“You can call meLýko,” Dimitris purred, arching his brow up at the legionnaire.
“Your mother have a thing for the outdoors?” he chuckled, his massive shoulders almost breaking through his shirt with every forced laugh.
Dimitris’s lip curled up in a smirk. “You could say that.”
“Alright,Lýko, I guess it is only fitting that you join us for this game.” Aarin’s smile crossed his face and it made Dimitris very soul recoil.
They were playing cards, right? That was what most gambling houses promoted on Nexos. He was decent at cards, had grown up playing them in the back of Marianna’s taverna for years, until he bet something he shouldn’t have. But it was easy to cheat at cards and there was no doubt in his mind that the Lernaean Legion and this oaf that sat across from him cheated.
Rattling filled the air as six knuckle bones dropped out of Thalia’s silk pouch. So it wasn’t coins at all—meaning shewasplanning to bet years, not gold.Aphrodite’s Throw.Fuck.Clenching his fists under the table, Dimitris squirmed in his seat. He had to win. If he somehow lost the beloved seer in the process, his brother would never forgive him. He would be shunned.
“The game isKyon”—Thalia turned to Dimitris and narrowed her eyes—“though you may know it by another name,fengaráki. There are six sides to every bone, each marked with a number. Highest roll wins.”
“And how many rounds are we playing, Thalia?” The half moons in his palm were about to bleed if Dimitris didn’t stop clenching so hard. She chose the hardest game to master in the entire Mykandrian. How the fuck had she expected to win without him here?
“As. Many. As. It. Takes,” she said with a hint of fire Dimitris had not heard from the seer before.
Raising his chin to the right, Aarin beckoned a burly man in leather fighting armor by a side door covered in gold locks. The man took a ring of elongated bronze keys and slowly began to unlock each one until a reverberating groan echoed in the room, so loud it could be heard over the chatter of the other men and women playing their games. At least Dimitris thought it was thatloud, though no other patron seemed to turn toward the opening door. When the groaning stopped, a boney body was dragged out of what he could only assume was a dungeon of sorts. Raven-colored hair swept in front of the woman’s face, covering her eyes. A tattered equally onyx-hued cloak hung over narrow shoulders, grazing the marble floor as she was pulled toward their table.
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 theAphroditeand 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 foryour 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 herpsychí.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 andagain 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.
