His eyelids lowered, hooding his eyes. “Do not lie to me.”
I gulped and stammered, “Wh-whose turn is it?”
“Your turn.”
I snatched a card from my hand and tossed it down. As it hit the pile, I realized it was the six of spades. I was supposed to play my jack first to skip his turn! I would’ve won!
He fanned out his seven cards, watching me with calculating eyes, then played the six of diamonds over my six of spades, changing the suit.
I drew a card—the five of spades.
“What are you hiding?”
My attention shot back to him. “Wh-what?”
He played a diamond. “When your face changes color and your breath comes fast, is that because of me?”
“No!”
“Lying again, drādah.”
Crap. Fighting my intensifying blush, I yanked a card off the stock. The last eight of the deck! Now we were talking.
He played another diamond, reducing his hand to four. “Why do you guard these thoughts? You do not hide other thoughts about me.”
“It’s none of your business,” I declared as I slapped down my eight. “Spades.”
And with that, I won. With no more eights, he couldn’t change the suit, and on my next turn, I would play the jack and five of spades, emptying my hand.
As I clutched my winning pair, he fanned out his remaining four cards. Two jacks had been played, and the third was in my hand. Even if he skipped my turn once, I’d still win. The only way he could win was if he—
He placed the seven of spades on the pile. Then he put the seven of diamonds on top of it. Then he laid the seven of clubs on top of that. My eyes narrowed to slits as he held up his final card.
“No,” I growled.
He dropped the seven of hearts on top of the pile, emptying his hand.
“No way!” I yelled, flinging my two cards into the air. With those four cards, he would’ve won no matter which suit I’d chosen.
He flashed a grin and pulled the cinnamon buns across the table. “Vh’renithnās.”
He’d only just learned the game, yet he’d beaten me three times in a row. Leaving the cards where they were, I pushed to my feet, fuming. Maybe I was a sore loser, but he was already bigger and faster and stronger and more cunning and he had an eidetic memory. He shouldn’t be better at cards too. It wasn’t fair.
As I stormed past him, he caught my wrist and pulled me backward. One arm flailing, I lost my balance and fell—landing squarely in his lap.
My blush reignited and I shoved away from him. He wrapped an arm around my waist, holding me down, and his warm breath stirred my hair.
“You missed it, drādah,” he breathed in my ear. “Your moment of dh’ērrenith.”
Dh’ērrenith—the demonic word for certain victory.
“If you can’t read my mind,” I muttered, fighting the urge to squirm against his immovable strength, “how do you know I was going to win?”
“Do not let your opponent distract you.”
Had he brought up the mind-reading thing to fluster me? I swallowed the hysterical laugh bubbling in my throat and tugged at his encircling arm. “Let me go.”
Instead of obeying, he slid the carton of cinnamon buns off the table and dropped it on my lap. “We will share the prize.”
“You want to share?” Him? Mr. Selfish?
“We will share … if you explain what makes your face change to red.”
“What?” I shoved hard, twisting free from his arm. The cinnamon bun container tumbled to the floor. “What kind of offer is that?”
“You lost. I will share my prize, but I want something else.”
“Then keep your prize,” I grumped, straightening my sweater. I stalked to my bedroom, but as I stepped through the door, I couldn’t resist glancing over my shoulder.
Zylas already had his teeth buried in an icing-drizzled bun. He angled his head, catching my eye. More heat rushed into my face and I fled into my room, shutting the door tightly behind me.
Breathing hard for no reason, I dropped onto my bed and rubbed my cheeks with both hands. Why was I so bashful? I shouldn’t be blushing like this. Zylas was a demon—a demon with no respect for personal boundaries. The more his invasions of my space annoyed me, the happier he seemed.
I lowered my hands from my face, a smile pulling at my lips. This time, though, he’d overplayed his hand. What he’d revealed had been well worth the embarrassment.
He couldn’t read all my thoughts.
How much sleep had I lost worrying about what he could hear in my head or how his demon brain interpreted it all? If he was in the dark about everything I preferred to keep private, that meant he didn’t know why I blushed when he touched me, or why he sometimes caught me staring at him, or why I’d freaked out when he’d stripped us half-naked in a storm drain.
Especially that last incident. I really hoped he had no clue about that one.
Feeling newly cheerful, I fished under my bed and dragged out a thin metal case. Time to get to work.
“Egeirai, angizontos tou Athanou, lytheti,” I declared, my hand splayed across the cool steel top.
The box lit up with white runes, and I opened the lid. The Athanas Grimoire lay on top, its worn leather cover shiny from handling—though little of it recent. Carefully lifting out the book, I collected my notebook from underneath it, stacked it and the grimoire on my pile of reference texts, and carried everything into the living room.
Zylas had shifted to the sofa, lying sideways across it as he shoved half a fluffy cinnamon bun into his mouth.
“You’re going to choke,” I warned him.
Ignoring me, he swallowed his mouthful without chewing.
I tidied the deck of cards, then spread my books out and sat cross-legged behind the coffee table, using the sofa as a backrest. Zylas’s tail hung off the cushions beside me.
Tucked inside my notebook were my mother’s notes and translations, but I’d yet to figure out which pages of the grimoire they corresponded with. I shifted them aside to reveal my translation of the first page of the grimoire. Quiet awe slid through me every time I looked at the list.
Fourteen names stretching back over four thousand years, all belonging to my ancestors. Each sorceress had taken on the meticulous task of recopying the aging grimoire to preserve its knowledge, and I would be the fifteenth name on that list. The grimoire had last been recopied over three hundred years ago, the longest gap in its history.