Page 27 of Enchantra (Wicked Games #2)
26
MEADOW
Genevieve was so damned tired of running. She was also so damned tired of getting blood all over every single dress she owned.
Blood does not go with pink.
She had known there was no way she could’ve made it all the way to the ballroom and then up the stairs before Remi caught up with her. So she’d done the next best thing—made a beeline for the dining room, where she proceeded to ruin her nails prying open the hidden entrance to the butler’s pantry. As she had suspected, the opposite exit of the pantry led through to the kitchen, where she then found the hidden corridor that led to the stairs and up to the secret room behind the library that Rowin had showed her the night before.
As she climbed the rickety wooden steps up to the drab, stone room, she pressed a hand to the aching wound at her side, sighing in relief at the pressure. As she leaned dramatically against the banister, the loose ribbons of the choker she’d tied around her neck snagged on the sharp end of a protruding splinter without her notice, and when she hauled herself up the next step, they pulled a bit too tight around her throat. Before she could reach back to untangle herself, the decrepit board beneath her gave out, and her foot went right through.
She let out a strangled gasp as she fell, jagged pieces of wood scraping her trapped ankle raw while the ribbons turned into a painful vise around her throat. She clawed at the silk knot until it came loose, gritting her teeth against the pain of prying her foot from the hole in the hollow step. The muffled sound of someone else shouting from behind one of the walls sent a shot of adrenaline through her and she worried she’d made too much noise. There was a pressure behind her eyes as they begged for her to cry, a lump in her throat she was barely able to swallow while she righted herself on the stairs to keep going.
She refused to give Knox’s spectators the satisfaction of her tears—and she knew they were watching. The strategically placed looking glasses in the nooks of this dusty passage no longer going unnoticed as she passed them.
It’s only a few scratches , she screamed at herself. And aching bones. Hurt pride.
By the time she made it to the, blessedly , empty secret room, she had already made a decision. She limped over to the cart with the decanters, double-, triple-, quadruple-checking she was not pouring herself a glass of urine. But Rowin must have taken care of that disgusting little detail when he’d reset the room’s door sometime during the safe hours, because all she found within the bottles was pristine maple whiskey.
She pulled out the bottle’s glass stopper and poured a bit of the liquor in a glass. As she brought it up to her nose, she nearly gagged at the smell, but once she forced down the first sip and felt its burn, the good kind, spread through her system, promising sweet relief, she easily gulped back the rest.
Two glasses later and she was draped over the couch, her eyes drooping closed as the nightmare started anew.
Groaning as she sat up, Genevieve massaged her fingertips into her throbbing temples as her eyes adjusted to the dark.
“I thought you didn’t drink whiskey?”
Genevieve sucked in a surprised breath as she searched for Rowin in the dark, finding him sitting against the far wall, elbows resting on his bent knees as he watched her with an unreadable expression. Umbra was curled up against his hip, sound asleep.
There was a beat of silence as Genevieve adjusted her dress, and he climbed to his feet to walk over to her. Umbra gave a chatter of protest at being disturbed.
“If you wanted to be choked, all you had to do was ask,” he murmured as he crouched before her, reaching up to brush the pad of his thumb over the tender skin of her throat. “I wouldn’t have left any marks.”
She felt the tips of her ears heat at his words, but only glared as she waved him back so she could stand. A dull spike of pain shot through her ankle, but she tried not to let it show as she hobbled over to the bar cart. She snatched up the mirrored tray that was sitting atop it and held it up to inspect the blotchy, inflamed ring around her neck.
“This looks terrible ,” she whined.
“Are you limping ?” Rowin demanded.
“I slipped on the stairs on the way up here,” she explained as he crouched in front of her once more and swept her skirts aside to look at her swollen ankle. “My foot went through one of the boards and my choker got caught on a splinter sticking out of the banister. That Devil can forge wards stronger than steel on the front gates and create fantasy lands inside of bedrooms, but he can’t take care of a few planks of rotting wood? Who does the upkeep around here?”
“Me. Knox only visits Enchantra during the Hunt. I get everyone’s rooms ready before they return, but fixing broken steps in secret passageways has fallen by the wayside while I’ve been looking for the cure,” Rowin said. He gently squeezed her ankle, eliciting a hiss from her despite his carefulness. “It’s sprained. Let me see the cut on your side.”
