Otter looked between the two most beautiful women in her life, the two women she cared the most about, and found she wanted to be anywhere else but with them in that moment. Sami, a charismatic leader who had trouble giving up control. Rua, a tightly wound ball of repressed everything who now wanted someone else to express themself just because she demanded it.

  It was just so unfair. Why couldn’t they just let things be? Things were good, and would probably keep being good so long as they just kept coasting. Why push it?

  Rua made no move, no gesture, but suddenly the three of them were enveloped by a bck dome, blocking out their view of the outside, but more importantly, keeping everyone else from taking notice of them.

  “Well?” Sami asked.

  “Well what?” Otter fired back, maybe a little harsher than she’d intended.

  Rua took Otter’s hand in hers. “This doesn’t work if you don’t talk.”

  “Which she normally can’t stop doing,” Sami muttered.

  “I know, but we need her to do that now, and we need to be supportive.”

  Otter’s heart beat frantically. Everything in her told her to run, to hide, to be anywhere else.

  Rua’s grip gave her a reassuring squeeze. It didn’t help. If anything, it made things worse.

  “I don’t want to talk,” Otter said.

  Sami looked as if she were about to say something nasty, but paused, composed herself, and said levelly, “You owe me.”

  “For what? Ghosting you? Look, I’m sorry about that, I fucked up there, I admit it. But it was all I had at the time, my only card to py. I wish I’d had better options.”

  “You know, Il-Su bmed me for you leaving. It was the entire reason he left, and burned the bridge behind him.”

  That was new. She hadn’t known that part. She and Il-Su had always been friendly, maybe even family, but at the end of the day, they were only connected by their hinge, Sami.

  “Il-Su’s a big boy. I can take the bme for my poor decisions all day, but not his.”

  “True. He was always going to leave us, I think. He’d been… talking to others. I think he forgot he’d logged into his socials on my computer once. I normally wouldn’t do it, but when he left, I was angry. He’d slid into the DMs of a few women. And a rival E-sports org. There was nothing too bad, except…”

  “He was leaving his options open.”

  “You know Il-Su. Always have an exit strategy. But we’re not talking about him, are we?”

  “Are you sure? You can compin about him more, if you want.”

  “I’d rather talk about you. No. I’d rather talk to you. Don’t you remember what that was like? We used to be best friends.”

  “And then I seduced the pants off you.” Otter pretended a smirk, but she just didn’t have the heart for it.

  “Hardly. I seduced you.”

  “Keep telling yourself that, Mr. Repressed Honour Student. You barely even knew how to touch yourself before I got to you.”

  Sami made a frustrated noise, but visibly tamped down her annoyance. “Just talk to me, Mayumi. Please. Can’t we at least pretend to still be friends?”

  “We are still friends. I just… I’m not ready to talk about it.”

  “Two years, Mayumi. I’ve waited long enough. Yell, if you have to. Tell me what a shitty leader I was, how I couldn’t separate trying to maintain unit discipline from our retionship. Call me every dirty name you can think of. Tell me what horrible thing I did that drove the goddamned love of my life to just abandon me without a word!”

  Sami’s normally unfppable exterior was now thoroughly fpped. Her voice had actually risen, her face was red with anger of frustration or grief, and tears were beginning to form in her eyes.

  Sami never cried. Not even when her mother had died. She’d just borne it with the regur impcability that you’d always expect from her, be it in a social setting or conducting a raid with impossible odds against the Inevitable.

  Sami was good at pulling through. But only when she could hold onto her anger. It was part of the reason Otter had just left without saying anything. Because a confrontation would just left them both wounded, but Sami would be able to carry on and heal from Mayumi’s absence.

  “I… I can’t tell you.”

  “Lie.” A flick left Otter’s nose stinging.

  Otter rubbed at it, giving Rua an angry look, and pulled her hand from hers. “All that time, I respected your boundaries. Never pressed you on anything, and waited on you to open up. And you can’t afford me the same.”

  “The situations are different,” Rua said. “I needed time, and to learn trust. And even then, it took you binding us together to give me a push. And even then, I still opened to you after a matter of days. It’s been years. You owe Sami something.”

  “All I can give her is pain. She can’t take what I can give, for probably the first time ever.”

  Rua cocked her head. “She’s telling the truth. Or, at least she thinks she is.”

  Sami looked as if she’d been spped. She went from sad and a little weepy to furious in a blink. “Of all the condescending, asinine, immature things–”

  She was cut off by the sound of loud chewing, followed by an obnoxious slurping noise. The three turned as one to see Holt seated on a bench, a tub of popcorn in one hand, a rge drink with a straw in the other.

  “Oh, don’t mind me,” he said. “You may continue. You have my permission.”

  “Speaking of asinine,” Sami muttered.

  Otter flickered from annoyed to hopeful. This was exactly what she needed. A distraction. And a common enemy. How strange to find rescue from Holt, of all people.

  “This is private,” Rua snarled.

