Page 113 of Steel Heart Iron Claws

I wet my lips, intrigued. “Look, if you want some feather play?—”

“No, Plume is a cloudfox friend.” Her eyes alight, she pulls her legs under her as she sits upright. “She told me about fae bargains. It’s the only way I know to bind the fae to their word. Seal a fae deal with soil, and it’s unbreakable. Do you see? We can enter into a fae bargain with my freedom as the prize.”

I still lament the feather—a little. “Your father wouldn’t sense a trap?”

She pauses, thinking. “So, we don’t bet against my father. We’ll do it all behind his back.” She bites down on her thumb, excited. “We’ll bet againstArtain—he’s so prideful that he can’t resist a wager. He’s stupid, too.”

A sour taste fills my mouth at the thought of the preening idiot who had Sabine’s lips all over him.

Putting him in his place?Yeah, I’m in.

“Hunting,” I grunt. “Artain is God of the Hunt—if I can threaten his ego when it comes to his affinity, he’ll accept the challenge.”

She squeezes our hands together tightly. “You’re the best huntsman I know, but can you best a god?”

I pause. “If I have your help, maybe.”

Her eyebrows lift, surprised. “My animals, you mean.Like how in the Everlast tournament, I called an arrowwood spider to bite your opponent.” She pauses, a reluctance there. “Okay, yes. There’s no other way. Tomorrow, we’ll propose the wager. There’s an offerings ceremony each Friday morning in the Garden of Ten Gods. It’s a public event. Artain will be there. It won’t seem strange for both of us to be there, too. And my father will be distracted.”

I stroke the back of her hand. “Something’s still holding you back.”

She takes a long breath. “I don’t want to see any more animals hurt. People, either. But I know that war is ugly.”

“Come here, you.” I pull her into my lap and stroke the hair at her temple. “If our prize is your freedom, then what will Artain wager? What does he want more than anything else?”

She buries her forehead into my chest. “I’m afraid to know.”

On Friday, the Garden of Ten Gods, normally quiet, is as busy as a county fair. The walled gates are open to allow in a steady stream of Volkish commoners, whose arms are laden with offerings for the gods’ altars. Woven baskets. Bolts of silk. A brace of skinned hares. At the base of each statue, the gods’ altars overflow onto the ground with more bottles of wine and bread loaves than an army could eat in a month.

And this happens everyweek?

“Ah. Lord Basten. Share this drink with me?” Samaur sidles up to me with a busty redhead on one arm. His golden eyes are dulled. Pupils black like he’s drunk. He smirks. “We are allies, now, are we not?”

I give a slight nod. “Lord Samaur. I’ll happily share a drink, but your hands are noticeably empty.”

He gives a knowing wink. “Silver chalices are one thing, but sometimes it’s better to take straight from the source.”

As he squeezes his acolyte’s ass with one hand, he latches his lips onto her neck. A tang of blood splashes in the air, and I realize with a sickening jolt that he’s biting her. I watch his throat constrict as he drinks from her vein, then pulls back with a satisfied sigh.

The wound closes up almost immediately. She looks dazed. Stunned but happy. He smacks his acolyte on her ass, dismissing her, and wipes away a drip of blood on his chin as he cackles.

As I watch her stagger back toward his altar, I think about Paz’s dead body still rotting in the tower room. How long before Samaur, too, “slips” and drinks too much? Before that redhead girl is dead in another closet? And her twin?

“I’ll stick to wine.” My voice is hard.

Samaur cackles.

I spot Sabine near Artain’s altar, her face carefully blank as she pretends to peruse a brass birdcage holding a snowy white bird. “Excuse me.”

I take my time circling the other altars, pausing to help a peasant tie a donkey’s lead rope to Vale’s altar, then sidle up to the opposite side of Artain’s altar.

The God of the Hunt himself is across the garden, flirting with a farm girl. He idly strokes an arrow, running his fingers along its sharp edge as he smiles at her.

Fixating on his altar, I feign interest in a necklace made of bobcat claws. Quietly, I murmur to Sabine, “Is it time?”

She shakes her head faintly without looking my way. “Not yet—my father is too close.” She returns to admiring the bird—a rare albino crow.

I spot Vale in the amphitheater’s center, looking over the offerings as they come in. He lifts a length of fabric from a merchant, rubbing it between his fingers. I wait a few minutes for him to get pulled into a conversation by a crowd of wealthy landowners plying him with Spezian sugared figs.

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