Chapter Three #2
The guard shoved her down onto the remaining pouf next to Aarin and a second man came up behind them, placing a small golden cage with—of course—another cat.
Mykonos had remained aboard the Aphrodite and Dimitris had been elated for the reprieve from the stench of that feline, but it was only fitting that the gods would curse him once more.
Although, this black creature did not give the same head spinning, gut wrenching smell that Mykonos did.
Truthfully, he could not smell the thing at all over the smoke and sweat that filled the room.
“Dafne,” Thalia whispered, her eyes going glassy.
Vomit burned Dimitris’s throat, threatening to spill on the table before him, as the woman—Thalia’s sister—finally lifted her head and met their gazes.
He wasn’t sure why he thought her sister would share Thalia’s same violet eyes, but he was so very wrong.
Deep crimson orbs stared back, her pupils dilating until they were barely slits.
It looked like the blood had drained from every inch of her skin and flowed only into those pools that glared through his soul.
Dafne said nothing, only sat, her hands shaking violently when Aarin leaned into her and grazed his teeth along her ear, whispering something that caused her to pale even more, if that was even possible.
Dimitris leaned close enough to Thalia so that the men could not overhear his whispers. “Why are we gambling for your sister’s life? Could you not just buy her freedom like Ander bought yours?”
“They would never sell my sister, no matter how much coin was offered. Me—I was a nuisance, a used up woman with little more to give. She has a tongue like a knife, but was always more easily manipulated by the threats to her psychí. I was a seer of prophecies. Visions that could be interpreted in many ways. Dafne only ever saw the truth, stark and irrefutable. She is priceless,” Thalia whispered back.
There were different types of seers? Dimitris had not realized that—had only ever heard of those who saw what the Fates threaded into the future. All seers were supposed to be taken at their word. Interpretability was not something he knew.
“So are we playing or not?” the man with a death wish muttered against the poor girl’s neck. Dimitris wanted to lunge across that table and tackle the man for the way he pawed at Thalia’s sister, but he couldn’t. Not yet. He had other plans for someone as repulsive as this Aarin person.
Three taps on the table—a signal the game was to begin.
Dimitris knew what he had to do. He wasn’t a risky man by nature, no wolf was—he had grown into it.
The high he felt when everything was on the line thrilled him more than anything else in this world.
But it was not his possessions, his service he would be risking today and it caused him to rub the stabbing pain over his heart.
Each of the players slid a coin into the center, except Thalia.
Instead she just said the number five. Five years off her sister’s service.
A high price to bet and one that was quickly tallied to the twenty he had learned Dafne was already bound to.
Again and again the table rolled, each time Aarin seemed to slip one number above the others.
Five turned to ten. Ten turned to fifteen. Fifteen turned to fifty.
“You need to stop,” Dimitris said to Thalia. “If you go any higher, she will be in his possession her whole life.”
“I can’t…” her voice cracked. Water rimmed the bottom of her eye lids and Dimitris prepared to step in more than he wished to.
“There is nothing you have left to bet, Thalia. It looks like I will be taking my little panther back with me,” Aarin hissed.
“My life for hers.” Thalia’s voice was sharp and definitive.
“No,” Dimitris whispered under his breath, grasping for her hand. “You cannot trade your life, even for your sister’s.”
She turned to him, fire still burning deep in her eyes. “I will not leave her again.” There was a finality in her words, as if this was what she planned all along.
“As you wish, seer.” Aarin tapped the table three times with his spindly finger, signaling the beginning of another game.
Six bones fell to the table with a clack, landing five, five, six, six, six, six.
Fuck. It was almost a perfect roll. There was no way Thalia would beat that.
Clasping her hands together, Thalia shook the knuckle bones, and opened her palms, allowing them to fall to the table. Six, Six, Five, Five, Six.
Five.
She had lost by a single point. Breath lodged in Dimitris's throat. His brother would never forgive him for this. No. No. No. No.
“Double or nothing,” Dimitris said, barely a breath leaving his lips.
“What?” Thalia and Aarin asked at the same time.
