“Right.” I’m thankful for the distraction and pick up where I left off. “I was working as a maid and posing as a human undocumented worker when the unthinkable happened.” Seven is staring at me now, unblinking, as if I’m the most important person in his world. That unwavering, focused attention is intoxicating. I wonder how many women would kill to be in my position at the moment. I savor the feeling and keep on talking. “My boss figured out I was a fairy. I was so young and incredibly stupid. One day when I thought I was alone in the hotel, I spread my wings. I just needed to stretch. I’d never had them tucked away for so long before. I should have known that he’d have hidden cameras.”
Seven pulls two tin cups from his pack and fills them both with boiling water from the kettle. He drops a tea bag in each and offers me a cup. “Let me guess, he threatened to turn you in.”
I dunk the tea bag, watching the liquid darken within the mug. “Actually, he made me an offer. Turns out he also owned a strip club, and he was willing to pay handsomely if I could impersonate popular celebrities and show up to strip.”
Seven glares at me over his tea, his expression humorless. “You worked as a stripper?”
I can’t tell if the sudden tension his body is putting off is from disbelief, judgment, or plain old-fashioned male interest. “I did. It was good money, and it wasn’t like I was exposing my own skin. I wasn’t even naked under my illusion. All the audience saw was what I wanted them to see. But apparently that illusion was enough to attract the attention of a local pimp. He followed me back to my camp under the bridge. Of course I ditched my illusion right after the show, but this guy had figured out that one woman walked into the locker room and a different woman came out. He suspected what I was.”
I’ve never seen Seven go so still. He isn’t drinking. He isn’t fidgeting. He’s not even blinking. He looks like a statue across the fire, his face carefully impassive, his attention completely fixated on me.
“I’d seen this guy around. There was a prostitute who used to sleep near the spot I did. She died a few weeks after I arrived. Drug overdose. This guy was her pimp, and I guess he figured a pixie would be a stellar replacement for his dead girl. He grabbed me and tried to force me into his truck. Clocked me right in the eye. I drained all the luck I had left in Kiko and landed a knee squarely in his balls. I left him lying in the street, grabbed everything I had that could fit in my pack, and raced directly to the bus stop. I changed my appearance and bought a ticket to Las Vegas.”
I look down at my tea. My hands are trembling, sending tiny ripples through the liquid. Seven stands and rounds the fire to take a seat next to me and pull me into his arms. For a long time, he doesn’t say anything, just tucks my head under his chin and stares at the fire.
“Why Vegas?” he finally asks.
I sigh. “You. You’d taught me how to play poker, and it dawned on me that playing cards was safer than stripping. I had a plan. If I used luck irregularly and sparingly, I knew I could win. I was four months pregnant by that time. I needed better living arrangements, but I couldn’t go to a homeless shelter because I didn’t have papers.”
“Smart. FIRE monitors those regularly.”
“I had enough to make it to Vegas. Started playing in back rooms of bars, cash games, under the table. Sometimes I posed as a white man. Sometimes as a sweet old lady. People fell for it. And after all those games we played together, Seven, I was more than good. I was great. I hardly had to use my luck at all. I won, and I kept winning. Soon, I had enough to pay a man for a fake ID. Then I rented a tiny apartment and used the utility bills to establish a new identity. As my due date grew closer, I purchased better papers. My passport was indistinguishable from a real one. I used it to get an actual driver’s license. I even obtained a social security number.
“By the time I went into labor, I had enough cash saved to pay for the delivery. A few more wins, and I’d rented my first house. And then Arden and I, we just lived. I played a half dozen big games each year and tried to avoid as much human interaction beyond the table as possible. Arden enjoyed an almost normal childhood. Oh, I told her what I was when she was old enough to keep our secret, and I eventually showed her my wings, but otherwise, she was a normal, happy little girl who attended public school and who everyone seemed to love the moment they met her.”
Seven draws back and looks at me, and there’s so much pain in his eyes. It’s more than regret. He’s tortured. I see guilt and more in his expression, though I can’t fully interpret the emotions there, but I sense he blames himself for what happened to me. “It never should have been like this,” he says in a voice laden with self-loathing. “You shouldn’t have had to be this strong. I looked for you, Sophia. I swear I tried.”
