I slouched, sagging like a tire with a bad leak. Acting like she’d caught me in a desperate ruse.
Hell, I was counting on that.
“And the battleground?” I asked.
“Why delay? Here and now.”
I nodded. “You’re on. Deal.”
“Let’s make this official,” Prince Sitri said. “Daniel, if you would, please?”
I stood before him. He gestured to the marble board, and I sank to one knee.
“You understand,” he said in a low voice, “that this will bind your fate to mine, and my court, forever. If you had any hope of salvation—”
“She’s worth it,” I told him. No hesitation.
His mismatched eyes glimmered emerald and amethyst as he looked up, staring over at Caitlin.
“She certainly is. And you continue to make my life entertaining, which is more than I can say for ninety-nine percent of my subjects. Raise your left hand. Do you, Daniel Faust, solemnly pledge to stand for the Court of Jade Tears? To be faithful to me, as your sworn prince, and to fight in the defense of my people and my territories?”
“I do,” I said.
He placed his hand upon my shoulder.
“So mote it be. You knelt before me as a thrall. Rise as a knight of hell. Rise, and see to it that my enemies are laid low. This I command as your liege and prince.”
As I rose, Sitri leaned in close. He dropped his voice to an amused whisper, his words like honey in my ear.
“Pomp and circumstance aside, I hope I didn’t just do that for nothing. Please tell me you’re not as pathetically desperate as you look right now. You’ve got one last ace up your sleeve, yes?”
“Only a little desperate,” I whispered back. “I’m going to—”
He held up a finger, cutting me off, then fluttered his hand at me. “Uh-uh. No spoilers. Don’t ruin the show. Go on, shoo.”
While we conferred, Naavarasi was preening, already celebrating her victory.
“A hound and a knight,” she said, “soon to be subjugated for the glory of Prince Malphas. And my glory too, of course. Such an embarrassment, Prince Sitri. How will you ever live it down?”
His opal eyes glittered, cold and hard. He looked from me to her and back again.
“I need to be perfectly clear,” he said. “Daniel, when I charged you to lay my enemies low?”
“Yeah?”
“By ‘enemies,’ I meant her specifically. And by ‘laid low,’ I meant—”
“Ass kicked,” I said. “Yeah. Loud and clear, big guy.”
The prince gave a solemn nod. And a thumbs-up. I turned back to face Naavarasi.
“Ladies first,” I told her. “Choice of weapons?”
She raised a hand. It rippled, sprouting orange and black striped fur, fingers melting into an oversized tiger’s paw. Five claws curled out, each one harder than steel and ending in a razor-sharp point.
“I am my weapon,” she replied. “I am a mistress of magic. Illusions are my playground, and my flesh becomes whatever I will it to be. No mortal can stand against me. No mortal ever has. Daniel…I understand why you’re doing this. The real reason.”
“Do tell,” I said.
“You’re so pathetically easy to read. The look on your face, after I made my offer to allow you to stay with Caitlin, told me everything I needed to know. You want to say yes, but you can’t. Your pride’s in the way. You know perfectly well that I’m going to defeat you in this duel, but being beaten down and forced to submit is so much easier on your ego than kneeling of your own free will.” She turned her paw, studying it. Her claws glinted. “Don’t worry. I’ll be happy to deliver the defeat you’re secretly craving. I’ll try not to maim you too badly.”
“Wow,” I said, “you’ve got me all figured out. Huh. Well, I hope you understand that I’m still going to fight as hard as I can.”
She gave me an indulgent smile. “I would expect nothing less. If it makes you feel better, I’ll even lie and tell people I was worried.”
“Mighty kind of you.”
“I can be a gracious mistress,” Naavarasi said. “You’ll see. Now then, choose your weapon.”
“I really have to say it? C’mon, Naavarasi, you’re slipping. All the studying you had to do to pull this off. All the mind games you had to play, all that effort planning and plotting, and you honestly don’t know which weapon I’m going to pick?”
“Your deck of cards?” She tilted her head. “A gun? No, you wouldn’t possibly be that foolish.”
“Nope.”
I couldn’t help but smile as I raised my empty hand and pointed.
