Page 17

A FTER EXCHANGING HER POUCH OF ASCENS FOR A MODEST stack of gambling chips, Saff wandered through the gamehouse in a trance, gazing up at the vast domed ceiling.

Painted upon it was one of the most beautiful murals she’d ever seen—dragons and griffins, warriors and Saints and priests, naked nymphs in glorious waterfalls, bare breasts and soft bellies, the whole thing a smear of color and skin and want.

Pleasure churned into her well at the mere sight, and it felt wrong, somehow, to experience such a thing in the devil’s own lair, but perhaps the wrongness was part of the appeal.

Pushing farther into the gamehouse, she passed a barrel-shaped woman arguing with the polderdash cards in her hand—one particularly mean-spirited queen had decided to poison the other royals, which had brought the game to a standstill—as well as several rows of elemental slot towers, which were famous for periodically electrocuting players in quite an erotic way.

A gaunt mage wept at the feet of a wheel of fortune, which apparently told real fortunes, since it had been enchanted by a Foreseer.

Said fortunes were rarely flattering. In fact, the more cursed your fate, the more likely you were to win big.

Saffron decided to stay well clear of that game.

Instead of heading directly to the roulette tables, her feet carried her in the direction of the divine scent.

The bar was vast and round in the center of the gamehouse, shaped and painted like a gigantic roulette wheel.

Saffron notched herself into a black seat and caught the eye of a handsome young bartender with dark brown skin, a Sinyi septum piercing, and owlish gold glasses.

“I’ll have one of whatever smells so good,” Saffron said, feeling lightheaded.

The bartender smiled, his face dazed, placidly content. “A blackcherry sour.”

He mixed the drink in a disaffected trance, his hands moving fluidly behind the bar, and Saffron lost track of all the different tonics and tinctures being poured. The drink was handed to her in a tall, thin glass with a single blackcherry skewered on a mixing stick.

She drank thirstily. It was at once sweet and bitter, frost-cold and butter-smooth, alighting each of her senses in turn.

A shiver on the skin, a pleasant tinkle in her ears, the luscious flavor filling her mouth and nose.

The edges of her vision flared and danced with stars, and a sense of enormous well-being spread through her like a parting of shadows.

It wasn’t a potion—it wouldn’t affect her, if so—and yet it had a far more profound impact on her sensibilities than simple booze.

She downed the drink in one, ordered another, and then looked at the bartender expectantly.

“May I mix you a third?” he asked.

“I was just wondering how much I owed?”

“Oh, no.” He gave her a strange smile of his own. “Blackcherry sours are on the house.”

Saffron found this a little odd—wasn’t the whole point of Celadon to rake in as many ascens as possible?—but felt no need to argue. She strolled over to the nearby roulette table, feeling infinitely more relaxed than she had a few moments ago.

In fact, it wasn’t just relaxation. It was … arousal? No, more than that. Like teetering on the edge of an orgasm, those blissful few seconds before the starburst—except the sensation spread over her whole body.

Saints, she felt good.

Maybe she wouldn’t go straight into her mission. Maybe she would treat herself to a few games of polderdash first. It had been over half a year since she’d flexed those muscles, and suddenly nothing in the world was more appealing than winning.

She found a spot on a mostly full table and the croupier dealt her in.

As she played—and won, over and over again—a memory came back to her, rich and textured.

A few months into the Silvercloak program, the cadets had coalesced in the common room to play polderdash around a low coffee table.

The darknight moon shone through the arched windows, the creamstone hearth crackling with merry flames.

Case files and textbooks scattered every couch, every desk, every spare patch of floor.

They’d survived their first law exam that day, and were celebrating with a bottle of flamebrandy and an ancient, ale-stained pack of cards.

Well, Saffron was celebrating.

The rest were growing rather pissed off.

“How did you win again ?” Auria had grumbled, pushing a significant stack of ascens toward Saff. “I follow the best strategies every single time.”

“Because you aren’t playing strategies.” Saff had shuffled the deck with expert sleight of hand. “You’re playing people.”

“And do you enjoy playing your friends?” Gaian’s pale brow had formed a perfect arch, his gray eyes glinting in the firelight. “Manipulating their emotions, homing in on their weaknesses?”

“I do.” Saff had smiled earnestly. “One more hand?”

