Chapter 21 #2
Something landed on top of the carriage, and the wheels screeched and skidded against the road. I braced myself, clutching anything other than the man beside me. The car teetered on two wheels before righting itself. Through the grate, I heard the driver wail.
The carriage hit a large bump, and it went quiet.
The grate slid aside, but a different voice came through. “You want me to claim what’s mine, Damien? You have no idea the war you’ve started.”
“Oh, come on, Max. A little sibling rivalry between brothers is always healthy.” Damien provoked him, keeping his hand around my waist. “You were always the favorite among us, but things have changed. Even Ronny is coming around to my side these days.”
“Ronny?” Max shouted. “She hates you, and you know it.”
“Not anymore,” he murmured.
There were shouts from oncoming traffic as Max turned the carriage hard to the right, then pulled the reins to bring it to a halt.
A blade flashed near my face, touching the soft skin of my neck. Damien shoved me to my knees in front of him while he sat on the bench, waiting for Max to rip the carriage door open. There was a scream of metal as it tore off its hinges, and Max tossed it into the alley behind him.
He stared at Damien, stilling when he saw the knife. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“Nina and I had an interesting chat on the journey, Max,” he hissed. “She was somehow under the impression that I’m working for someone.” The blade caressed my skin, indenting my throat.
“We found the receipts, Damien. We know you’re paying for the bodies of dead Archetypes. After everything we went through together, after what the Trials did to the both of us, I would never have expected you to get involved with something like this.”
Damien adjusted his grip on the hilt. “That’s because you don’t know anything about me. Poor Maxence,” he mocked. “The engineer favored him too much. He received every bloodline, every gift, every relic. Meanwhile, the rest of us were tossed aside.”
“Your jealousy is rotting your mind,” Max growled.
Damien spat near my knee on the floor of the carriage. “You just hate me because I’m finally becoming what I was made for. Because I am accepting who I am, and you still hate yourself for it.”
Max didn’t move, glancing at the blade still sliding against my bounding pulse. “That has nothing to do with Nina. Just let her go, and we can deal with this like true Cursed. We’re not the children we were in the lab anymore.”
“Cursed, eh?” He snickered. The knife loosened. “You finally accept it, then. So let’s settle it like Cursed. Let’s duel.”
Max went tense—but suddenly, he smirked. “You really think you can beat me in a duel?”
Damien’s grip on my throat tightened, as if Max’s amusement irked him. “I know I can.”
“Fine,” he said. “Name the time and place, just let her go.”
I lunged for the door just as Damien grabbed my wrist, pulling me back against his body. “You know where to find me,” he whispered in my ear, “when I kill your keeper.”
“Let go, Damien,” I demanded.
He shoved me out of the carriage, forcing Max to catch me. By the time he’d set me down, Damien had escaped through the opposite door and disappeared into the street traffic.
“Coward,” Max spat.
I said nothing, still trying to process what had happened.
Max squeezed my shoulder, requesting my attention.
“I’m sorry,” was all I could think to say.
How easily Damien had procured all the information he’d wanted from me.
And I had gotten nothing in return. The shame of it all made me sick.
He’d tasted me, and I’d let him. How far would he have made me go had Max not interceded?
I covered my mouth with a hand to cover the bite there. The evidence of my stupidity.
“Nina.” My name always sounded gentle from his lips, even when the dust of his fury still sifted in the air. “You did nothing wrong.”
Suddenly, a new terror overtook me. I dug into my pockets, searching for the dice. They were missing.
“What is it?” Max cried.
“The dice!”
“Nina!”
It was so much worse than a kiss. He’d distracted me, tricked me, all to make me forget about the Forge and Glamour dice so he could scoop them from my pocket while I was under his spell. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know what came over me! I—”
“He compelled you, didn’t he?”
I stared at him. “How would I know he compelled me?”
“Well…” Max’s nostrils flared, his shoulders tensed. “It’s very simple. Did you want to kiss him?”
Heat filled my cheeks. “Of course I didn’t want to!”
“Then he compelled you.” Max’s fists trembled at his sides. He reared back and punched through the car’s window, then kicked through the spokes of the driver’s side wheel. Glass and twisted metal littered the alley, his carnage unyielding.
“Max…” I whispered, shielding myself from the debris. “I promise, I’ll fix this. I’ll get your dice back.”
His rampage ceased, as if he’d just remembered I was still standing there.
Heavy breaths were the only sound before he finally spoke.
“I’m not worried about the dice, Nina. Damien crossed a line, an old one established by the original Cursed clans when the city first tried to push us out.
We don’t compel each other. He knows that, and he was baiting me. He wanted me to challenge him tonight.”
“But why would he want that?”
“To get rid of me for good, while convincing the city that he was only defending himself. Duels are another of our oldest traditions. We cannot refuse a challenge or back down after issuing one. With two of my dice, he thinks he has the advantage.”
“And does he?”
Max closed the distance between us with a step. His hand lifted to my face, gently stroking the spot where Damien had bitten me. A muscle flickered in his jaw. “No. I’m going to win this. I’m going to kill him.”
Sirens blared from a few blocks over. Constables shouted in the street, surrounding the body of the driver who Max had thrown under the moving carriage.
“Come on,” he whispered, reaching for my hand. “We need to get somewhere safe.”
I wanted to have the same confidence, but the odds were stacking against us. We were pinned between the Cursed and constables, a threat no matter where we turned. Not a single place in the city felt safe anymore.
Except… maybe one.
I took Max’s outstretched hand in a grateful grip, like it was the last solid thing in a world that was falling apart, and followed him as he pulled us down a shadowed alley.