Page 85 of Mud

Fuck, my head hurt. I had cuffs around my wrists, butthe chain was long enough that I could reach the right side of my forehead where I’d hit the ground, and my temple where one of these pricks had hit me with the handle of his gun. I hissed in pain when my fingers touched the wound, and I had a trickle of dried blood going down the side of my brow. It wasn’t bleeding anymore, but it pulsated pain that spread through the rest of my head in waves.

But my leg wasn’t hurting at all, like someone had spelled me again while I was out of it.

“Where are we?” I asked because it was dark outside, and all I saw were trees through the tinted windows. Trees and other cars driving both ways.

“We’ll arrive in the City of Games in three minutes,” said the driver, while the ones sitting in the back with me reached for something in the compartment between their seats. A small bottle of water and something wrapped up in tin foil.

A sandwich.

“If you try to run away, we have orders to stop you by any means necessary,” the guy who unwrapped the sandwich said, before he put it in my hand. His friend put the bottle of water in my other.

But I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t want to eat—I wanted to get the hell out of this car before we made it to the City of Games!

Panic instantly settled in.

I should have been more careful, damn it! I should have made sure there were no wards around the mansion. Never mind that there hadneverbeen any wards inside the estate that had stopped me from moving about freely—I should have been more careful.

Fuck, fuck, fuck! Look at me now, I’m losing it.

I was finally,reallylosingit.

Except now wasn’t the time to lose it, was it?

I was tempted to laugh because I couldn’t even afford to freak out or be pissed off at all. I couldn’t afford to let myself feel what I needed to feel, not right now.

So, closing my eyes, I picked up the memories and the thoughts in my head and forced them into order.

I’d tried to run away. They’d caught me. They’d brought me to the City of Games. They were going to force me into the Iris Roe, and if I tried to run again, they were going to shoot me to death. That’s whatby any means necessarymeant.

Unless I shot them first.

My knives, my guns, my leather jacket and leather pants were on me still. I could shoot these guards before they got me through the gates. I still had a chance.

“Do you mind?” I said, raising my hands to tell them to take those cuffs off me.

“We have orders to keep them on you until you enter the game,” said the guy who’d given me the bottle of water.

It took all I had not to start cursing out loud.

“I can’t eat with cuffed hands,” I said instead, as calmly as I could manage.

The guards looked at me—that’s all they did. With their hands over their knees and their shoulders straight, ready to launch at me at any second if they needed to, they just looked at me with a dead expression on their faces.

The cuffs weren’t going anywhere.

I brought the sandwich to my mouth and bit into it, defeated. Not hungry in the least, but I was going to need the energy. It was delicious, though, which told me Poppy had had something to do with telling the cook how to prepare it. Lots of turkey and lots of cheese, and the cold water did wonders to clear my head.

The reminder sent shivers down my back—I hadn’t gotten the chance to even see Poppy at all. When I decided to run, I didn’t think I’d get caught, and I didn’t think about what would happen ifI didget away. I’d just ran, and now I was never going to see Poppy again.

Maybe that was for the best. I sucked at goodbyes. I would rather just…disappear.

Easy enough to do in the City of Games.

The City was located west of Baltimore, over two hours away from the IDD Headquarters. Iridians loved their games, loved to showcase their magic, loved totest their skills,and that’s why the covens had created the City of Games—asafe space to do magic and entertain with no boundaries.

So now the world had a live magical show to visit any time they pleased, and the covens made a lot of money off those visits, and the Iridian folk had a way to be who they are openly while earning fame and money and power off it.

There were a lot of playgrounds in the City of Games. Think of it as this big permanent circus, with games that went on regularly, including those that were played every month or year or four years, like the Iris Roe. It had two large theaters that played magical shows for the audiences, a zoo with magical animals—one of two in the entire world—different parks with different themes, from Disney princesses to lands of mythical creatures. Large hotels, restaurants, bars, an aqua-park and a miniature volcano, too, as well as a very famous wedding venue that people said was booked some three years in advance.

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