Chapter One #2
Including people like the Chimeras’ managers and my other teammates. After my testimony came out, they knew that someone who belonged to a god made out of stone and handled conflict with his fists was patiently fielding a lawsuit, so how bad could my experience at Camp Merethyl really have been?
If I were a true Urzoth follower, I would’ve fought back when these supposed atrocities happened.
If I were a true Urzoth follower, I wouldn’t have gone through with a lawsuit; I would’ve challenged the head of the camp to a fight and let that victory lay out the guilty party.
The pro rawball community seems almost evenly split between knowing I was right to stand up against the abuse and knowing I’m a weak coward.
All that buzzing in my skin fatalistically shifts from excitement to anxiety, creep-crawling up my spine and wrapping around my throat.
Seb grabs my forearm. “Hey. We don’t have to be out tonight. We can go back to one of our—”
Saved by the squeal of a microphone.
It wails over the crowded bar and we all flinch—well, not Marlow, who watches us and laughs—before a voice reverberates in the proceeding silence:
“Let’s get this party started! It’s karaoke night, bitches, and you know what that means.
No heckling. No booing. Everyone’s welcome.
If you have siren lineage, warn us before your song so the audience can cast disenchantment wards.
Now, first up, we have … Alexo the Magnificent! Let’s give it up for Alexo!”
The crowd applauds. But Seb keeps his grip on my arm.
“O,” he says over the din. “We can—”
“I’m gonna go closer to the stage,” I say. We’re still wearing Marlow’s clip-ons, which are a huge help in situations like this; I know Seb can understand me even with the noise.
I pause, analytical eyes sweeping over him, and my emotions take a one-eighty. “Unless you want to leave?”
One corner of Seb’s mouth lifts. He leans back again, where Thio, in conversation with Marlow and Darian, automatically threads an arm around his waist.
That’s one of the main reasons I was able to get some much-needed healthy distance from Seb over the past few years: I knew he had Thio. I knew my best friend was taken care of.
“I’m good,” Seb says with a helplessly content smile. “I’m engaged. We won. You’re back in Philly. Everything’s great.” His smile dims. “Right?”
Right.
Say it.
Right, Seb. Everything’s great.
Except I didn’t get traded due to my stats—which is the reason Seb thinks I’m on a brand-new three-year contract with the Hellhounds. I got traded because my old team turned on me for daring to bring down the camp that almost killed me.
And my new team seems to have the same opinion on the matter.
Yes. We won the lawsuit. That era of our lives can finally be put to rest.
It’s this new era that terrifies the shit out of me.
I lean forward to peck Seb on the cheek. “I’ll be back. Cheer for me.”
Seb still looks like he wants to keep asking if I’m okay, and I love him for it. But he relents and gives me a thumbs-up as Alexo the Magnificent’s song kicks on: Journey. A pretty standard karaoke pick.
I bop Darian on the shoulder to get his and Marlow’s attention. “Tab’s open under my name. Go crazy.” I sure as hell will.
Marlow cackles. “Famous last words. Drink like a fish is a cliché for a reason.”
I grin, relieved at the feel of it, the flash of camaraderie I’ve been starving for.
Unease wiggles its obnoxious little way into my thoughts, reminding me not to get too attached to all this. Healthy steps. Boundaries, compartmentalization. I need to keep everyone at a distance until I can figure out my place here.
Seb gives me a probing look, but I shove off the stool with a reassuring smile, a long breath escaping as I peel farther away from my group.
A large portion of the crowd has pressed around the small stage at the back of the room, but I lumber through and score a spot right up against the edge near the wall, so I’m not blocking anyone.
Alexo the Magnificent croons the first lines of “Don’t Stop Believin’” and a cheer goes up, but I’m pathetically scanning faces in the Silver Hound’s dim light for anyone else from the team.
If they’re going to believe the fuckers saying that our claims about Camp Merethyl’s cruelty were lies, that I should’ve handled any perceived slight through stone-cold aggression, I don’t want them here.
I’d hoped this team would be different. That I could be back home in every sense of the word.
No one on the Hellhounds has spoken to me about the trial yet, and everyone’s been welcoming and kind, if overly formal.
I knew once the verdict landed that it’d all come to a head, and I’d hoped I could get in front of it, invite everyone out, play it off as something positive before they had a chance to believe the worst of me.