  “You’re in my arena, holding up my event,” he said. “And since you’re wasting my time, I figured I’d at least get some entertainment out of it.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Sami said. “That should be entertainment enough. You can even use this.”

  She drew her sword from its scabbard a few inches, just enough to bare steel, and Holt rolled his eyes.

  “Calm down. I’m just here as an observer. You can keep up your big dramatic event. As a matter of fact, I encourage it. There’s no TV in Fell Champions. Just pretend I’m not here. I can be very unobtrusive.”

  As if to demonstrate, he shovelled a fistful of popcorn into his maw, and followed it with a noisy slurp from his drink.

  “She’s never going to open up with you here,” Rua said.

  “She was never going to open up regardless,” he countered. “If anything, my presence here encourages her to talk.”

  “Why would…” Sami said, and then stopped. Her fingers beat out a quick, furious pattern along the pommel of her sword. Otter could practically see the gears turning, and then locking in onto a particur thought. She whirled on Otter, genuine fury in her eyes. “He knows? Two years spent constantly questioning myself, wondering what I did wrong to drive you away from me, coming up with theories and ideas, but never answers, always cursed with the godamn mystery, and Ingram fucking Holt knows?”

  Otter held up her hands defensively, and shot a pleading look at Holt.

  “To be fair,” Holt said, “it’s not like she told me. I just happened to be investigating an interesting story I’d heard. Something completely unreted to you or her, or so I’d thought at the time. And I have a rge amount of money and resources at my disposal. Once I had the thread, it wasn’t long until I untangled the whole mess.”

  “Yes, you’re very impressive,” Otter said.

  “I don’t get it,” Sami said. “What could he have been investigating, that led him to our break up of all things?”

  “What indeed,” Holt said with a smirk.

  “You said you’d keep it quiet,” Otter snapped. “It was part of our deal.”

  Immediately, Otter spped a hand over her mouth, as if to force the words back. But it was too te.

  “Deal?” Sami asked weakly.

  “It’s nothing,” Otter stammered. “Or… nothing to do with this stupid death game. I didn’t know anything about that.”

  Sami looked to Rua, who nodded. “True. Well, the second part is. She knew nothing about Holt’s death game, nor was any part of it. But her deal with Holt being ‘nothing’ is a lie.”

  “It’s not important,” Otter protested.

  “Lie.”

  No flick this time. No admonishment. Rua’s tone had an edge to it. She was no longer in a pyful mood. Supportive seemed out the window, too.

  It was all falling apart. Everything she’d built, past and present. Otter had long since fucked things up with Sami – they both had – and she’d been forced to resign herself to the fact that it was okay. They were done, and there was nothing that could be done about it. But the possibility of losing Rua as well was too much.

  She wanted to expin herself. To just blurt out everything. But she didn’t know how. How could you tell a secret you’d wrapped a fist around for two years, editing everyone out of your life in fear of it getting out? A secret you’d long since decided you’d take to your grave, where you’d literally die before it came out?

  “If you don’t tell them,” Holt said in a sing-song voice, “I will.”

  “Why?” Otter asked, her voice coming out as a rasp.

  “Maybe because it’d be entertaining. Maybe because I love the drama. Maybe because I hate the drama. Maybe because I want you both to heal and hope you crazy kids get back together. Or maybe it’s because I am a spiteful man, and you are wasting my time.”

  “Just…” She felt so heavy. Heavy, and tired. “Haven’t you inflicted enough pain?”

  “I haven’t even begun to inflict pain,” Holt growled. “When I am done with you all, there will be no one left untouched. Everyone still living will bare scars. But I do what must be done. And now, so must you. So either you tell them, right here and now, or I will. And I won’t be nice with the truth.”

  “Don’t,” Otter said. She wasn’t sure if it was a command, or a plea.

  “Ten.”

  Everything in Otter rocked at hearing that number.

  “Nine.”

  She wasn’t ready.

  “Eight.”

  She didn’t have the words.

  “Seven.”

  An angry, desperate cry issued from her throat.

  “Six.”

  She triggered her Thread of the Scourge.

  “Five.”

  The golden wire fshed into existence.

  “Four.”

  She shed at Holt’s throat. He wouldn’t be able to talk without breath. She’d kill him, she’d rip him apart and kill him, anything to keep him from talking.

  Sami’s sword leapt from its sheath and cut the wire from the air, splitting it in two. The separate half dissipated, fshing out of existence in a wink of light.

  “Three,” Holt said, eating another mouthful of popcorn.

  Otter gave Sami an anguished look. She tried to find a way to say it.

  “Two.”

  Her mouth hung open awkwardly, and nothing came out. In silence, she knew shame.

  “One.”

  “I’m sorry,” Otter whispered.

  “Well?” Sami asked. “What’s the big secret? What sin could I have possibly committed to send Mayumi running?”

  “Why, the greatest sin of all,” Holt said with a smirk. “You murdered her.”

  DorenWinslowe