“I said double or nothing. My ship and my servitude for both of their lives,” Dimitris repeated, this time with more poise, though his gaze shifted down toward the table, unable to meet that of the legionnaire across from him.
“Your ship? Surely you wouldn’t give up something so dear for a used up seer and a whore.”
He was wrong. Dimitris loved the Aphrodite, had built it plank by plank with his own hands and had the scars to prove it, but a woman like Thalia—one who had sacrificed her own well-being, one who had suffered at the hands of vile men for so long, one who would sacrifice the well-being of her own life for another—was worth a thousand ships. She would not be going back to them.
“I guess you have the advantage then, Aarin,” Dimitris said before he tapped his fingers three times on the table and placed his palm face up in front of Thalia. “Kiss them for good luck?”
“Excuse me?” Thalia’s brows furrowed together, shifting uncomfortably in her seat, eyes still glassy and chest heaving.
“You should do it, this one needs all the luck he can get.” Aarin laughed a low heady chuckle. “He hasn’t won a round yet.”
“Come on, gatáki, appease me just this once.” Dimitris looked up, taking in the wary gaze of the seer before him.
She nodded slowly, bringing her lips to the bones in his palm, kissing them gently. Her warm breath and velvet touch sent a surge of buzzing energy down his veins, shocking him back just an inch. “Good luck, fengaráki,” she whispered.
Clasping his hands together, Dimitris shook once, twice, three times before allowing the bones to flow off the tips of his middle and ring fingers.
Aarin’s hit the table only moments before and Dimitris tried to glance at what the numbers were.
Four, Six, Six, Five, Six, Six. A fine roll by any standards.
But he didn’t even need to look down at his own to know what would be there.
Straight sixes.
Unless he willed it otherwise, it was always straight sixes.
“You won…” Thalia said in no more than a breathless whisper.
Dimitris turned toward the young woman, letting his thumb graze under her chin.
“Why do you think my ship is called the Aphrodite?” He was hoping it would not resort to him having to play, actually play—to risk so much.
But that was what Aarin didn’t know, how often he had played this game since he was a boy, perfecting how to place each bone in his hands, how many times to shake before dropping, how to let the bones roll off his fingertips so that they would land exactly the way he wanted them. A true Aphrodite’s throw.
“I thought it was because she is a thing of beauty, as is your ship.” Thalia placed her hand over his and squeezed hard, her eyes sparkling as bright as a full moon. “Thank you, Dimitris. Truly. I will never know how to repay you—for my sister’s life and my own.”
Heat spread over the bridge of his nose, trickling down to his heart.
For a moment, he forgot to remind himself he was not supposed to be enthralled with her.
This stunning, fierce woman before him had lost so much and yet could go about her day with such grace and determination to make the world better and, gods, if he didn’t want to make it better with her.
“I believe you owe Dafne her freedom, Aarin,” Dimitris coaxed the despicable man.
A growl echoed in the room as Aarin flipped the table, sending the knuckle bones scattering across the floor. The young raven-haired woman trembled in her cloak, frozen in her seat, eyes wide and chest heaving.
“You cheated!” he screamed, lunging at Dimitris with a dagger, but Dimitris simply stepped aside, letting the legionnaire fall, crashing to the ground before he made his move.
Kneeling on Aarin’s back, Dimitris unsheathed his sword, pressing it into the back of the man’s neck, drawing the slightest bit of blood.
“I never cheat,” he growled into the man’s ear.
“Now, let her go. I have no qualms about driving this sword through your skull and I’m sure the owners of this establishment wouldn’t take kindly to knowing a patron was betting what was not his to own in the first place, or would you rather take this up with the madame of the establishment? ”
The legionnaire twitched beneath him. Struggling for a moment before he reluctantly spoke. “Fine,” Aarin hissed through grit teeth, “she was beginning to bore me anyway.”
Dimitris rose, but not before giving the man a swift kick in the ribs for his obscene comment.
Rushing over to Dafne, Aarin shoved her toward Thalia and Dimitris. “Go on, whore. It seems the Fates have let you live another day.”
