Page 97 of Xantera
One man eyes me up and down skeptically. “You look new. You didn’t bring anything to bet with.”
“Ah,” I laugh, fluttering my eyelashes toward Tristan. “I thought it was my clothes you wanted me to bet with… or myself rather.”
Tristan’s smirk unfolds slowly, along with the other three men’s.
“Saskia, this is Andreas, Geo, Victor, and Claudia,” Tristan says, introducing me with a gesture toward each of them.
The men’s names go in and out of my ears like vapor. Claudia, the woman across from me, studies me with a tilted head as I sit. She has thick, dark brown hair and full eyebrows that she raises at me skeptically.
Rolling my eyes playfully at her, I try to convey,There’s more than enough to go around, don’t you think?
And I’m not interested in them anyway. The one male Iaminterested in isn’t anywhere to be found.
Be good, echoes in my skull, but I push it out. There’s no reason to be good anymore. Arad can kill me. He can turn me into stone faster than ‘normal.’
Whatever.
“How long have all of you been Chosen Ones?” I ask conversationally.
Victor, I think, speaks first. “Three short years.”
I assess his body movements as he leans back on the sofa, crossing his ankle over his knee.
“Geo and I were Chosen with Tristan,” Andreas says.
I do the math in my head again based on what Tristan told me. “So, a year ago then.” Claudia just stares at me when I smile. “What about you?”
A beat passes where I think she won’t answer. “Last blood moon.”
A laugh almost bubbles out of me. The blood moon where I wished so hard to be Chosen.
“What’s so funny?” she asks, catching the dark humor in my expression.
Shaking my head, I press two fingers to my lips. “Nothing. Just thinking about how much things change in such a short amount of time. What did you all do back in the city before you became palace prisoners?”
Everyone’s narrow eyes cut to me, but Claudia’s are the first to soften.
“Repair Crew,” she says. “I was assigned to the screens and cameras for Complexes 500 to 600. What about you?”
“Healer,” I say before a pause. “I miss it already.”
“Not me,” Tristan drawls. “This beats farming any day.”
“I bet it does,” Geo laughs.
“Now,” I cut in, already eager for the next distraction, “who’s going to teach me how to play?”
Tristan’s face ticks up in delight, as a man’s often does when he has the pleasure of teaching a woman something. Just like backgammon all over again. Hopefully this game is a little more exciting.
He explains the object of the game and how to make combinations with the cards that I’ll hold and the cards he’ll eventually put down on the table.
I’m half-listening as my mind wanders to my future, wondering if this is what it’ll look like everyday… that is, until I’m confined to a bed.
“I’ll deal everyone two cards,” he says, slinging the red cards face down around the table until each of us has two. “The little blind…” Tristan points to Claudia on his left, who taps an index finger down on the table. “And the big blind…” Which must be Geo to my right because he throws down two fingers instead. “…they put up a bet before even seeing their cards. Now, all of us can look to see what we were dealt and decide if we want to call or raise.”
“Call or raise?” I repeat, bemused.
“Call, you bet two,” Andreas explains. “Raise and you’re upping the bet to three or more.”
