Dead of Winter (The Arcana Chronicles #3)(36)

Death wish? “Stop this!” I tried to get between them. “You can’t touch him!”

Jack’s bruised face was red with rage. “Might be worth it just to knock that snide look off your face!”

“The Empress is right. One touch is all it takes. Well, at least for everyone but her.” He gazed down at me. “As was meant to be, sievā.” He seemed amused by all this, as if he’d just arrived at festivities.

In a blur, Jack’s hand shot up, a pistol pointed at Aric’s head.

My chest contracted, lungs robbed of air.

Aric had accelerated healing, but even he wouldn’t survive a bullet to the brain. If anything happened to him . . . Now that I knew he hadn’t come here to hurt me, confusing feelings overwhelmed me.

Panic, that sense of protectiveness, an ache in my heart—

Jack cocked the weapon, pressing the barrel against Aric’s forehead. “One reason.”

While I struggled to breathe, Aric’s gaze reluctantly moved from me to Jack. And still, Death looked amused. “Because she’ll never forgive you for it.”

“Take him out, hunter!” Joules yelled. “Pull the bloody trigger!”

I laid my hand on Jack’s arm. “Put down the gun.” Nothing. “If you do this, we can never come back from it.”

On the razor’s edge, he turned to me. “What the hell is he talking about? Wife? WIFE?”

“It’s complicated,” I repeated.

That muscle ticked in his jaw. “I can goddamn keep up, Evangeline!”

“I will explain everything to you, if you come with me back to the tent.” If Jack shot Aric, they would both be dead to me. Tears pricked my eyes. “P-please, I’m asking you to do this for me.”

“You expect me to let him loose in my camp? Do you give a damn that he wants to kill me?”

“He won’t.”

“How can you be so sure?”

I gazed at Aric as I said, “If he hurts you in any way, he knows I will never stop hating him.” Back to Jack. “Please. Talk to me—away from here.”

He must’ve heard the dread in my voice. Finally, he uncocked the gun, lowering it. He cast Aric a murderous look, then stormed away. I followed, glaring at the knight over my shoulder.

He gave me a gallant bow, self-satisfied smile in place. He knew his strike had already found its target.

“What the f*ck?” Jack paced the tent, hitting that flask like nobody’s business. He could barely look at me, hadn’t managed more than cursing.

“I told you that Death and I had a history.” With shaking hands, I pulled the tent flap aside, peeking out.

Aric was cooling down Thanatos, his creepy white stallion. The red-eyed beast looked like a cross between an Arabian—and a tank. It even had its own black armor.

Cyclops snacked nearby. Crunch. Crunch.

From a distance, the other Arcana gawked at Death—Tess especially seemed entranced by his divine good looks—but their attention didn’t appear to disturb him in the least.

I tensed when Matthew wandered over to Aric. The last I’d heard, Matthew had broken ranks, reneging on some deal the two had made.

But he and Death talked calmly. What could they be discussing?

“Christ, Evie, you can’t take your eyes off him?”

I closed the flap, then headed for Matthew’s cot.

“How much history can you and the Reaper have? You never met him before three months ago.”

I sat with my hands folded. They wouldn’t stop shaking. The fear I’d felt for Aric bewildered me. “We were together in a past life.”

“Dis-moi la vérité!” Tell me the truth!

“I am. Arcana are reincarnated.”

His mouth opened, then closed.

“Whoever wins gets to live as an immortal. The rest of us reincarnate for each game. Death has won the last three, so he’s lived all this time. But I have memories of being with him.”

Pacing, pacing. “That bastard ain’t acting like this is a past thing! You sleep with him?”

“You have to understand: I thought you and I were over.”

Jack’s eyes grew crazed. “Did you—sleep—with him?”

“No, but I was . . . with him.” The night he’d saved me from Ogen, I’d decided to have sex with Aric. But I hadn’t gone through with it.

“I ain’t hearing this!” Jack heaved in breaths, like he couldn’t get enough air.

“I believed I’d never see you again. But then I couldn’t stop thinking about my promise to you, to give you a chance to reach me. So I didn’t go any further with him. I told him I was going to get your side of the story about everything.”

Jack tipped that flask up, swiping his sleeve over his mouth. “I’m out here, nearly dying every day trying to find you or make it safer for you. And you were almost screwing the man who nearly killed me!”

“I can’t explain what it was like when I found out about your lies. It was like something broke in me.” I thumped my chest. “Died in me. I felt so betrayed by you. By Matthew too. Then I learned that in a past game, I married Death. I tried to poison him—on our wedding night. In another game, I got him to trust me again, then struck once more.”