Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(12)

For a long moment the boy said nothing. His fingers stopped drumming on the table. An explosion of wheezing coughs erupted from his mouth, blood spattering the table before him. In the space of a breath his eyes had gone glassy and bloodshot. He clutched at his throat.

Alfie started in his seat and grasped the boy’s shoulder, unsure of what to do. “Help him! He needs help!” Blood-tinged foam poured over the boy’s lips as he fell forward, his head flopping on the table. The monkey-masked boy fell still, his mouth open against the wood.

Rayan softly clapped his hands, his ringed fingers clicking. “Eso! A poisoning card already!”

Alfie stared at Rayan, his heart pounding in his chest. He had underestimated the depravity of these games. He should have known better.

Rayan rang a small silver bell. Two men walked into the room and silently carried the body by the arms and legs out of the parlor. The smell of the boy’s blood cut through the air like a scythe. Alfie felt sick to his stomach.

The man seated across from him in the bear mask gave a deep, low chuckle as he eyed Alfie in amusement. The woman in the dragon mask was the only other player who also sat stock-still. He looked at her, searching her body language for the shock he felt in his chest, hammering in his heart. But when she noticed his gaze on her, her body relaxed into nonchalance. She crossed her arms, unfazed. These people were monsters.

Alfie focused on the now bloodstained card that the boy had drawn; within it swirled a vile green magic—the Bear’s. Alfie glared at him. The Bear cocked his head at him, as if inviting him to say something, but Alfie could only grip his cards so tightly his fingers ached.

All the while, Rayan shuffled the dead boy’s cards back into the deck and went on as if nothing had happened. A maid came to scrub the flecks of blood from the polished wood table.

Rayan nodded at Alfie expectantly. “Well then, now that that’s over with. Fox, proceed.”

But Alfie couldn’t move. The smell of blood still laced through the air. He could barely look at his glass of sangria without gagging.

“Onward, little fox,” the Bear said, his voice as gruff and slow as his magic.

Alfie glowered at him and took in a breath. He focused, looking at the deck. The top card was charmed by the steely gray magic of the Tiger. Before picking up the card, Alfie engaged his propio and let the magic flowing through him change color from his own royal blue to the man’s gray. A charmed card wouldn’t affect the one who’d charmed it. Alfie had nothing to fear so long as he matched his magic to the card before touching it. It would see him as its master and not harm him.

Alfie added the new card to his hand and discarded one of his lower ones. He rubbed his thumb on the card’s face and found the magic within. He nearly snorted; it was a drunkening card—one magicked to make the player who touched it become piss drunk at first contact.

Nice try, Alfie thought as he smirked at the tiger-masked man. Across the table, the man’s shoulders stiffened, and Alfie felt a rush run through him. He was not as ruthless as these players and he did not want to be, but he could outsmart them just fine.

Rayan sat at the head of the table, elated by the tension cresting between Alfie and the tiger-masked man. “And the Fox outfoxes the deck! For now. . . . Go on, Tiger. The turn is yours.”

The Tiger reached for the Bear’s hand. As his fingers lingered over a card, the Bear’s jaw clenched. With a smirk, the Tiger plucked the card from his deck.

The bear-masked man slammed his fists on the table and stood.

“He cheated!” he roared, spittle flying from his mouth. “He looked at my maldito hand! I know it!” With a curl of his fingers, a globe of flame hovered above the Bear’s palm. All the players shot out of their seats. Alfie rose last, unsure of what to do. Sweat on his forehead was making his mask slip. Were they all going to kill each other before the cards did?

The Tiger flexed his fingers in a quick, beckoning motion, and the sangria swirled out of his cup to hover before him. He closed his fist and froze it into a blade of red ice before plucking it from the air and holding it at the ready. He was a water charmer, like Alfie. The Dragon flexed her fingers and seemed to pull a dagger from thin air. Alfie only watched them all, his hand gripping his chair behind him. They stood silent, their bodies coiled tight with tension while Rayan sat in his chair, his arms crossed.

“Cálmate, Bear,” Rayan said, sounding bored. He rang the bell. A group of muscular men filed into the room—men he had hired to protect him on the nights that he hosted his games. “Either the cards kill you, or they do. Entiendes?”

The flame quivered above the Bear’s hand. The Tiger cocked his head at him, a smirk of amusement on his face.

“Fine,” the Bear groused, sitting down. Rayan waved his hand and the men walked silently out of the room. The rest of the players slowly sank back into their seats. The Dragon’s dagger disappeared back up her sleeve. With a flick of his wrist, the Tiger liquefied the frozen sangria and guided it back into his glass. Alfie sat down slowly, his cards held tight in his shaking hands. When he caught the dragon-masked girl staring at him, he took a deep breath and forced his sweaty hands to fall still.

“Carry on.” Rayan crossed one leg over the other. Alfie could see the low heel in Rayan’s gilded shoe. That shoe, like many things in Castallan, was a holdover from Englassen occupation. Englassen people tended to be taller than Castallanos. During Englass’s reign, the more you looked like them, the more privilege and respect you had. So the people of Castallan had worn heeled shoes to appear taller, more Englassen. The trend still carried on today.