Page 74 of Surfaces
I didn’t know if Valdez was an intentional target as well. I didn’t know if he knew secrets that Gorgono wanted to keep hidden or if the pirate was simply an unintended casualty.
Either way, this was a nightmare situation. Gorgono was pulling strings that altered my very future.
Oh…he’d get his…
But would I be able to fix this? I’d bound myself to this ancient tournament and its idiotic rules and I didn’t know if Gorgono’s treachery was reversible.
It had better be.
I glanced across the roof to see how others were taking in the news. The expressions of the two men involved were heart wrenching.
Felipe, who always followed rules, who served me without question, looked ready to retch. He was about to be verbally flogged for his ingenuity.
Valdez’s eyes, meanwhile, were livid. The pirate’s rage was so visceral I could practically reach out and touch it.
Shite.
Shite.
I looked between the two—torn. And I realized I was more attached to the pirate than I’d ever realized. Far more attached.
This choice was even harder than I’d thought.
I dropped Julian’s hand as the herald spoke and walked across the gold bricks, the symbols of each noble house stamped into the metal scraping against my bare feet.
Those bastard judges. That fucker Gorgono. His wife recoiled as I walked past. Marea knew what her husband had done.
Scorn threatened to escape my lips—I wanted to verbally lash all of them until their ears bled.
When I reached Sahar, she could read my mood.
I gestured at the parchment in her hand, where she was tallying the scores from both tournaments, ranking the competitors as the herald made the announcement.
I stood, staring over her shoulder as she added up Valdez’s and Felipe’s scores. There were twenty men, including the four assholes. Only fifteen would make it through to round three.
I scanned the list as her quill finished, sucking in a breath as I correlated numbers to names.
And when I saw both of their scores, I hissed through my teeth. Both of them were in the bottom five. Radford, due to his score on the joust, would still make it through.
Sarding shite. Couldn’t I just trade him out?
I pointed and gave Sahar a meaningful look. If she just scratched out Radford’s number…
Sahar looked pale as she whispered up to me, “Scores must be tallied on enchanted parchment. They can’t be changed.”
“If you try, what happens?”
“Your tongue shrivels.”
“Well, I don’t really like your voice anyway,” I said in a low voice. But my tone was strained from stress, from the fact that I was trying to joke about something that very nearly had me on the edge of angry tears—something I didn’t find funny at all.
I wanted to punch Gorgono. Or do worse. My magic rose up, the tune mixing with my rage in a quick, blood-pumping frenzy—tempting me. If I could just freeze the bit of water inside Gorgono’s gills, then no one else would know. He’d fall over dead, and none would be the wiser.
Or I could slice him a thousand times, tiny little cuts with knives made of ice, scenting the water for all the shark shifters nearby.
My mind took an even darker turn, that strange oily black rage that I associated with my madness creeping over me again.
Perhaps Watkins was mad as well.
