When I next open my eyes, the face of the Illween fills my vision. The hole in the Illween's face is an inch away from my nose.

“You're awake,” she says.

A scream escapes me before I can stop it. The Illween doesn't react. She stays right where she is even though I'm pushing back across the bed, rolling, doing everything in my power to get away.

I roll off the other side of the bed and fall on my ass. I'm splayed across the tile floor, the cold of the tile freezing my back and my legs.

I frown, looking down at my exposed breasts and the rest of my naked body.

This entire time, the Illween hasn't moved.

“Nameless,” I say, “did you undress me?”

“Of course,” she says.

“Of course,” Silvy repeats from the other side of the room.

I look in her direction. “And you let her?”

Silvy shrugs. “I told her to wash the parka. It was beginning to smell. Like you.”

So I guess Silvy's still upset.

After rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I look around the room. There's no light source. I could've been asleep for ten minutes or ten days.

“How long was I asleep?” I ask Silvy. She doesn't respond so I turn the question to the Illween. “How long was I asleep?”

“In your time?” the Illween asks. “At least eighteen hours.”

My stomach gurgles as if to remind me of this fact.

“I thought the tournament was starting? When does it actually start?”

“It starts at noon.”

Something obviously isn't connecting for me.

“On which day?”

“That depends,” the Illween says. “In here, time is fluid. You could stay in here for an entire year and outside nothing will move. You'll still be on time for the tournament.”

So we're in the Shadow Vaile, or at least in a bubble within the Shadow Vaile.

I don't know how the Illween are coordinating it across all the other rooms, but I have a feeling that's probably above my understanding.

“Can I eat before I go?” I ask.

“Of course,” the Illween says. “Would you like the same food you ate before you slept?”

“I guess.”

The Illween leaves and returns with a tray full of food. I eat as I focus on what's to come.

Death scheme.

I've played death scheme before to make rent on Blackhart's gateway, but I've never been in a tournament like this.

My competition is the problem. Wizards live for hundreds of years, and if the wizards are controlling their thralls, they may have more experience, more expertise at scheme.

May? I laugh to myself. They definitely have more experience and expertise.

Maybe it would been better to let Dom continue to use me in the tournament.

Something about that immediately makes me squirm. I can't let some other person use me whenever they feel like it. Not on my watch.

I finish eating and make up my mind.

I'm going to win the tournament for Pixie. I'm going to free her. I have to. Her mother's depending on me, assuming her mother is still alive.

When I've showered and finished getting ready for the day ahead, the Illween approaches.

“Are you prepared?” she asks.

I nod. “What happens next?”

“I go and retrieve your wizard.”

I smile.

He doesn't know that I'm in control now.

“Go ahead,” I say in a soft voice.

When the door clicks shut, Silvy speaks. “What are you going to do if he realizes that you've severed the connection?”

I've already considered this and decided to play it by ear. I've made too many plans over the past few days that have come crashing down on my head.

Better to move forward in a more fluid manner, dealing with things as they come and reacting instead of coming up with eighteen different possibilities of how I should deal with something.

“Well?” Silvy asks.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I’m playing it by ear.”

Silvy chuckles, disappearing from the far side of the room and reappearing on my shoulder. Her forked tail swishes along the back of my parka. I pull up the hood, nestling my head in the back, trying to get warm.

Shadow Vaile bubbles don't warm me in the same way that the actual Shadow Vaile does.

When the door opens, Dom stands there, appraising me with a raised eyebrow.

I step forward, trying to mimic the mechanical walking I'd endured when he was in control.

I make it two steps out the door when he puts his hand on my shoulder. I spin around and punch out as hard as I can, hitting him right in the stomach, feeling my fist travel deep.

His breath shoots out and he bends over, wheezing in.

I bring my knee, right into his nose, before he can recover.

As his hands move to his face, I rip my hood back, leaning in hard with my horns. I press the sharpened tip of one horn right underneath his left eyeball, whispering softly, “If you ever strap one of those bloodstone collars around my neck again I’ll fucking gut you.”

Dom wheezes something in response and I reach my hand down, grabbing between his legs. When I find what I’m looking for, I squeeze. Hard.

He yelps and gasps, “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was desperate.”

I press harder with my horns and squeeze my fist tighter.

I close my eyes to the sounds of his whimpers.

Letting go, I step back. There’s a long cut beneath his left eye that's dripping blood down his cheek.

“Never again,” I say.

He swallows and nods. His nose leaks blood onto his lips.

“Clean yourself up. You look like a mess. Fucking wizards.” I turn away from him and the Illween looks at me with interest. “What?” I ask.

She shrugs.

I follow her down the hallway to a door, glancing back over my shoulder once to see if Dom's coming. He's limping along, dabbing at his nose and the cut under his eye. He doesn't look mad though, he just looks… what? Spent? Exhausted?

I imagine he's had a tough couple of weeks. The person he'd been training to play scheme in this tournament had died, had been murdered actually, and his girlfriend was kidnapped.