Auria and Tiernan had groaned at once. They’d been depleted to a mere handful of coins each.

Sebran had long since retired to bed. He’d claimed it was because he still kept a soldier’s schedule, and arose at dawn to train every day, but in reality he had lost all of his ascens in the first few rounds and could not stomach the embarrassment of being outlasted by Tiernan, of all people.

Though Tiernan was actually rather good at polderdash, on account of having no idea what was going on, and therefore being quite hard to read.

Looking around the room, a rich, golden pleasure had poured into Saffron’s magical well, not through any physical sensation but from a kind of emotional fulfillment.

It had been happening more and more lately, the longer she spent with her cohort, and it worried her, how much she was letting herself care about them.

Another soft spot into which fate could drive a blade.

Nissa had sighed and risen to her feet, stretching like a cat. The flames crackling behind her only accentuated her dragonesque features. “I’m going for a smoke.”

Another dare of a smile had tugged at Saffron’s lips. “If you win this hand, I’ll keep you in achullah for a month.”

Nissa had rolled her eyes. “I have plenty of achullah.”

Saff’s own grin had broadened. “Alright. I’ll kiss your toes in front of everyone.”

After a few moments of consideration, Nissa sat back down, sheets of silken hair falling around her face. “Fine. But only because I thrive on the humiliation of others.” She held out a palm. “And I’m shuffling.”

Shuffling didn’t help. Nissa still lost.

Because that was the first thing Saffron had learned about gambling.

It wasn’t reckless when you were good.

And so in Celadon Gamehouse, Saffron kept playing until she’d won a frankly irresponsible amount of ascens. By the time she eventually made her way to the nearest roulette table, her well was brimming with the pleasure of victory.

It was a little-understood facet of the magical well.

If joy or grief were powerful enough to elicit a bodily response, then they seemed to replenish the well in a similar way to physical pleasure or pain.

Whenever Saffron thought hard enough about her parents, a hard brick of sadness slammed against her ribs, and her magic was, for a brief spell, galvanized.

At the roulette table, there were two other players—older mages bickering about whether House Arollan would fall before they met their graves—and a short, neatly presented croupier of around fifty.

He wore a purple cloak over a gold-trimmed waistcoat, sweeping chips soundlessly from the velvet table and gesturing for the players to place their next bets.

Saff set her chips over the table, covering black and red squares equally. As the croupier spun the wheel and rolled the silvered ball around its rim, a thrill built in Saff’s chest until she thought she might detonate.

The silvered ball slowed down, and Saff stared at it, entranced. In certain lights, it resembled an eyeball rolling frantically inside a mirrored casing.

No, that’s exactly what it was.

As it came to a stuttering halt, Saff picked out the red veins; the dove-gray iris; the wide, fraught pupil.

An unsettling illusion, surely.

“Red thirty-six,” announced the croupier, placing a marker on the table and sweeping away all the losing bets.

Even though losing was the reason she was here, Saff felt an innate snap of disappointment.

When she’d first started gambling—back before she discovered her excellency at polderdash—she’d stuck to the games of pure chance, games wholly and utterly out of her control, like roulette.

And whenever she lost early and hard, she felt the need to keep going, to keep betting, in a desperate attempt to recoup the sunk cost.

This was how the Bloodmoons made their fortune, after all.

Gambler’s fallacy—the idea that surely she couldn’t keep losing, when it had already happened so often.

That familiar desperation awoke in her now, like a beast from its slumber.

Losing was the whole point, and yet it still felt terrible.

She placed her next bets even quicker, that drumming sensation building ever higher in her chest.

Everything went according to plan for the next half hour, and despite winning the occasional round—which brought with it a familiar surge of pure, raw pleasure—Saff whittled her chips down to the last handful.

The two other mages lost all their chips and disappeared in the direction of the bar.

Saff was laying her final bets when the croupier muttered something so fiercely staccato that she had to ask him to repeat himself.

“Walk away,” he hissed. “While you still can.”

Saff’s hand froze over her chips. “Pardon?”

“I haven’t seen you at my table before.” He tucked his shoulder-length brown-gray hair behind his ear. His silver name tag read Neatras. “Leave now, while you still have your wits. I won’t accept another bet.”

Frustration—and truthfully, dread—prickled at Saff. “You’re overstepping.”