Page 79 of This Dark Descent
“You think I can’t handle Rezek Kelbra?”
“That’s not what I said.”
Loic waved a dismissive hand. “Just because he outplayed you doesn’t mean I’ll make the same mistake.”
“Outplayed?” Damien hissed. “Is that what you call him murdering—”
Loic seized him by the collar. “Do not finish that sentence. You don’t have the right.”
The burn of verillion tore through Ari, and she wrenched Loic back by the shoulder. He spun on her, but Reid leapt to his feet, and he and Damien closed ranks between them.
The grin that cut across Loic’s face was half snarl. “Just a sculptor, hm?” His gaze settled on Ari like a clammy touch, and she fought the urge to recoil. “Did you find yourself a girlfriend, little brother?”
Damien ran a hand through his hair, then straightened his jacket. They were small movements, throwaways to someone who didn’t know him, but Ari recognized them for what they were: distractions. Tasks Damien performed as a means of keeping himself under control. Straighten this, move that—and don’t think about punching your brother in the face.
“She’s not your concern,” he said.
Loic’s grin turned hungry, and for an instant, all Ari could see were Fen and Cardix. She felt their hands around her throat, smelled the stale stench of their breath. “Care for her, do you? Now, what could be so special about her that it would enrapture the great Damien Adair?” He laughed. “Perhaps I’ll find out for myself.”
Damien shed the last of his pretense. “If you go near her, I’ll put a bullet between your eyes.”
Loic lifted his hands in mock defense. “I won’t touch her.” A smile split his lips as his gaze locked on Ari in a way that made her stomach turn. “Until she asks me to, of course.”
Reid seized Damien’s hand as it went for the gun at his ribs. “You can’t,” he warned.
“Do it,” Loic urged. “Shoot me and forfeit your right to the Ascension, little brother.”
For an instant, it looked as though Damien would throw Reid off and draw the weapon. His fingers curled tight about the handle, his knuckles bleeding white. In the end, he only shoved it back into its holster.
“You and Rezek deserve each other,” he said.
Loic snarled. “And you deserve no one, which is exactly what you’ll have when I’m finished.”
Damien straightened his jacket cuffs. “This isn’t over.”
“No,” Loic agreed, drifting backward. “It’s only begun.”
Ari watched him go until the crowd swallowed him up. Only then did she relinquish the burn of magic.
You should have shown him what happens to people who threaten you, coaxed the voice.You still can.
She pushed its words aside and looked to Damien. “What is the Ascension?”
Damien’s gaze strayed across the crowd, checking they were alone. Most of the spectators had moved to the starting line, where the announcer was running through her usual speech. He was delaying. Thinking.
She didn’t give him the chance. “Does this have something to do with why Shira’s been following us? And why Loic showed up at the manor that night?”
“Damien,” Reid said quietly when his silence persisted. “She should know.”
Damien ran a hand through his tousled hair, vexation breaking through his mask. “If I involve you in this, you become a piece on the game board. You become a target.”
Ari thought of the way Loic had looked at her. “I already am.”
He must have understood what she meant, because he visibly relented. “The Ascension is a tradition among the noble houses. Instead of the oldest child inheriting the household, a challenge is set. Whoever completes it first, or most successfully, becomes heir to their house.”
She’d never heard of a competition to decide the next heir of a house, but she’d only been in Veradell a short time, and it sounded like a closely guarded process. Was this what Reid had meant by saying that he had a lot depending on the race? Not just House Adair’s racing business and verillion, but its entire future. His future.
“And what challenge were you set?” she asked.