I won't feel sorry for you. I don't have time. I have a tournament to win. The blood wizard is also somewhere. Not necessarily out in the tournament, but somewhere close. I can feel it in my bones.

The Illween opens the door and I follow her out, into what I had originally expected to be the room where the announcement of the scheme tournament had been made.

That's not where I am though.

There are tables scattered about and when I glance up, I see a glass ceiling. I see feet standing on that glass ceiling.

I'm in the room where I saw those people sitting at that long table with candles. The testers for the Lumaverse Chase.

All the wizards are above, drinking, mingling, and generally enjoying themselves.

Around me, people sit in chairs, staring blankly at the table before them. The majority of the people I see wear bloodstone collars.

I look to the Illween and she gestures to a table. I take a seat and wait. For the moment, my table's empty.

A loud gong rings out in the chamber and all the wizards above us move away to the edges of the glass ceiling.

I see why in the next few seconds as glass walls slide down from the ceiling, completely surrounding the grouping of tables.

The glass forms an enclosed coliseum that keeps the wizards separated from the thralls at the center. The wizards spread out behind the glass, preparing to enjoy watching thralls die in the name of their tournament.

I take in a deep breath and let it out.

Silvy, nestled around my neck, whispers, “Good luck.”

“Thank you,” I say.

“You're going to need it, darling.”

“I know.”

The table in front of me is just like the table from the abandoned house. I wait in my seat as the door to my right opens and more thralls enter the room.

I look around for Silvy, but can’t find her. I whisper, “Silvy, is there any way you can look at the other players cards and tell me what they are?”

Silvy doesn’t answer.

“Silvy?”

Still no answer. Chewing on my lip, I consider the fact that maybe this entire playing floor has been warded against any outside influence. Outside influence like a familiar.

Thralls move mechanically towards their assigned table and soon my table is filled with other people. There are only four people, but that's enough.

The game starts immediately, without fanfare.

The cards are dealt and I stare at my hand.

Scheme is both a simple and complex game. You play by trying to match numbers and colors, outpacing your opponents and collecting as many cards as you can by the end of the game. The person with the most cards wins.

The tricky thing about scheme is that every single card has a small ability written below the number. When you play a card that matches the number of a previously played card, you activate that ability.

And those abilities?

Those abilities allow you to do things like skip another player, to take all of their cards, to make them fold their entire hand.

Below the ability text, on each of the cards, is also a destructive magick spell. These spells start from tiny things like making it feel like you have a pin inserted into your wrist, all the way to blindness. If you are hit with too many of the high-powered destructive spells, you die.

The scheme table is what controls the magick and sends the spells, so even a stick can play scheme. It levels the field between casters, wizards, and sticks.

I look up to see Maldive at one of the tables on the far side of the room. He still doesn't seem to recognize me.

Good.

Play at my table starts fast and furious. The players are all making wild plays, gambling with their horde in a way that I'm not accustomed to.

I realize what the issue is. They're being controlled by people who have nothing to lose. No one is playing defensively because when the game ends, the wizards controlling the thralls won't be the ones who die.

I easily win the game, destroying one player after another. Allowing the wizards controlling them to make splashy plays that go nowhere.

I hate everything about this. Around me I watch as people are killed by other players. I try not to focus on the fact that I've just killed three people.

As the chairs at my table are removed, I wait. I watch Maldive win his table. I watch a tall, lanky man in a dark robe win his respective table and then I watch another woman with bright red hair and angry eyes win her table.

The gong rings out above us again and the announcer speaks.

“The final four have made it. Please approach the center table.”

I stand as the table before me sinks into the floor.

At the center of the chamber, a larger table presses itself up out of the floor in front of us. We sit down and that's when Maldive sees me. He blinks, his eyes turn tomato red, and he blinks again.

A message. A warning.

“So,” I say, “what's it like being owned?”

Maldive curls his lip at me. “Owned? What do you mean?”

“The blood wizard,” I say. “What's it like being controlled by him?”

Maldive stares at me as though he doesn't understand what I'm talking about. That's when I understand. He doesn't know. He doesn't know who he’s working for. He doesn't get that the blood wizard is using him, controlling him.

I start laughing.

“What are you laughing at?” he snaps. He stands up from the table, picks up his chair, but before he can do anything with it, the Illween rush forward, out of the shadows, grabbing his arms and legs, pushing him down to the ground and holding him there. One of the Illween steps up onto his chest and looks down at him.

“This is your only warning,” the Illween says. “If you attempt bodily harm to any of the other contestants, you will be ended.”

Maldive doesn't say anything and the Illween steps off.

Maldive straightens his chair and takes a seat. He looks across at me and grins. “So you play scheme?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I've been known to.”

The other two thralls glance at Maldive and then at me. The woman with the angry eyes smiles. “You know that he wins tournaments, right?”

The smile on my own face falters. “What do you mean?”

“He's won every underground tournament held over the past twenty years.”

Maldive smiles at me. “It's true.”