Page 21 of Songs of Vice

He walked over and accepted the paper.

A Fight for the Ages, read the headline in curling script. Beneath it an image of two men in boxing gloves circled each other as spectators raised their hands in a cheer. At the bottom, someone had printed today’s date in an uneven font. And below that:Competitors welcome to join.We had a group member who loved a good fight, but it wouldn’t be a fair one against humans which would draw exactly the attention we wished to avoid.

“Oh, for the sake of the Goddess,” Sai said. “Can we catch one fucking break?” He stormed out of the clearing and walked in the town’s direction.

Luz followed but Lira stared in the direction he’d gone, and her mouth gaped. “Well,” I said. “Are you coming?” Since Sai had stormed off, I suppose it was my responsibility to mind her now.

“Are we supposed to?” Her voice was almost mewling, and despite the fitted outfit, she looked uncertain rather than fierce.

“We should stick together.” I grabbed Elisa’s hand, and the three of us walked through the forest until we made it to the cobblestone roads of the town. A few people walked by, their heads down. But the streets were quiet as lamplight gleamed over the hunching thatch-topped buildings. Our footsteps clipped against the stone as we continued down the street.

I hated human towns. Cities were worse. Those massive, sprawling areas where buildings overlapped so far they swallowed the horizon and people, lost in the bustle of the relentless pace, died without so much as another soul to shed a tear. We were only in a modest sized village, the tree limbs bare even though it wasn’t that cold. But the country bordered the Seelie kingdom and their eternal winter.

It was funny how humans saw fae as so ruthless when some of the greatest callousness I’d seen in life had all happened in the human realm. Not that the fae realm lacked for its own cruelties and disparities. A roar of clapping broke over the quiet from a building in the center of the square. Light pooled out the windows and oozed along the doorjamb, like gold seeped into the world, as if this building held the only thing worth treasuring in this saints forsaken town.

Elisa chuckled. “Orman has really crossed a line this time if what you suspect is true.”

Another howl of cheers picked up. “And what will Sai do about it?” I didn’t wait for her answer. “Nothing.”

“He’s loyal to us.”

Lira’s eyes had widened until they dominated her face, and the light warmed her pale skin, giving her an ethereal appearance. I internally kicked myself for ever thinking she was merely a human. The longer I looked at her, the more fae she appeared. I turned back to Elisa. “He’s loyal, but he doesn’t keep the group in line enough. If he trusted us more, revealed his plans before the last damn minute, we’d all have a better grasp on things.”

“And you think that would have stopped Orman?”

I scoffed as I pulled the door open. “No. Nothing stops him. That’s part of the problem.”

Elisa chuckled and Lira crossed her arms as we stepped in. The crowd lined the perimeter of the building. It was a squat, stone space with chairs around the edges that were pushed against the wall and a center square that probably acted as the courthouse, auction, market, and—tonight—fighting ring.

Two contestants circled each other, fists raised. The human had steely eyes and a cut through his brow that bled and mixed in with sweat, dripping down his face so that he had to blink it away. The other fighter was Orman. His dark skin had a sheen, but he grinned cockily as the man plowed towards him.

Orman jumped to the side then twisted to land a punch. If the human knew he fought an elf, he’d probably give it up.

The crowd yelled, and Lira shuddered as we weaved through the people who wore rough homespun clothing and smelled like the sweat of a day’s work blended in with an hour of gathering in close, warm quarters. That is to say, fucking awful.

Sai stood tall and striking in his dark outfit, his arms crossed. Luz perched on a railing next to him, their foot undulating back and forth like the tail of a cat as they watched the fight. The crowd had cleared several feet around them, as though they subconsciously knew to keep their distance. I could only imagine this was how vampire tales came into existence. The stories were laughable. What fae would drink the blood of humans with the way they smelled? Bile rose in the back of my throat, and I coughed it back.

Sai watched the match but also skimmed over the crowd in equal measure.

Orman pulled his fist back and smashed it into the face of his opponent. Everyone seemed to hold their breath, a pulse of silence passed that ached nearly as painfully as the noise had before. The man weaved around the mat, stumbled, and dropped to the ground with a thunk. The ringmaster grabbed Orman’s arm and yanked it into the air as the crowd screamed and jeered and jostled.

“He won,” Sai hissed.

“Who is this upstart?” a woman in a puckered blue dress beside us said.

“They’ve tricked us,” the man with her responded. “Made us believe we could place honest bets on our champion and the company brought in a player to steal from us all.”

The voices in the crowd turned razor sharp and angry. Growls of dissatisfaction rumbled through the space like a bear waking, hungry and irritable, into the biting winds of early spring. Sai’s jaw worked, and Luz remained sitting on the railing, but their hand lingered by their hip where they had a blade tucked.

People pressed forward, moving past the boundaries for the spectators, crowding the stage.

Shit.

CHAPTERTEN

LIRA

Sai cocked his head,gesturing towards the ring, and Neia, Elisa, and Luz all hopped up and pushed through the crowd. Sai had to be the official leader of the group. Despite how the others spoke to him with impartiality, in this moment of tension, one signal from him and the group moved.

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