Page 54 of Beasts of Briar
“Just wait.”I grabbed the die and tossed it. It landed on a three, and I smiled, moving one of my coins forward three spaces, then setting another coin on the board.
“How come I didn’t get to do that?” Kairoth asked.
“Because you didn’t roll a three.”I shot him a smile.
I could feel him studying me behind the swarm of shadows. “You could very easily be making up these rules, and I wouldn’t even know.”
“I could,”I agreed.
His head tilted. “But then I don’t think you’d take as much pleasure in beating me. I don’t think you’re one to cheat. You have more respect for your opponent and the game to do that.”
I didn’t know why, but his words filled me with pride because he was right. I never cheated.
He rolled again and got another two, tsking as he moved his piece forward.
“It was my twin brothers who liked to cheat,”I signed.“Killian and Klaus. We’d finish the game and find spare coins up their sleeves, weighted die. They had a hard time taking anything seriously.”
“They sound fun. They remind me of one of my uncles. He was like that. Always the one you went to if you needed cheeringup. Always a joke at the ready. He liked to be the center of attention.”
It was odd hearing him talk about such human things like family, like uncles. Then again, in another way, it wasn’t odd at all. So much of what I’d seen of him since we’d met had felt distinctly human.
I rolled and got a four, moving my second piece. Then I rolled again, a smile already forming on my face because I knew Kairoth would have something to say.
“And why are you rolling a second time?” He leaned forward.
“Bonus turn.”I shrugged.“If you roll a four or a five, you get to go again.”
He grumbled something under his breath, and I thought it sounded like “that’s convenient.”
“Did you and the other gods ever play games like this?”
He snorted. “No. Not games like this. The gods had much more twisted games they liked to play. Games that usually involved mortals as the game pieces.”
He sounded disgusted by it, but I remembered that woman trapped below his castle and bristled.
“How does that just happen? How do you become immortal and lose any sense of morality?”
He paused before he rolled. “Aha,” he said when it landed on a four. “Bonus turn.”
I made a face, and I swore I could see his lips twitch underneath the shadows.
“It happens slowly,” he said. “After we got our powers, learned how to use them, learned our limits, our strengths, our weaknesses, we decided we’d each take a territory of the continent to rule. We started bringing mortals over from different lands, bestowing them with powers. Not immortality but magic. In return, the mortals worshipped us. They were in awe of us and our strength, in awe of our ability to gift themwith magic. They built us temples. They threw themselves at us, everyone wanting a piece of us.”
“Sounds awful.”I rolled my die, landing on a two and placing another piece on the board.“If you don’t roll a two soon, you’re only going to have one piece to play with.”
“I’m aware,” he said drily. “It was awful. I didn’t like all the attention. It made me uncomfortable, everyone always staring at me, wanting something from me. The worst was when they wanted something I couldn’t give.”
I stared at him curiously.“Like what?”
He sighed heavily, finally rolling a two and getting another piece on the board. “Everyone looked to us to be the heroes. They expected us to be able to save them. One day, I came across a woman who’d been crushed under the wheel of her wagon. Her entire party waved me down as I flew through the air. They begged me to save her. Her children were crying, grabbing at my cloak. Her husband was crying over her, telling me he’d do anything if I’d save her. And I couldn’t. I didn’t have that kind of power. My power is connected to shadows. That’s it. Many didn’t understand that.”
His voice was full of so much heartache, so much regret.
“What kind of power do you have?”I shifted in my seat.“You can fly. You can disappear, then reappear in another place.”
“The gods can do a lot of things.” He snapped his fingers, and a shadow flew off, then returned within minutes with a piece of bread that it dropped in the middle of the board, scattering my coins.
“Now who’s cheating?”I signed and returned my coins to their place on the board.
