7. Aldrin #2
A cruel smile curls her lips. “I want to see if he can put his money where his mouth is.” She leans across the table, takes my cup of wine and drains it. “Dante, you disappoint me. You gave him the weak stuff.” She tsks. “Where are the psychedelic agents?”
I watch them closely, my magic at the ready in case they attack. I will not be a victim here.
Nico gives her an impatient flick of his head. “We want to invite you to a card game. Give us another chance to beat you. Ada’s ego is smarting. She hasn’t taken a beating like that in a while.”
“My ego! You were practically crying about your pretty complexion being ruined!” she roars, then goes on to explain, “He is still too injured and can’t fully change forms yet, stuck in his Nightmare.”
Nico’s claws grow longer, cutting grooves into the table as the fire of his eyes burns at her. “I am trying to be civil here.” He turns back to me. “You hurt my dog, Fluffy, and that was not okay.”
“Do you mean the dread hound that almost tore my throat out?” I shudder, remembering the snapping jaws of that obsidian beast.
“Yes. Fluffy.”
“ He attacked me !” I can’t help my incredulous tone.
“He is a dread hound. What do you expect?” Nico retorts.
Dante chuckles lowly. “Never expect a man to see fault in his beloved pet,” he chimes in beside me, and I give him a dark look. They talk like the creature peed on my carpet, not tried to kill me.
“Can we focus on the game?” Ada snaps. “Are you in or are you out, Aldrin? Do you have the nerve to go up against us?”
“A card game?” I ask. “And what is the bet? Drug me and beat me with a group of your friends if I lose? It is harder than that to trick me.”
Ada’s smile widens. “A drinking game. That is all. We may be Assassins of Belladonna, but we are not bloodthirsty maniacs. At least, not in our downtime.”
We all turn to Dante. A charged silence passes between the three assassins, like a silent conversation.
I don’t know about this, Aldrin, Keira says. What if they trick you? Or attack you?
I consider for a moment. They can do that anyway. There is no guarantee Dante or anyone else would defend me. He would probably call it another trial. Besides, I am incredibly good at both card games and drinking games. It may be a chance to earn some respect from these people.
“Don’t let me stop you.” There is a twinkle in Dante’s eyes when they connect with mine, but I have no idea what he is up to. “But he is your responsibility until tomorrow morning.”
Ada and Nico both shrug, but there is significance in those words. Maybe they won’t try to kill me. Not until tomorrow.
I stand, placing a hand to the sword sheathed at my back to remind everyone what it can do, then follow Ada and Nico into the next room.
It is cozy in its own way. Multiple fireplaces lend a dim glow to the space and there are couches arranged in groups with assassins sitting in them, talking and drinking.
Tables are set up with cards, dice and bones, half of them occupied.
The card game they pick is one I know well.
A smug exhilaration fills me when I thrash them in the first round.
Nico picks up the bottle of spirits in the center of the table and fills two of the three tiny glasses.
Both losers knock theirs back quickly. I win the next round, and lose the third by a narrow margin.
I drink my liquor from Nico’s cup, just in case they have tampered with mine, and it burns as it goes down, with herbal afternotes.
He flexes the long claws of one hand repetitively, then rubs at the puckered skin across one forearm. “It is fucking hard to play a card game in my Nightmare form,” he growls as we are dealt our next hand and he struggles to pick his up.
“Excuses, excuses,” Ada mumbles as she scans her cards.
I look at Nico and truly see him. There are still deep cracks in his antlers and the tiniest bits of ash keep peeling from his skin, like a high fae with sunburn.
“Are you…not fully healed yet?” I venture.
He gives me a dark look. “It will take a few days. My kind is from the darkest depths of my court, where not even the starlight enters. I am far more susceptible to light than Ada here.”
“And too much of a baby to visit the healers.” Ada places her cards on the table, showing her winning hand.
“Their lotions are full of alcohol,” Nico grumbles. “It only inflames the flesh.”
For some ridiculous reason, I suddenly feel bad for the guy, even though he would have sliced my head off with those claws of his. Apparently, what happens in the trials stays in the trials, with no hard feelings.
“You realize I am the King of the Spring Court, right? That healing flesh is one of my court’s specialties? Let me help you.” I touch his wrist, but he pulls back.
“I do not need your sympathy. The wounds are just part of the job.”
“Come on. Prove to me that you’re not a baby afraid of a little healing pain, like Ada suggested,” I say, gripping his arm again.
“How do I know you aren’t just trying to look at my cards?” His voice is low and gravelly.
I ignore him, pouring my raw power into the place where we touch, probing along his skin and the deeper tissue and finding all the lacerations.
My wields knit them together and my raw magic enables the growth of flesh that burned away under the light.
He grunts and tenses as the pain increases and the healing draws on his own magic, but I don’t let him pull away.
The pop of bone resounds as his antlers crack back into place and the fractures there disappear.
