his shoulder. The TV screens.

Which is hilarious. He’s a little guy—significantly shorter than me, as pale as I am but all unruly blond hair, glasses, and sass against my half-giant height and bulk—and him trying to block anything from me is like a chihuahua hurling itself in front of Cerberus.

All I have to do is flick my eyes up and to the left, and the screens are in full view.

The closest one shows a news report about—I squint, then roll my eyes.

Looks like another group of Galaxrien Vossen cultists tried to resurrect him.

Summon him? They can’t seem to decide whether their demon lord is alive or dead in the hell-pit my patron god—Urzoth Shieldsworn—locked him in centuries ago.

This time, their ceremony involved a tuft of hair—ew—they swear was from Galaxrien’s mortal descendant.

Whoever they are. Most of the people who worship Galaxrien through the official religion have demonic ancestry, by nature of Galaxrien being a demon, so they probably grabbed hair from one of their own worshippers and called it good.

Regardless, before the ceremony could be completed, members of Urzoth’s church charged in and the proceeding tussle set fire to a pizza parlor, since the resurrection ceremony had been set up in an abandoned Best Buy in a strip mall.

Because, as everyone knows, demon lords trapped in hell-pits will only deign to come to earth if they’re resurrected at an electronics store.

The fuck is wrong with these cultists.

I almost reach for my phone, certain it’ll be lit up with texts from my mother talking about this latest drama, complaining about the Galaxrien cultists and how idiotic it is to think they can undo Urzoth’s work, and so on and so forth.

I could throw a little wrench into her rant by pointing out that the Urzoth worshippers used unnecessary force, but I know exactly what she’d say to that: Force is strength, Orok!

When was the last time you challenged anyone to a fight?

When was the last time you displayed your strength outside the rawball field?

My phone stays safely in my pocket.

I frown at Seb. However shit-stirring that news report will be with my mother, that can’t be what he didn’t want me to see.

He’s got this aggressively hopeful look on his face, wide smile and forced levity.

“Go on now.” He bats my chest. “Git.”

My eyes cast up again as I start to move off the barstool—and I catch the other screen.

That’s my face. My headshot is next to one of the ostentatiously ragey sports reporters who always tries to have the most boisterous opinions on every single move we make during games.

The reporter is gesturing wildly, stabbing his finger to make a point, his face red as he shouts, but luckily the TV’s muted.

Are they talking about my trade? My stats? How I was one of the Vegas Chimeras’ best defensive tanks when they won the rawball championship last season? How the Philadelphia Hellhounds got a steal when they traded for me?

Doubtful. Not by the way the reporter looks one blood pressure spike away from a stroke, and then the symbol for Urzoth, a stone with an axe jammed into it, flashes over my headshot, followed by Orok Monroe: Traitor?

Call me a traitor to the magical community for bringing down Camp Merethyl, and it’s annoying, sure, but anyone who says that can fuck off.

Call me a traitor to Urzoth, and my stomach sinks, all that beer I chugged shaking up at the sudden lurch.

Because they’re right.

Or they will be, at least.

Yeah, I’m definitely not looking at my phone now.

I rip my eyes away from the TV. They land, instead, on Seb, whose forced levity vanishes at the look on my face.

No.

Tonight’s about freedom. About celebrating the end of a four-year-long lawsuit, but it stretches beyond that, all the way back to our childhood. To our days at the magical paramilitary training camp that became the source of all my nightmares.

Literally.

I haven’t slept in months.

I scramble for some of that good feeling again.

The lawsuit ended. The verdict’s in: they’re guilty. Camp Merethyl’s directors owe us restitution for torturing us under the guise of training. The world knows what they did and how wrong it was.

Yeah, the world knows.