It wasn’t really an answer, but then, what did it matter? If he was to be believed, and she had a sinking feeling he was, she wouldn’t be around long enough to enjoy it anyway.
“What’s a champion of the court?” she asked, tugged along to the great beasts.
Lennox shot her a guarded look as he also started forward. The others wouldn’t look at her at all.
“A great distraction for the court,” Tarian said gruffly, “and the way I will explain your presence. The way I will hide your importance.”
“I do love me a good riddle,” she replied. “But whatisit?”
The stormbacks waited in a half-circle, now facing northeast. Stratow stood in the middle, at the top of the arc. His mane ruffled around his face as the wind picked up speed, blowing in the direction they were all facing.
Tarian stopped beside Stratow with her hand still in his. “The royals call it games. The gentry call it entertainment. It’sactually a blood sport. Each member of the court puts forth their champion of choice to participate in these bloody games. The entrants might be servants, some are pets, and many are slaves bought or abducted specifically for the games. In addition, the throne puts forward a collection of captured fae and prisoners to attempt to win their freedom. The goal is?—”
“To survive. Yeah, I get it.” She looked up at the stormback, its wings pulled in, blocking any easy way of climbing onto its back. Not that getting up that high would be easy. It wasn’t a fence she was scaling. The odds of her looking graceful were slim to none.
“No. That would imply these games are set up for the contenders. They’re not. The games are political, like everything else. The contenders are just pawns. Some players set up their champions to fail, thereby sucking up to royalty or making another of the gentry look stronger, tightening their alliance. You never know why a player chooses a champion and what their end game is. There is a lot of maneuvering amid the show. Maneuvering I won’t bother with. No one in their right mind would form an alliance with me. I need only to buy time to get set up without the king becoming too impatient.”
“I assume using a human in these games will further your image as the butt of the court’s joke? Your champion doing well, therefore, will be a slap in the face of those same people. If I don’t die immediately, I will be a target to dispose of gruesomely and for an audience, something like they did to your girlfriend?”
He studied her for a long time as the otherFallenjumped and climbed and scrambled onto the backs of the other stormbacks, there being no stirrups to help, and no saddles or reins to hold once up there.
“I won’t have to do much schooling in the political side of things, I see,” he said. “I’m impressed. Essentially, yes. We’ll have an uphill battle from here on out.”
“I have next to zero magic except this mythical chalice situation that doesn’t help me in the least, and you’re going to pit me against powerful, bloodthirsty fae? Super. Sounds like a real fun time followed by a wonderfully peaceful grave.”
“As I said…an uphill battle.”
She shook her head. “My life has been filled with terrible luck, and you might be the worst of it.”
2
Alexis
Bria was already waitingwhen Alexis showed up at the Magical San Francisco Government Building, right next to one of two spots labeled “Demigod.” The other was occupied by a cherry-red Ferrari, an older vehicle with all sorts of sentimentality. It was the car Kieran had nearly (and purposely!) run over Lexi with, resulting in the first time she and Kieran had met. Good times.
He’d obviously been thinking about the past when he chose it to drive today. Thinking about how Daisy had resisted his integration into their lives and her tight family unit. Had secretly stolen money from him at every turn to create an “out” should he become power hungry and abusive like his Demigod father before him. Daisy had been thinking of the future and preparing should she need to rip them away from this life. At fifteen years old, she’d been trying to protect her family.Fifteen!
She didn’t feel more secure now, Lexi knew. Daisy had become an ace at investing—just in case—in both magical and non-magical markets. Had contacts everywhere. Had safehouses, secret offshore bank accounts, and friends inverylow places. She was ready for the Demigod apocalypse, even though Lexi was now a Demigod herself. There was nothing Daisy wouldn’t do to help her family. Nothing. She was hard, but she was sweet, in her own way. Ravaged by life, but saw the joy in it, too. Above all, she relished in the love of her family.
And that piece-of-shit fairy fucker had stolen her from the only happiness she’d ever known. He’d pay for this. The Celestials, too. What the fuck were they doing? Besidesnotdoing their jobs. They needed a hard lesson in work ethic, that’s what they needed.
Lexi planned to give it to them.
She flung open the door of the beat-up old Bronco and stepped out in clothes she’d picked herself. Let the magazines and gossip columns talk shit—for once, she didn’t care. Daisy wasn’t there to pick out her clothes and style her. Now the columnists would know Lexi hadn’t grown a sense of fashion; it was still all thanks to her “filthy” Chester ward who “didn’t belong” in the magical zone.
Fuck those people.
“Well, hello,” Bria said, her platinum-blond hair falling straight to her shoulders. She wore a light blue Nirvana T-shirt, acid-wash jeans, and a spiked dog collar around her neck. She had never cared about the fashion columns. “Love those pants. Are we preparing for a flood?”
Lexi left her handbag in the Bronco and the doors unlocked. She half hoped someone was stupid enough to steal it. It would really help her mood if she could get some of this pent-up pain-turned-aggression out of her system.
“Oh! And we’re free-boobin’ it, too?” Bria cracked a grin and stepped out of the way. “Nice! I’m diggin’ it. How’s the mental health?”
“How do you think?”
“I think you keep jabbing me in the spirit box by accident, and it is not so pleasurable.”
A spirit box was the casing of a person’s soul, and as a Spirit Walker (not so affectionately called a Soul Stealer), Lexi had the power to crack that thing open and rip the spirit right out. She could kill with a flick of her power. Then, if she wanted, she could stuff that spirit back in, tether it to the dead body, and reanimate it, creating the walking dead. She had a rare type of magic that was generally regarded as horribly terrifying. It was a “glad she’s on our side” situation in magical San Francisco.