We’re a team. Spells, explosions, obstacles—all that and more get thrown at us every time we step onto a rawball field. Trust is what keeps us alive.
The Hellhounds don’t trust me, do they? It’s gonna be the Chimeras all over again.
I stretch my right arm instinctively, phantom pain radiating from the hairline fracture I got in my elbow during the championship game.
Weak. Weak to worry about all this. To be disappointed. All this, just—gods, weakness.
I shake my head, hard, as Alexo the Magnificent takes the midnight train going anywhere. His voice is smooth, flowing over me in a crooning wash.
My eyes drift to the stage—
And my jaw drops.
Holy.
Shit.
I take back all my previous smartass thoughts about his karaoke name. Magnificent is completely accurate.
He’s about Seb’s height and size, but thinner, slighter, wearing a scarlet satin shirt unbuttoned to his stomach so it billows away from his bare chest, with tight black pants tucked into clunky gold boots.
His pale skin is covered in a dusting of rosy golden glitter, and with his overall demeanor, I can’t figure out if it’s makeup or he’s part pixie.
Alexo sways in the musical interlude between verses, eyes shut, more of that rose-gold paint shimmering across each eyelid, his messy tangle of strawberry-blond curls gleaming pink in the stage lighting.
Wow, my brain supplies. And then keeps repeating that word in a dumbstruck rollover when Alexo the Magnificent dives into the next verse.
His eyes fly open, deep onyx brown, highlighted in thick black liner and mascara, and as the music builds, rage sparks there. A small pool of it at first, then it grows and grows, spreading across his whole face until he’s snarling with the swell of the words and music, livin’ just to find emotion.
When he belts out that first long note, I don’t want to look away, but my head swings back, and I catch Darian’s eye. The whole damn bar is watching Alexo perform, most people slack-jawed, others bobbing to the song.
Darian meets my gaze over all the heads, and when I cock an eyebrow in an unspoken Are you seeing this?, he says something that gets picked up by his enchanted earring and subtitles under his face:
“This is why you leave karaoke to the professionals. You have to follow that.”
I roll my eyes and turn back to Alexo, because fuck Darian, that’s not what I meant.
I’m not sure what I meant. I just—gods, this guy is throwing his whole body into the performance, dancing across the stage, and the crowd claps along.
But Alexo seems unaware of them, each word of each verse coming from the very pit of his soul.
I almost wonder if I missed him telling the audience he’s a siren and he’d be inadvertently casting an enchantment on us with this routine, but he doesn’t have the look of someone casting spells. This is for him. Just for him.
But I take a little of it for me, too.
There’s this god who fell out of favor centuries ago—Cendis, the god of small fires.
Candlelight, sparks, embers, tiny touches of heat.
He dropped away as people were more drawn to raging elemental fire gods, but I always found what he represented to be far more potent.
He was the god of beginnings. Of having the ability to start a fire in the first place.
That’s what I see as Alexo bares his soul with this song. Someone trying with every wisp of their existence to begin.
To be free.
Where the crowd is fully enjoying the song, dancing and laughing, a partying Thursday night, I go more and more slack as the music carries on. The lyrics drop in the last interlude, and Alexo’s previous dance moves were a warm-up.
He pirouettes around the stage, back arching, legs kicking up to his face, arms pinwheeling in a mesmerizing braid of limbs and fluidity.
All the while keeping the mic cord from tangling and playing around the karaoke machine with the lyric screen he’s not once looked at—and avoiding a few reaching hands from the audience.
I jolt forward at that, shoulders bunching. I’m close enough to the edge of the stage that all I have to do is move to get the attention of the front row. When I glare, they sink back a few good inches.
Just because it’s unsafe. I don’t want him to trip. Obviously.
Alexo doesn’t notice. He whirls back into the last swell of lyrics, clinging to the mic with both hands, and singing, singing his fucking heart out.
Each long note becomes its own mini performance piece, his spine folding so far backward he’s defying gravity, and that part of my brain still going wow, wow, wow now adds he’s flexible along with pathetic little whimpers.
The song fades out as Alexo holds in the position of the final note, hands still death-gripping the microphone, eyes pinched shut.
The music barely ends when the crowd explodes, hooting and cheering and clapping.
Alexo’s eyes blink open like he’s coming out of a trance. He straightens up and his gaze casts over the crowd, a slow smile lifting one side of his mouth—
His eyes land on me.
Something flashes through his expression, a quick scroll of surprise—and fear.