She stepped away from him as he stood. “I’m fine .”
“You’re good to move to another room, then?” he prodded. “To run if we have to?”
“Can’t we stay here?”
“We’ve been in here for a while already. I think we should try and move to one of the enchanted rooms,” he reasoned. “You shouldn’t have let yourself pass out like that. If it hadn’t been me who found you?—”
“I know,” she said, sincerely.
His gaze brightened with surprise, and she rolled her eyes.
“I had a weak moment and saw the whiskey and I don’t know what came over me,” she admitted. “I also ran into Remi earlier, and he was pretending to be you, so it’s been a strange few hours.”
“Did…did anything happen?” he demanded, the seriousness of his expression making her want to laugh.
“Define anything ,” she teased.
A muscle in his jaw ticced. “If he touched you?—”
“If I didn’t know any better,” she interrupted before he could get too worked up, “I might think you were jealous, Mr. Silver.”
He gave her a hard look, as if to say she’d lost her mind, but all he said was, “Are you going to be able to walk on your foot?”
“If I said no?” she asked.
He smirked at her. And before she could protest, he was scooping her up into his arms and bringing her over to the spinning bookcase.
“I thought this couldn’t be opened again until it was reset,” she said as they spun toward the library.
“I said it couldn’t be opened from the library side until it was reset,” he corrected.
Just as the wall stopped spinning and he set her back on her feet, Genevieve felt the burning sensation in her hand.
“Rowin—” she gasped, but it was too late.
“And to think I was coming in here to take a break,” Remi said as he strutted into the room.
Rowin crossed his arms over his chest as he faced his twin. “I wouldn’t pick a fight with me right now, Remington. Not after what you pulled with my wife.”
“I’d say your wife and I are even after she ripped that ridiculous piece of metal out of my lip,” Remi reasoned.
Rowin raised his brows and swung his gaze over to her. “You did what ?”
Genevieve shrugged. “Be thankful I lived out that fantasy on him and not you.”
Rowin’s eyes lit up with a wicked gleam. Remi grunted in irritation, unsheathing the Hunting Blade and pointing it at Rowin. “Let’s get this over with.”
And then Remi was launching himself forward. He leaped onto the small coffee table in the middle of the seating area and used its wooden surface to propel him onto the armchair, rocking it backward with his weight until it fell and gave him the perfect arcing momentum to slam the blade down into Rowin’s shoulder. Genevieve tried to swallow her yelp of surprise when the blade actually made contact, having expected Rowin to dodge the hit, but it was clear that this was exactly what Rowin intended.
As Remi went to yank the dagger back out of Rowin’s flesh, Rowin grabbed his twin’s straightened arm with both hands and snapped it .
Genevieve looked away and heaved a bit as the image of broken bone poking out of Remi’s skin lingered in her mind. A scream of agony filled the air, then grunts of effort as the two of them fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Even with only a single useful arm, Remi held his own—so did Rowin, with the dagger still protruding from his shoulder.
Eventually Rowin managed to pin Remi to the floor, and Genevieve couldn’t help but think how bizarre the sight was. As if Rowin was fighting himself.
“I’ll sit here for the rest of the round if I have to,” Rowin threatened.
In answer, Remi freed his good hand and wrenched the dagger from Rowin’s shoulder before plunging it back into his brother’s side. The grunt of pain Rowin made was impressively restrained.
Genevieve would’ve been cursing up a storm.
“I’m so fucking tired of this,” Remi said from behind clenched teeth. “ I want out .”
That last part was a desperate roar, and it was almost harder for Genevieve to watch than any snapping bone.
“Then let me end it,” Rowin snarled back, and she wasn’t sure whether he meant this particular fight or the Hunt altogether.
It didn’t matter either way, because in a blink Remi mustered up the rest of his strength and bucked his legs hard enough that he managed to slam Rowin back into the ground. As he unsheathed the knife from Rowin’s ribs, he poised himself to strike again, this time in Rowin’s heart. Fortunately, the dagger never made it to its target because the case of books behind him came crashing down instead.
Genevieve blinked in disbelief at what she had just done as Rowin crawled out from beneath Remi’s body and Remi flattened to the ground, unconscious, beneath the heavy shelf. Her chest was still heaving from the exertion as Rowin climbed to his feet, stunned.
