Page 3 of Death Game: Supernatural Battle

Why was this so damn hard? Why couldn’t he understand that I didn’t blame him for not saving me? I’d saved myself. He was furious that I’d made him powerless in the equation. I got it.

If the tables were turned, he’d have zero qualms locking me in a room to go save his family.

Kyros strode to the door, gripping the framing. It cracked under his hand, and his shoulders heaved as he said, “Do not leave this house.”

He wanted me here but didn’t want anything to do with me?

Kyros felt inadequate. Welcome to the fucking club.No onebut Kyros could make himself feel worthy again, certainly not me. This was his battle.

And yet I hated witnessing such uncertainty in someone who’d walked this earth for so long. This bottomless, falling feeling was horrible. It was like he’d given up the right to our blood bond.

I sighed. “I’ll stay if you sit down and talk to me tomorrow morning instead of waiting until I fall asleep to leave for work. You’re one hundred and fifty years old, not thirty.”

Apparently the thirties were a hard time for Vissimo.

He didn’t turn. “You want to negotiate? Here’s a negotiation for you, Basilia. Stay in the house, and I won’t kill the Indebted who failed to protect you on the estate.”

I stopped moving. Stoppedbreathing. “You wouldn’t do that.”

Evie would be the first in the firing line. When I misled her, it was in the knowledge Kyros would never cross that line and hurt her because of my actions.

The vampire glanced over his shoulder, fangs lengthening. “Test me.”

I stood, staggering slightly with dizziness. “So, what? You’re trapping me here?”

“You can’t be trusted not to put yourself in danger. You’ll remain in my personal territory until that trust is earned again. Look at it however you want.”

He was there one moment and gone the next.

The door to his room slammed.

Sitting heavily, I stared at my hands. What the actual fuck?

I couldn’t be trusted to put my safety first? I only hadone personwhose needs I put above my own. Kyros had eight of them.

Yet guilt rose hard and fast.

You can’t be trusted.

Little did Kyros know just how true those words were. When I got back to the estate, I wouldn’t just be picking up where I left off with my grandmother’s legacy of winningIngenium.

Nope.

Two weeks ago, I pretty much handed Clan Fyrlia everything they needed to win the game. Unless I put Clan Sundulus back in the game somehow, not only was my grandmother’s work and death for nothing, but most of Kyros’s family would be murdered. I couldn’t let either of those things happen. Equilibrium had to be restored.

So Kyros was right—yes—I couldn’t be trusted.

Just not for the reasons he thought.

2

I inched forward, peering over the cliff edge at the ocean crashing below. In the distance, to the left, the golden shores of Lyall Bay called.

My head spun and I closed my eyes, inching away. My ears were mostly healed according to Dr Olivia. Tests had confirmed permanent damage to the canal. I couldn’t hear a whisper at farther than fifty metres away. Considering human norms were a few metres, I wasn’t shattered over the disability, but the news devastated Kyros; one more punch to the stomach. I’d genuinely feared for Olivia’s life when she presented the results. Poor woman.

A safe distance from the drop, I opened my eyes again and settled into my senses practice. I worked to stretch each individually and then mute them one by one. I worked on operating two at once. Looking as far out to sea as possible, I did my best to block out the crashing noise of waves. Once I achieved that, I dialled each sense in the opposite direction, pulling in my vision to the grass by my feet while flaring my hearing to maximum despite the tender twinge of protest.

After repeating this for paired combinations of each sense, I returned to sight and sound, adding touch to the mix. Holding the sensation of wind on my skin at amedium, I proceeded to juggle the three around, dialling them up and down in turn.

---