“I choose Caitlin.”
42.
Naavarasi stared at me, uncertain. “That’s…no, that’s ridiculous. She is not a weapon.”
“If it pleases the court,” I announced, “I can prove that Naavarasi agrees with me.”
“But I don’t agree.” She looked to Prince Malphas. “This is absurd.”
I pointed to the soap bubble, still floating over the chessboard, frozen at the end of Naavarasi’s memory.
“Please rewind that back to the beginning. And this time, don’t skip the next part.”
“No,” Naavarasi snapped. “I refuse!”
Prince Sitri leaned forward on his throne, grinning from ear to ear.
“You’ve already submitted it into evidence,” he told her. “You can’t refuse, unless you want to withdraw the entire memory, in which case you have no proof of anything owed to you and there’s no case to be argued in the first place. What will it be, Baron? Drop your claim, or show us the rest of the memory?”
Glowering, she gazed up at the shimmering bubble. The memory replayed from the beginning—the clip seen from her eyes—as Caitlin confirmed she was there as a representative of the prince.
“Indeed.” Naavarasi’s voice echoed across the misty chessboard as everyone listened in silence. “‘A hound is a prince’s weapon. His sword and his shield, his whip and his crook.’ I understand perfectly.”
Caitlin’s image replied, “Verse thirty-nine, chapter eight of the Dictates of the Cold Peace. You’ve been studying the law.”
“So I have,” her voice answered.
The bubble quivered, agitated—then burst. Wet cinders rained down upon the polished board and the air filled with the smell of brimstone.
“‘A hound is a prince’s weapon,’” I repeated. “Straight from your lips, quoting your own book of laws.”
Naavarasi went red in the face. “But that’s—that’s not, I mean—that’s a metaphor!”
“Unless it isn’t. I’ve been told by an expert that the law is highly open to interpretation.”
I shot a look of thanks at Nadine. She flashed a wicked smile, utterly smug.
“It’s a technicality!” Naavarasi shouted.
“Gosh,” I said, “tricked into a bad deal then screwed on a technicality. I can’t imagine what that feels like. That must really suck for you.”
Standing next to Nadine, Royce put his hand to his mouth and delicately cleared his throat.
“Actually, my good baron, I’m inclined to support Daniel’s reading. As Prince Malphas’s hound, I find it sets some interesting precedents vis-à-vis my own enforcement of the law.”
“As do I,” Nadine said. “Caitlin may be a cheap, shabby, poorly made weapon—an unworthy and laughable one at that, more suited for the hand of a manure farmer than a true knight—but I essentially agree with my colleague.”
Naavarasi wheeled around, bellowing across the chessboard. “Who even invited you?”
Nadine shrugged. “I go where I like.”
Sitri stared across the board, looking to Malphas. “What say you, old friend?”
The three heads conferred in whispers, bending low beneath their ragged hoods. I held my breath.
The crow head emerged. Raising its beak to the mist-shrouded sky, it let out a strangled and frustrated caw. Sitri clapped his hands.
“Then we are in near
-unanimous agreement.”
“Prince Sitri,” I said. “May I borrow your weapon, please?”
“You certainly may.”
He clapped his hands again. The manacles burst open. Caitlin fell. She dropped to one knee on the ivory marble square beneath her and rubbed her chafed wrists.
She rose slowly, her eyes molten orbs of copper and seething rage. Naavarasi cringed, inching back a step, as Caitlin’s gaze fell upon her.
“I understand that we’re fighting until one party yields,” Caitlin growled. “So I’m going to give you a choice. Yield. Get down on your knees and beg me for mercy, and this can all be over.”
Naavarasi pursed her lips. Her jaw was clenched so tight I could see it tremble.
“And if I don’t?”
“If you don’t,” Caitlin said, “then I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to hurt you a great deal, in a variety of exceptionally cruel and potentially permanent ways. And then you’ll yield anyway.”
“I can still win this fight,” Naavarasi said. Fur rippled down her arms and her back, orange streaked with black, as her other hand sprouted killing claws.
“I am so glad you said that,” Caitlin replied.
She smiled, opening a mouth lined with the teeth of a great white shark.