“Those shelves are much heavier than they look,” Genevieve complained before turning to him and saying, “Sorry. But I just couldn’t stomach it any longer.”
Rowin shoved a hand through his hair as his surprise finally wore off. “Let’s go. He’s going to have a headache, but that won’t keep an immortal down for long.”
As soon as Rowin shut the door to the enchanted room behind them, Genevieve gasped as she realized which room he’d brought her to. The meadow. Only now, instead of sunny, blue skies, the clear, inky abyss above them was sparkling with a million stars. The river was still softly bubbling somewhere in the distance, and the blanket of flowers over the hills was glowing with flickering fireflies.
It was heaven.
“Genevieve?”
She glanced over her shoulder.
“I just wanted to say you did well back there,” Rowin said.
His expression, as usual, told her nothing about how he was feeling. The sadness in his eyes, however, made her chest tighten.
The line from his letter came back to her now. Remington, I don’t know how to repair this rift.
Kicking off her shoes so she could feel the grass beneath her feet, she backed away, careful not to put too much weight on her bad ankle. “Two truths and a lie?”
He nodded as he shoved his hands into his front pockets and followed her toward the sound of the water. They were quiet for a while as she thought of her questions and took in their surroundings, a symphony of croaking frogs and crickets beginning around them. At some point she began to pull the petals off the lavender flower in her hand, getting all the way down to the final two petals before she spoke again.
“Where did you get this ring?” she began. “If the Hunt didn’t exist and you could live anywhere, here or on the Other Side, where would it be? And”—she bent down to snap a purple flower from its stalk as she passed by—“what leads have you found for the?—”
“Careful,” he inserted. “There may be no mirrors here, but everything that happens within these rooms is being broadcasted with crystal clarity.”
“For the”—she searched for a placeholder—“the super-rare birthday gift you’re going to get me.”
“I won Favored fifteen years ago—the same year my winning streak began—and the ring is what I chose as my boon from Knox’s trove. Grave and I got into an argument at the masquerade that year, and it made for a pretty brutal game. Knox’s audience clearly enjoyed seeing that side of me.”
He looked up at the stars, and she wondered whether he was wishing that side of him didn’t exist.
“I’m not sure where I’d want to live if I ever leave Enchantra. It’s been so long since this has truly felt like home, and yet I cannot think of another place worthy of such a title either.” He looked back at her now. “And that brings me to your…birthday gift. Unfortunately, all I’ve found are dead ends so far. I’ve been writing letters”—he flicked his eyes over to her, and she swore she saw guilt in them—“but most people don’t even respond. And when they do…”
Everything he’d said had the ring of truth, and Genevieve was unsure whether he quite understood how to play this game. But all she said was, “What did you and Grave fight about at that masquerade all those years ago?”
“It’s my turn,” he reminded her.
Genevieve sighed and nodded as she tossed away the mutilated flower before continuing toward the ornate silver bridge just ahead. Rowin kept pace at her side. Umbra, meanwhile, was pouncing in and out of the grassy field around them, snapping at the fireflies, and Genevieve couldn’t help but giggle.
Rowin still hadn’t said anything by the time they reached the overpass, and Genevieve was too busy exploring to bother giving him a nudge. Up close, the bridge was much wider than she expected, the steady, streaming river beneath it surprisingly deep. The water’s surface was glassy, reflecting the twinkling stars from above like a mirror. As she began to cross, one of the stones dropped down slightly beneath her weight, and nearly made her trip.
Rowin hooked a steadying arm around her waist just as a flash of gilded, luminescent fish swam downstream.
“Did you see that?” she gasped as she tugged at the sleeve of his shirt and stepped toward the railing.
She leaned over to peer into the water, but the only gold in sight now was the reflection of Rowin’s eyes as he leaned over next to her. She frowned.
“I think you found the game within the game.”
Genevieve glanced over. “The what?”
He waved toward the rest of the scene around them as he crouched to examine the sunken step. “Remember I mentioned that there are tokens Knox has hidden inside each of these rooms? Every room contains a puzzle. Solve it, survive it, and the token is yours.”
“And the token would give us immunity from the next round,” she recalled.
He nodded and then placed his palm against the stone, shifting his weight forward onto the loose step once more and sending another stream of glowing fish through the water.
“Do you think there are more triggers like that one?” she asked.
One corner of his mouth curled up with anticipation. “I suppose we’ll have to find out.”