“I hope you rot in Aidesian for all you have done,” Thalia said, clutching her arms around her sister before spitting in Aarin’s face.
He wiped the spit immediately off with the back of his greasy hand. “One day, seer,” Aarin leaned in close to her, his breath causing her skin to pale even more, “I will have you back as my plaything, and maybe I’ll string up these two and make you watch for added measure as they hang.”
The legionnaire would never get the chance. Dimitris would make sure of it.
These men would pay.
And now he knew how.
Ceylon light from a waning moon cast its glow down in even the most lurid of alleyways.
The blue-gray hue blended into the deep navy overcoat Dimitris shed and tossed over his shoulder.
Unlike the men and women he passed, Dimitris’s breath did not cast about his mouth in a puff of mist. Instead of the chill others endured, sweat built at the nape of his neck, trickling down his back.
A buzzing in his head acted as a chart, leading him to his final destination, begging him to shift, to lean into the feral tendencies that were his nature.
But he couldn’t. Not yet. Not until he reached the small townhome of the legionnaires.
It took Dimitris buying out the entire store of liquor the tavern owner held in his basement, before he acquired their address.
That was the thing about the citizens of Lesathos, they lacked honor.
Anyone would give up information for a price. Which is why he now waited to shift.
There were too many people on the streets, and though they might have been full with liquor and lust, Dimitris could not risk the Lernaen Legion finding out who was really out for blood.
Run-down brothels and seedy taverns were replaced by three-story brick buildings, each with grape vines crawling up the stone.
This was where the wealthy lived, the men and women who owned the secret rooms behind bars, the ones who dealt in the worst kind of trade, those that owned the gladiators who fought in underground rings, the men he hunted.
It made his fists clench and his ears burn how stark the shift in the scent of the air was, from a putrid mix of bile and excrement to crackling wood and fragrant florals.
How could the elite not take care of their own people, walk past the filth that the market square had become, let children and women beg on the streets?
His kingdom would never let this happen; the Nexian’s were like a pack, where one succeeded, they all succeeded.
This wasn’t to say there weren’t levels of wealth.
A fisherman’s salary could not purchase a home like those that lined this street, but his people aided each other from neighbor to king.
Every Nexian did their part—brought additional fish and breads to those who were hungry or whose crops had died, gave education to all children, sent healers to those that became ill in even the most desolate parts of the isle.
Basic rights every person deserved to have regardless of what circumstance they were born into.
What he walked through now was savagery.
A few townhomes up on the right stood the most lavish of them all, though Dimitris wasn’t surprised.
The Lernean Legion had raided for years along the coast of the northern continent of Voreia and were mercenaries for the King of Harrenfort, earning them a steep amount of coin.
Now all he needed was to get inside, a simpler task than he’d expected.
His knuckles reddened in the cold as he rapped against the wrought iron door three times.
No answer came from inside, but he could hear the men shuffling about, clinking their glasses of liquor together as if they had something to celebrate.
Once more he knocked, this time pounding the side of his fist until the sound reverberated down the entire street.
Rumbling came from inside as locks clicked and chains were removed. They must have been very cocky if they didn’t even slide the looking view across to see who was outside banging down their door.
“What do you want?” a gruff voice slurred as one of the men Dimitris played against earlier cracked the door open.
“Are you so drunk that you do not remember me?” Oh, this was going to be fun.
“You’ll have to excuse my partner, he is better with his fists than his words.” That slick, oily man who called himself Aarin stepped from the shadows.
Good.
Dimitris had hoped he would be here.
“Come to return the whore so soon? Too bad. I don’t like used goods.”
Dimitris stepped through the threshold, inching closer to the legionnaire. “You really should watch your tongue when speaking about a lady.”
“And who are you to tell me how to speak, boy?” Aarin hissed through gritted teeth and Dimitris slammed the door behind him.
“My name is Prince Dimitris Kirassos, Alpha of the Nexian wolves, and I am here to settle a debt.”
Aarin’s eyes flared and he began to yell orders, but it was to no avail. A raw, unfiltered growl left Dimitris’s throat as he shifted, and not a single one of the men could reach their swords fast enough.