It’s an unwritten rule. If anyone goes twenty rounds with a house fighter, the house yields.”
For someone who couldn’t have been a member of the Devil’s Mercy for long, Zella knew an awful lot about its unwritten rules. She’d escorted him and Avery into the atrium, then past a set of velour curtains—Lust—and up a winding, golden staircase. Now the three of them were in a room like Jameson had never seen. The bed was larger than king-sized. The ceiling was a deep midnight blue, just reflective enough that Jameson, lying prone on the bed, could catch the occasional glimpse of a ghost of their images. The floor on which Zella and Avery stood was made of round, smooth stones that had been warm under his still-bare feet.
The wall that Jameson could see when he propped himself up was seemingly made of water, falling into a basin below like a waterfall tamed.
The sheets beneath his body—the sheets he was bleeding on—were made of the softest silk.
“What are you doing?” Avery demanded, putting a hand on his shoulder and pushing him gently back down onto the bed. “You need to lay still.”
“I need to do more.” That word. It always came back to that word— needing more, wanting more, wanting to be more. “The Proprietor will choose the players in the Game tonight. I can’t spend the rest of it up here.” “I’m not asking you to, Jameson.” Avery brought her hand to his
abdomen, just under his rib cage—his bruised and battered rib cage. “I am asking you,” she continued fiercely, “to remember that this matters.” His pain. His body. “You matter.”
Once upon a time, he would have had a flippant response for that, would have deployed it like a grenade. But not now. Not with her. “I went to see Ian last night.” The admission came out more pained than he would have liked—or maybe that was his jaw. “Don’t look at me like that, Heiress. I know what I’m doing.”
He knew—now and always—what it took to win.
“At least let us clean you up,” Zella said, her voice no-nonsense. “Believe me, the Proprietor won’t thank you for leaving a bloody trail across the Mercy.”
Jameson let them tend to him, his body throbbing, his mind pulsing, his thoughts singular. What’s next? He’d won on the tables. He’d won in the ring. That left two areas—besides this one—in the Devil’s Mercy.
And each of those two rooms held a book.
Those books hold more.… unconventional wagers. Any wager written into one of those books and signed for is binding, no matter how bizarre. Jameson meditated on that bit of information as antiseptic and bandages were applied to his cuts, as his ribs were wrapped. As he pulled his shirt and jacket back on, his body screaming its objections now that the adrenaline of the fight was starting to ebb away.
“What would you do,” Jameson asked Zella, his mind sorting through an array of possibilities, “if you wanted to get the Proprietor’s attention?”
It wasn’t just his attention Jameson needed.
“Surprise him.” Zella turned and ran one hand lightly through the waterfall on the wall. “Or make him think that you have something he wants. Or if you have as little sense as it appears…” The duchess turned from the wall, her brown eyes settling on his. “Make him see you as a threat.”
“You know about the Game,” Avery said, and there was no question in her voice as she took a step toward the duchess. “You want in—if you’re not in already. Why would you help us?”
Help me, Jameson thought.
“Because I can.” Zella looked from Avery to Jameson. “And because the advantage to choosing one’s competition is knowing one’s competition.”
Any help she gave him served her own ends. “And you know me?” Jameson challenged.
“I know risk-takers,” Zella said. “I know privilege.” The duchess let that
word hang in the air, and then she looked from Jameson to Avery. “I know love.”
You know a hell of a lot more than that, Jameson thought.
Zella smiled slightly then, almost as if she’d heard him clear as day. “I know,” she said, “that there’s more than one way to shatter glass.”
And with that, the duchess made her exit.
“What did Ian say to you?” Avery asked him as soon as they were alone. “When you went to see him—what the hell did he say?”
Jameson didn’t make her call Tahiti. “He offered to leave me Vantage when he dies, if I win it back for him now.”
Avery stared at—and into—him. “You could win it for yourself.”
That was true. It had always been true. But Jameson couldn’t help thinking about Ian saying that he didn’t care for whist. About the laugh he’d managed to surprise out of the man, so much like his own.
“I can’t win anything for anyone,” Jameson bit out, a ball rising in his throat, “if I don’t get an invitation to the Game.”
Every bruise on his body was a live wire, but the only thing that mattered was what was next. Surprise the Proprietor. Tempt him. Threaten him. “Time to get back out there.”
To Avery’s credit, she didn’t try to talk him out of it—just handed him a quartet of over-the-counter pain pills and a bottle of water. “I’m coming with you.”
Game on.