My head spins and pain flashes behind my eyes, causing my vision to black out for a heartbeat. I am forced to pull my hand back before I am entirely finished. I blink multiple times to bring my vision back to normal. Maybe the toll of today’s trial had more of an effect on me than I realized.
Nico cracks his neck from side to side, then shifts into a form with alabaster skin and long-fingered hands with black nails. His antlers are far smaller, paired with black hair, and the bony skull sits upon his head like a morbid hat.
I hold my cards before me with numb fingers and try to focus on the symbols, but my vision keeps doubling. Regardless, I know I have lost this round. I slam the cards down on the table, grab a waiting glass and throw back my head to down the liquor.
“Do you feel better?” Ada murmurs to Nico.
“The splitting headache is gone and my skin no longer feels like it is on fire,” Nico replies.
Both sets of eyes turn to me, but I am struggling to focus on anything. I usually hold my alcohol very well.
I don’t think that is the effect of alcohol, Keira says from somewhere very far away.
“I almost feel bad now,” Ada says.
Nico shrugs. “He needed to get his dose somehow.”
I slide sideways and fall off my chair, too high to feel the impact as I collide with the ground. Laughter rises up within me, tears forming at the corners of my eyes, my entire chest shaking with it until it hurts and I can hardly drag in a breath. Until I can no longer remember what was so funny.
Two demons peer down at me with consternation. I am supposed to be afraid of them, suspicious that they might harm me, but I can’t remember why. They seem nice enough despite the talons.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have shared our concentrated dose of belladonna with him. Let him start with a mild concoction,” Nico grumbles.
“Weakling,” Ada spits. “It’s more entertaining this way.”
“Well, I hope you’re entertained while we scrape him off the floor and get him back to his chambers. Dante wants him alive for his trial tomorrow. The Mistress is very interested in him.”
A string of curses leaves Ada’s lips, then the world spins around me and I am suddenly on my feet, hunched over and being dragged between the two of them. I blink and blink again, but my vision remains blurry and my eyelids become heavier each time they close.
“By the gods, Aldrin, why do you have to be so bloody heavy?” Ada gripes. “If you fall asleep and become a dead weight, I’m leaving you in a puddle of your own drool here in the corridor.”
Keira’s fury rises up like a frozen wave breaking over my intoxicated state. Maybe if they hadn’t poisoned you in the games room, you wouldn’t be crashing on them right now.
She has a point. I’m sure she does.
I repeat her exact words to them and get twin scowls in return. My feet have a will of their own and I stumble and almost go down multiple times, but they don’t let me fall.
Nico puts an arm under my shoulder to better support me and I turn to him, completely forgetting his Nightmare form. “Hey, man, I’m sorry I hit your dog…but I have to know…why in the darkest pit did you name it Fluffy? It’s carved from obsidian.”
“I did not take it to the darkest pit to name it,” Nico says with confusion, missing the curse in those words. “And the many strands of twisting obsidian look like the fluff of those soft creatures in your court.”
Well…fuck. He has me there.
At the edge of my senses, Keira shudders at the memory of the hound. Oh, come now, Keira, you’d be the first to kill it and add it to your collection of dead Cú Sídhe, I mock, and she bristles.
I turn to the other side, my vision tunneling in and out so badly that the woman there is just a halo. “Ada, I’m sorry I disemboweled you and all that.” I wave a hand at her abdomen. “You’ve just gotta stop trying to kill me.”
“Don’t get soft on me, Aldrin,” she growls.
“This is business as usual for us. We are Nightmares of the Darkest Realm, after all. We need the blood and fight and chase like you need the sun on your skin. Carnage is in our veins. And it keeps our natural bloodlust quiet and our skills honed. But that bloody sword of yours with its infernal light…” She glances at Nico.
“Maybe we can steal it while he is incapacitated. Destroy or hide it. I never want to feel like that again.”
A laugh booms through me. “The indestructible relic is made from my raw magic and my blood. It sings to me. I’d find it at the bottom of the ocean or in the deepest abyss.”
Nico looks at Ada. “It was a nice dream, even for a fleeting moment.”
They manage to dump me on the small pallet that has become my bed in my tiny chamber, then stand over me in the darkness.
Sweat breaks out across my skin. My mouth is so incredibly dry.
I try to speak, but my words are too slurred to be comprehensible.
Keira is saying something with urgency at the back of my mind, but I can’t quite make it out.
“Should we give him an antidote?” The woman’s words dance across my mind and disappear before I can grasp them.
“Defeats the purpose of poisoning him. He needs to build resistance,” a masculine voice replies.
“We can’t just leave him here. What if he dies in his bed? It’s a waste to kill him outside of a trial. He has so much potential.”
“Then I suggest you get a couple of chairs. We are spending the night here.”
My entire body quakes with shivers so intense my teeth clack together. A woman with large, leathery black wings tosses a blanket over me, then leans in close. “Don’t think this means I won’t try to kill you in the next trial.”