Page 98 of Villains Never Die

Rook’s unyielding heart.

My failures were stacking up faster than I could fix them, and much quicker than I could accept that some of them could never be fixed. My feelings for him were the only thing left that felt certain, unmoved by all the ways I had let myself down. Perhaps that was why he resisted loving me back. His world ran on bets and odds, and occasional luck. Maybe he looked at me and predicted the odds weren’t in his favor. Then why did he claim me? Why was he so impassioned by the idea of losing me—to Death, or life, or the arms of someone else? Why did it matter so fucking much if he didn’t love me?

What was so complicated that I hadn’t earned his heart?

I closed my eyes, begging sleep to take me from my suffocating thoughts, but this time the vision that hit me didn’t cause pain. There was only a quick, glacial shock, as if my skull had been dunked beneath icy water.

A heart slowing. Something thick and cloying navigating blue veins. A choice—more a sensation than a sight—and the heavy crush of making it. A voice that should have soothed, but grated along every nerve in my body. Then a clock, ticking away seconds that felt too precious to waste.

The cold splintered and filled my chest with ice. I quieted my shallow breaths so that I didn’t wake Rook, but when the sun rose again, I was still wide awake with the terror of what I might possibly have left to lose.

Chapter Thirty-Six

“You aren’t going to beat me,” Rook said, reclining in his chair with a smug little smile like he’d already won.

“No, I’ve been practicing, and today is the day,” I assured him, rubbing my finger over one of the pieces on his chessboard. His was less ornate than mine, a simple black and white board with chunky, undetailed pieces lined up in rows at the edges.

After he’d left the penthouse, I’d spent two days distracting myself with something that felt less dire than everything else in my life—studying chess as if it were the only thing getting me out of bed in the morning. I’d been good in school, but years had dulled my memory of the game. That was something that could be fixed, and today I was going to wipe that look right off his perfect face.

I’d sold a cursed deck of tarot cards once, and as I’d carefully flipped through them to make sure they were all there, an image of a heart skewered by three swords slipped into my memory. That was my heart now as I sat across from Rook, watching him sprawl in morning leisure, entirely at a loss for how to makehim love me. I let it pinch for one second before I renewed my eagerness to defeat him. Simple. Clean. Mundane.

He made his first move and I followed immediately. For days, I’d memorized tactics to destroy him.

“After we kill Emmett, do you want me to help you with the Prague stuff again? You don’t have to do it by yourself.”

“Shhh!” I pressed a finger to my lips, thinking through my counter to his next move.

“It’s faster if there are two of us…”

I glanced up at him, eyebrow cocked and gaze flat. “You are trying to distract me, and it won’t work.”

He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, skin touching skin where there were ragged holes in his jeans. “Austin, baby, I don’t need to distract you. I’m going to win.”

“And I’m going to make you eat those words,” I swore. I slid a piece into place. “Now make your next move.”

He slid a piece with his fingertip without even looking. Cocky son of a bitch.

“Do you really think this is the best way to handle your emotions?” he asked.

“Oh, now you want to talk about emotions?” I didn’t check to see how he was looking at me. My eyes were too busy darting between options.

“You’re sleep deprived, you’re grieving, and quite frankly, you look like shit. This weird little fixation with the game won’t make any of that better.”

“Stop acting like you know what’s going on inside my head and play the bloody game.”

Another casual move on his side, and my heart leaped. A wrong choice. Maybe I wasn’t the one distracted. We were fifteen more minutes into the game, our pieces fanning out with rapid moves and quiet clicks of stone against the board, when herealized what a terrible position he was in. His eyebrows drew together, but there was no undoing the mistakes he had made.

“Checkmate,” I said when his king was properly fucked and there was no way out of it.

Rook groaned softly across the table, his eyes scanning the board again. “There’s no fucking way.”

“There is absolutely a fucking way!” I cried gleefully, gesturing to the vanquished king. “That’s what you get for being so pompous about it.”

He wrenched my arm and pulled me right over the table, smashing our mouths together and scattering pieces everywhere. He sank his teeth into my lower lip until I yelped and then grinned at me. “Fine. You win. Enjoy that victory boner for as long as it lasts. In the meantime, I’d like to get my hands on a literal one. Did beating me get you hard?”

“No, but your fucking mouth is doing it for me right now.” The whole board crashed to the floor as he stood, drawing me close and dragging me toward the bedroom. He kicked the door closed behind us with an echoing slam and threw me on the bed. And then he showed me exactly what his mouth could do.

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