“I must confess, I lied a little, Naavarasi. I don’t have any mercy tonight.”
Caitlin charged, barreling across the chessboard like a runaway train, her fist cocked back. She threw all of her force into hurling one lethal punch—and went staggering, off-balance, as Naavarasi vanished. The rakshasi queen burst into a woman-shaped cloud of dust, spinning away like a miniature tornado.
“I didn’t know she could do that,” I said. Eyes sharp, putting my back to Caitlin’s as we watched in all directions.
“Oh, Daniel.” Naavarasi’s voice seemed to echo from all around us. “I am the mistress of illusion. Your eyes see what I tell them to see.”
The towering chess pieces, flanking us from both sides, erupted. The stone burst into clouds of debris, and from within, marble tigers carved from ebony and ivory leaped forth to do battle. The mammoth beasts charged. Circling, emitting roars that sounded like gravel in a blender. Each one had Naavarasi’s baleful orange eyes.
I flexed my wrist and Canton’s wand dropped into my hand. It twirled in my grip, truth-bone outward, as one of the tigers broke from the pack and streaked toward me. I slashed the wand like it was a knife and the air between us shimmered. The tiger exploded into a cascade of ebony shards, broken pieces that skittered and spun across the polished chessboard. Behind me, Caitlin went on the offensive. She charged into the circling pack, threw herself onto a tiger’s back, and wrenched its ivory head until it snapped. The apparition went down on its forepaws, sliding, and detonated into rubble beneath her. She rolled onto her back as another tiger pounced. She thrust upward with both feet, kicked it in the belly, and watched it buckle and burst.
There were more tigers. The illusions were multiplying out of nowhere now, replenishing their numbers as fast as we could destroy them, and Naavarasi was still here somewhere. Invisible and—
A tiger plowed into me from the left, slamming me to the marble ground. The ivory beast stood atop me, paws on my chest and squeezing the breath from my lungs.
“Sorry,” it said in Naavarasi’s voice, chuckling darkly as it raised a killing paw above my face. “This one was real.”
Caitlin ran in, blindingly fast, baring her teeth as she launched herself into a spin. Her foot lashed out and delivered a brutal kick to the side of Naavarasi’s head. She yowled, tumbling off me, juking to one side on four unsteady legs. Then the rakshasi queen thundered into the circling pack of illusions, getting lost in the herd.
“Which one is she?” Caitlin said.
“I don’t know!”
I slashed Canton’s wand in all directions. Tigers burst right and left, showering the board with ivory and ebony rubble, and more shimmered into being in the corner of my eye. Then one lunged at Caitlin. Naavarasi bounded up and chomped her marble teeth into Caitlin’s shoulder. Caitlin howled as the teeth dug deep, tearing muscle and bone, leaving her arm a slick curtain of glistening plum. Dark blood guttered to the chessboard. She threw a punch with her opposite hand, slamming her knuckles into Naavarasi’s snout. The tiger fell back, shaking her head, stunned, then galloped back into the herd.
“Are you okay?” I shouted.
Caitlin winced. She gripped her shoulder and wavered on unsteady feet, her eyes fixed in a dazed squint.
“No,” she said.
Naavarasi had the battlefield locked down. She could keep this up all night, hit-and-run attacks until she’d worn us down to nothing, and she could sprout new illusions faster than I could banish them.
We were going to lose.
My mind raced, hunting for a new tactic. Matching her blow for blow wasn’t working. I had to fight smarter, not harder. She was an illusionist. So was I. What did I know?
I knew she wouldn’t attack me again. That’d just invite another kick in the head from Caitlin. I wasn’t the threat here, Cait was, and once Naavarasi had taken her out I wouldn’t stand a chance. I also knew these weren’t simple illusions. As good as Naavarasi was, she had to be spending some mental effort on keeping them up and moving. She’d have some kind of a tell, something that made her stand out from the pack. I just couldn’t see it.
I turned my back on the circling horde, looking directly at Caitlin. Watching the herd of tigers, eyes open for another charge. The thrum of stone paws was a thudding, pounding rhythm that kept time with the race of my heartbeat.
