I nodded at Kiera to take her first turn.Let’s play, little thief.
We were a silent island in a sea of laughter and conversation as we took our four turns, discarding and swapping tiles or passing.
Then we came to the Duels.
She laid a tile facedown between us. “Ten,” she told me, her jaw tight.
Liar. Trying to make me to give up a higher tile early in the game, are you?
I placed a seven facedown between us. “You lie,” I said evenly.
She scowled, and we flipped our tiles. My seven beat her six, but I didn’t gloat. Playing off emotions was also a handy trick.
I laid down another tile. “Mynastra.”
She grinned with triumph, slamming down her tile—the trueMynastra tile. “Liar.”
I flipped my tile, and Death leered up at us. “So eager to prove me wrong,” I said, unable to help a smirk at her incredulity.
“Shut up,” she growled, “and keep playing.” She plunked down another tile. “Eight.”
I chuckled. “Truth, I think. It seems the angrier you get, the more honest you are.”
I won the Duel with a nine.
She clenched her last tile as if she were wishing it was a dagger she could throw at me. Instead, she tossed it to the table in defeat as I’d won three of the four Duels. My Arduen would’ve beat her ten, anyway.
Four tiles, four turns, four Duels. The gods must have really liked the poetry of their number when they invented this game to play with humans.
“Ask your question,” she said, violently crossing her arms and legs as if to ward off an invasion.
But I didn’t want us to be enemies.
Before I could ask anything, Iris swept in with a platter of cinnamon-glazed ham and tender root vegetables, two mugs of golden Sunshine mead, and a plate crowned with three steaming biscuits as big as my palm.
Kiera immediately relaxed, her fingers snatching a biscuit the moment the plate touched the table. She quickly took a bite. I hid a smile as her eyes rounded like gold coins.
She let out a muffled groan that unfurled strange ribbons of heat through my stomach.
I looked away from her to thank Iris.
Iris grinned and winked at me. “I believe you’ve found the way to that girl’s heart,” she whispered conspiratorially in my ear.
I clenched my jaw. Gods, that was thelastthing I wanted to do. Such attachments never ended well in my world.
Oblivious to my chagrin, Iris pattered away to answer the call of another customer.
Meanwhile, Kiera had inhaled her biscuit and was reaching for another.
I batted her hand away. “There are only three, little thief. You’ll have to play me for the third.”
She scowled. “It will be cold by then. I’ll Duel you for it.”
“Fine.” We turned all the tiles facedown and shuffled them around. She drew Terraum’s regal, bearded head, and I drew Viridana’s smiling, doe-eyed impression.
“A draw,” I said. “We could split the biscuit.”
Kiera shook her head. “Again.”