“Seven, it wasn’t your fault. Your dad poisoned you.” Saying the words aloud brings the horror of it to the forefront for me, and I grimace. I wonder at the damage it caused him, the scars inside that no one else can see. I wonder how he gets out of bed every morning and faces a man who cost him… I can’t define what I meant to him back then, but if what he tells me is true, his father’s cruelty changed everything. “Gods, how do you continue working with him after that kind of abuse?”
Seven sits up straighter and gives a maniacal laugh. “Why do you think I ended up head of security for all Dragonfly? How do you think I came to work for Godmother, Sophia?”
“I don’t know. I assumed she asked for your help at some point.”
He scoffs and looks away from me, shaking his head. When he speaks again, it’s through his teeth. “No one will ever punish my father for what he did. He’s too rich and too lucky. But I see everything now. I’ve made it my mission to cultivate a network that’s beyond his control. Yes, he’s chairman of Lucky Enterprises and has ultimate control over the Delaney family fortune. But by becoming head of security I’m in the only role in Lucky Enterprises that reports to no one but the board of directors. That position gives me the resources to stay two steps ahead of him. It gives me a feasible reason to keep secrets from him, like when I searched for you. And even his influence can’t reach me when it comes to the work I do for Godmother. How do I face him every day? By knowing I’ve created safe zones where he can’t always see me. He can’t always reach me. He can’t always control me. It’s not total freedom, but it’s a start.” He takes a sip of his tea.
Everything becomes clear in that moment. Seven’s path had everything to do with me and everything to do with breaking free of his father’s hold. My mother said he started working for Godmother right after I left. He was trying to use his position to find me. He was trying to gain enough power to stand up to his abusive father. I don’t know why with all Seven’s luck and resources he didn’t find me over the years, but I suspect his father had something to do with it. His bigoted, abusive, and vindictive father probably used his own luck and resources to keep me from his son. Maybe that’s why I was finally caught. Maybe dear old Dad lost focus on me after all these years.
I end my internal speculation when Seven’s hand cups my cheek and his touch interrupts my higher-level thinking. His face is close, our breath mingling. All my concentration is diverted to the heat rushing to my core and the need pulsing in my veins. Seven didn’t mean to hurt me. He wanted me. He still wants me.
“Is it too late for us?” he asks, his lips hovering close to mine. “A relationship with me is risky. More risky for you than for me. But I know you, Sophia. You’ve never said no to a challenge.”
“No,” I admit.
“There’s something here between us, a spark that refuses to go out. And it’s not just from before. It’s now. It’s here.”
“There is.” Where is my inner warrior? I can’t find her, and if I could I’d probably throw a bag over her head and send her packing anyway. I’m breathless from desire, my skin tingling, not from his luck but from mine. All of me wants to reach for him. I know it’s a bad idea.
Despite our tangled pasts, we are nothing alike. He’s a privileged, filthy-rich leprechaun who’s used to getting exactly what he wants when he wants it. A relationship with him would be a constant battle to hold my own with less luck, fewer resources. It’s true what he said, I’d be assuming most of the risk. If his father found out about us, the man who poisoned his own son to keep him from me, I don’t even want to consider what type of hell he’d make my life to pressure me away from Seven. That possibility aside, there’s the social risk. Other women would hate me and try to bring me down for stealing Dragonfly’s most eligible bachelor. The social columns would be all atwitter about the scandalous relationship between a pixie and a leprechaun. Arden might be teased about it at school. My parents’ shop might suffer.
For all those reasons, I know that Seven will never truly be mine. Any relationship we might have will exist in the shadows, impermanent and secret. I know this, and I am having trouble remembering why I should care. Whatever the future might bring, this thing between Seven and me has been fated for a long time. Our connection is written in the stars. What would it be like to take Seven as my secret lover?
“Maybe we should leave it up to fate,” he says suddenly, standing and crossing to his bag. “Care to make a wager?” He reaches inside and pulls out a deck of cards. “Five-card draw. If I win, we give this thing between us a chance.”
“And if I win?”
“You tell me.”
“If I win, you owe me a favor to be named later.” A favor from a leprechaun is worth far more than any amount of money.
