I blinked at the sight in front of me.
It was some kind of game. Half a dozen or so vampires sat around a big, round table covered in soft green fabric. Animal bones carved into dice were set on the table, a small pile of shells and the like in front of each player.Shells. I’d only seen illustrations of them in books. With the Witch Kingdom being landlocked, beaches were little more than a fairy tale.
“Here we are.” Thea led me over to a recently vacated seat and settled in next to me.
“Who’s your lovely friend?” one asked Thea, the same male vampire who had cursed when he realized who had arrived.
He looked to be a year or two younger than me, though that hardly meant a thing when it came to creatures of the night. He cast an easy grin at me.
I didn’t manage to return it.
“This is the Lady Samara,” Thea said.
“Lady Samara?” he stammered, the grin falling off as the table erupted in complaints once more.
“You brought her here?” another murmured.
“You brought the king’s Chosen?”
“You brought hisfledgling?”
Thea looked utterly unperturbed as she confronted them, while I would have been gratified if my chair turned out to have a mouth and teeth and swallowed me whole. “What’s the problem? We’re both here to play.”
No one said anything.
“Unless you’re all going to forfeit…” She trailed off, meaningfully gesturing to the stack of shells in front of each player.
“Of course not,” the same young male from before scoffed, some of his bravado returning.
“Good. Now deal us some shells and bones.”
“It’s an honor to meet you,” the vampiress next to me said. Her white hair was long and pinned back in an artfully messy bun, her periwinkle dress cut into a wide vee that dipped past her collarbone. “I’m Cynthia, of the Night-Singer clan.”
“Nice to meet you.” I looked at the table, where the dice had been redistributed. “How do we play?”
“Oh, Round Toss is easy,” she assured me, and launched into an explanation of the game. Itwasfairly simple—the bones were marked with dots on each face, with different numbers of sides, from four to eight depending on the bone. It was a matter ofmatching your rolls based on how the others did. Part luck, part strategy, Cynthia explained. The shells were assigned different values, allowing for wagers.
The game began, and though the group was obviously curious about me, few direct questions came. Instead, they peppered Thea with questions, and she gossiped right back in between extremely unsportsmanlike conduct.
I waited to feel some rush of power, but none came. The urge to slump in my seat weighed on me. I’d hoped I’d feelsomethingaround all these vampires. Perhaps it was too soon? It had barely been a day since I’d… turned. The magic might need to recalibrate inside me, especially considering I’d never felt it as a human. But if this didn’t work, what would? Would I need to ask Thea to bring me back every night of the week? Or was I going about this the wrong way entirely? I refused to consider that the magic might somehow be gone. I could feel it bubbling inside me when I held the grimoire. I just needed to learn how to access it.
“Blood save me, I’m parched,” one of the vampires on the other side murmured, breaking my train of thought.
“Losing will do that to you,” Thea said from behind her increasingly large mountain of shells.
My own pile was, well, medium height. I almost enjoyed the strategic part of the game, since luck certainly wasn’t my forte, but it was hard to concentrate on all the rules when I was playing another game of life and death without anything so defined. Still, I wasn’t the worst at the table. I suspected they were being a bit nice to me since I was new.
Or since I was Raphael’s fledgling.
“Yeah, says the oracle,” another griped.
“My magic is no good here,” Thea retorted.
“Then what’s your excuse for always cleaning us out?” another groused. It seemed like a well-rehearsed line.
“Skill. Or perhaps Lixa just favors one-eyed beauties.”
The audience tittered at her response. On some cue, a server came in, carrying a tray of goblets over. He put wine in front of Thea, and blood in front of the rest of us.