Rhythm. Your eyes see what I tell them to see, Naavarasi had said.
I closed my eyes.
Listening to the cadence, the steady galloping echoes around me. All the illusory tigers had the same gait, the same identical stride.
Except for one. One was just a beat off from the rest.
My eyes snapped open, staring dead ahead. There she was. Ebony now, on the move, and her sly gaze flicked to one side. Lining up her attack. I didn’t say anything, didn’t play my hand. I braced myself, waiting for the tell—then she peeled off from the pack and lunged.
“Caitlin! Six o’clock!”
I slashed my wand through the air, a wave of raw power crackling toward Naavarasi. It hit her in mid-leap. The illusion melted away, ebony turning to orange fur and bare flesh. The wand’s power wrenched her into her natural form, a human woman with the head of a Bengal tiger—and Caitlin turned just in time.
She grabbed Naavarasi by the throat and threw her down onto the marble chessboard.
The illusions erupted around us. The entire pack detonated as the rakshasi’s concentration shattered, billowing upward like volcanoes of ebony and ivory shards, then raining down in a storm of choking dust.
Caitlin dragged Naavarasi up by the throat, hauling her across the battlefield, then slammed her against the marble pillar. Then she did it again. And again, the stone buckling as Naavarasi struggled to push back against her. Caitlin spun her around, trapped Naavarasi’s scruff in her fist, and smashed her face against the bloody stone.
The rakshasi flailed at her. Caitlin seized one of her wrists, hauled it behind her back, and snapped Naavarasi’s arm in two places. “I yield!” she shrieked.
“No,” Caitlin grunted, “not yet.”
Caitlin threw Naavarasi back to the floor, standing over her, and brought her foot down on Naavarasi’s throat. She slowly leaned forward, putting her weight into it as Naavarasi struggled to shove back with her one good hand.
“Yield,” the rakshasi croaked. “I yield.”
“Cait,” I said, moving up behind her. “C’mon. She tapped out.”
Wisps of black smoke drifted from Caitlin’s molten eyes. “Not. Yet.”
“Caitlin,” Royce shouted from the sidelines. “Stop it, you’re going to kill her!”
Nadine leaned against the side of Malphas’s throne, wearing a lopsided smile. “Works for me
.”
Prince Malphas shot to his feet, his elephantine bulk jiggling as his three heads squawked in shrill outrage. Sitri waved a tired hand, nodding at his counterpart from across the board.
“Caitlin,” Sitri sighed. “Stand down. That’s an order.”
She took a deep breath, nodded, and pulled her foot away.
Then she drove her heel down like a sledgehammer, square into Naavarasi’s stomach. Naavarasi curled into a fetal ball, gasping for breath and writhing at Caitlin’s feet.
“Now you are allowed to yield,” Caitlin told her. She looked to Royce. “You should remove her from the battlefield before I change my mind.”
Royce hustled over, getting his hands under the fallen rakshasi’s arms, trying to ease her up.
“Aren’t you going to help?” he asked Nadine.
“Just got a manicure,” she replied, “so…no.”
Caitlin drifted to the far edge of the board, silent, fingers massaging her bleeding shoulder. I followed her.
43.
The mists of the Low Liminal drifted around us. They closed in, erasing the edges of the chessboard, the towering thrones. Narrowing down the world to just the two of us.
“Hey,” I said. “You okay?”
She kept her back turned.
“My wounds will heal,” she said.
“Not what I meant.”
“I was…frightened.” She turned to face me. Her eyes had changed back to human. Deep, soft, holding some distant sorrow. “When I’m not in control, it reminds me of when you first met me. Enslaved by that…human. To think I might have spent eternity trapped. My worst fear. If you hadn’t come along.”
“But I did,” I said.
“But you did.”
“Your worst fear,” I said, “and still. You were going to give yourself up for me tonight.”
She gave me a tiny, almost embarrassed smile.
“I told you,” she said. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I said.
“Daniel, I can’t…I can’t undo what I did to you when we first met. I can’t go back in time and change things. That will always be a wedge between us—”
“No.”
Double or Nothing (Daniel Faust Book 7) Page 27