The thought of watching from a box seat while my dad fought his sister in a stadium full of people screaming for his death made me sick with rage. We’d come here to buy Nik’s life, but there was no way I was trading my father—my family—for anything. Even if Yong had been at full strength and capable of crushing his sister in one blow, I would have refused on principle.
The only reason I didn’t tell the Gameskeeper to shove his deal up his spellwork and walk away right then was because I didn’t understand why he was bothering to bargain in the first place. He had my dad and Nik by the throat, and he was a god. So long as I was on his turf, there was no way I could fight him, so why were we doing this? Why wasn’t he just taking my dad already?
Because you have him, the DFZ said. And I’ve got you.
I jumped. Her space in my head had been so quiet and empty, I’d thought she’d left. An assumption that drew great ire from my god.
I would never abandon you! I was only holding back because you were doing such a good job on your own. What’s the point of having priests if you can’t trust them to speak for themselves?
Thanks for the vote of confidence, I thought at her. But what do you mean ‘I have him’?
Instead of answering my question, the city spirit twitched my hand, and I looked down to see something glowing wrapped around my clenched fist. When I uncurled my fingers, I saw it was a silver thread. A brilliantly glowing line of magic was running between my father and myself.
It’s a bond! the DFZ said excitedly. Just like the one that connects a mage and a bound spirit! I don’t know how you managed to form one with a dragon, but nothing about you and your father has followed the normal rules since this started, so who am I to say?
I nodded, still staring in wonder at the glowing line. I’d never met a mage crazy enough to bind a spirit, but I’d read about it at school. I hadn’t realized the link was so thin. The thread in my hand looked as delicate as spider silk, but I could feel its strength down to my bones.
There’s nothing stronger, the DFZ confirmed. So long as that thread exists, the Gameskeeper can’t touch a scale on Yong’s snout without your permission unless he kills you first, and he can’t do that because I’m here. She moved inside my body as she spoke, lifting my other hand to show me how my skin was shining with a rainbow of neon colors as bright and varied as the lights of the Underground. You are my priestess. My domain. Just as I can’t enter his arena, he can’t touch you so long as you are mine.
I nodded, staring at the wild colors shimmering under my skin. It was pretty trippy, but my life had been off the deep end for a long time now, so I just rolled with it.
How do we escape?
My god made a worried sound. That’s a trickier issue. You dad belongs to you, and you belong to me, but this place belongs to the Gameskeeper. So long as we’re on his turf, I can’t do anything outside my domain, which currently ends at your epidermis.
I sighed. Just like last night, her powers were useless, which meant that—despite having a god nestled inside me like a Russian doll—I was essentially on my own. No doors, no throwing buildings, nothing. The Gameskeeper must have known my dilemma, because he was grinning like a cat with a cornered mouse, which sucked because I was so tired of being the small, helpless creature in these metaphors. But what could I do? The bloody magic was so thick it was choking me, but all the spellwork around us was keeping it locked up tight.
That was why I couldn’t grab the magic here. It was already in use, tangled up in a million lines of Thaumaturgical code. I still didn’t know what the spellwork did, but so long as it was there, the magic here was out of my reach.
I tried anyway, just to make sure, but the power snapped back out of my grasp just like every other time I’d attempted to cast in this cursed place. I couldn’t even make an old-fashioned run for it since the Gameskeeper had my dad tied up like a mummy. I was scrambling to think of something brilliant—hell, I’d take something stupid so long as it got us out of here—when my dad’s stiffened body suddenly went slack against the Gameskeeper’s magic.
I froze. Oh no. Oh crap crap crap. My dad must have been fighting his hold this whole time and exhausted himself. Now he was unconscious, which meant our chances of escaping had gone from terrible to nonexiste—
“Opal.”
I jumped a goddamn foot. You’d think I’d be used to disembodied voices by now, but there is simply no way to normalize ghosts whispering your name in your ear.
“Don’t turn around,” the smoky phantom of my dad ordered when I instinctively moved my head toward him. “He can’t see me.”
I didn’t understand how that was possible. My dad was invisible to humans and little idiot dragons, but the DFZ could see him just fine.
