Sunday, October 18, 2026
👻🎃Sunday's Sport Stats🎃👻: The Fake Divination Offense by Sara Raasch
Magic and Romance #2
From New York Times bestseller Sara Raasch, sports romance gets a Dungeons & Dragons makeover with the next book in the Magic and Romance series that follows half-giant Orok, forced into a PR relationship with a feisty, fan-favorite cheerleader.
Orok Monroe: Half-giant. Rawball defensive tank on the Philadelphia Hellhounds. Follower of Urzoth...only Orok’s tired of following the god of aggression.
Alexo Warden: Cheerleader. Human? A dancer with a stadium’s worth of secrets.
When Orok saves Alexo at a bar, fans go feral for the star athlete protecting the pint-size dude-in-distress. The Hellhounds propose that Orok and Alexo start a PR relationship to put a positive spin on Orok’s god. Orok is set to refuse and renounce Urzoth—but that wouldn’t let him see Alexo again.
So, like a sap, he agrees.
As Orok tries to drop the fake part of their fake-relationship, Alexo’s dangerous truths emerge. To save him, Orok will have to sacrifice far more than his divine association.
Chapter One
“Five.”
“One.”
I think for a minute. Or, more accurately, the buzzing under my skin thinks for a minute. The whipping epidermal hurricane of emotions I’ve been carrying around most of the day.
And it decides: “Five.”
To which Seb responds, “One.”
Thio, from his barstool on Seb’s other side, snorts into his wineglass. “I don’t think you two understand how negotiating works.”
Seb leans back against him. “Yeah, I do. First rule of negotiating: never back down.”
“Second rule of negotiating,” I add, “never apologize.”
And I scroll through the bar’s karaoke sign-up sheet on my phone to quickly claim five slots. Maybe six. Oops, seven?
But we’re celebrating tonight.
We’re free.
Seb’s slow smile is all the further argument I get. “Eh, go crazy, big guy.” His eyes dip past my shoulder and his grin sharpens. “I won’t be the one using my body as a human shield to stop you, anyway.”
He raises his cocktail glass for a sip, the new ring on his finger flashing in the low light. We’re celebrating more than one thing tonight, and I go to add an eighth slot—
When someone bats my hand away from my phone. “No.”
Ah. That’s who Seb was looking at.
Darian Callabrass—human, with thin black locs pulled into a topknot, and a very deliberate rock-star vibe from his leather pants, ripped white T-shirt set off against his dark skin, and the guitar strapped to his back—has been a bard on the Hellhounds for the past three years. While I’ve only been part of the team for two months, he’s good people.
Mostly.
“I swear, Monroe, if you bastardize another Queen song like you did at practice…”
I give Darian my most innocent, wide-eyed sulk. “Excuse you, I was singing along to my personal workout playlist, so fuck off. Your patron god loves me appreciating his music.”
“My patron god has made it my new mission on this plane to get you to stop inflicting emotional damage on the unknowing public by screeching his songs.”
I cut a smile I know won’t faze him. “Just one Queen song tonight?”
A sudden lurking presence at Darian’s shoulder has both of us glancing over. I’m rather used to these antics, getting teamed up with Marlow in practices, but Darian jumps in surprise.
“Fucking hell, you’re as bad as Phei,” he gasps. “I’m going to put a bell on you.”
Marlow, one of the Hellhounds’ rogues, slowly flips Darian off and holds out her other palm, where a cluster of clip-on earrings sits. The motion wafts the smell of saltwater that always permeates the air around her, an overpowering wave of, well, waves.
Darian snatches an earring, attaches it, and repeats, “You’re as bad as Phei. I’m going to put a bell on you.”
Only now, thanks to the enchanted earring, his words are subtitled below his face in slightly neon-blue script.
I take an earring, as do Seb and Thio, but they’ve turned to watch something on one of the TVs behind the bar.
Marlow’s tan skin reddens. “A bell? Do you have any idea how offensive that is?” she signs. It, too, is converted into subtitles, though hers are due to a ring she wears.
Darian blanches. “Oh gods. Is that some mermaid thing?”
“No.” Marlow beams, all sharp white teeth. “It’s a screwing-with-you thing. Put a bell on me. I dare you.”
Darian shoves her.
“Where is Phei?” I ask, cutting my gaze around. Though, from what I’ve learned of the Hellhounds’ dryad healer, they don’t exactly hold to things like schedules. Or time. Or humanoid forms. But they’ve surprisingly never missed a practice, so.
The bar’s filling, evening swelling the crowd, chatter rising with the temperature as sweat slicks my navy Henley to my back.
“No clue,” Marlow says. “They said they’d try to come, though.”
At which point, conversation flatlines, and it’s painfully obvious that only Darian, who was assigned to show me the ropes when I got traded, and as such got stuck being my friend, and Marlow, my training partner and the other newest team member, came out. Despite my invite to the whole team that drinks were on me at the Silver Hound.
“I’m sure they just had other plans.” Darian adjusts his guitar’s strap with a shrug. “There’re only a few weeks ’til the first game. Everyone’s busy before the season starts.”
Marlow’s crystalline eyes flash with her smile. “We’ll still party.”
That buzzing energy I’ve been riding high on threatens to morph into something other than cheerfulness, but nope. It doesn’t get to do that tonight.
I’m staying in this moment. Living in this victory. It was a hard-earned win, no matter what other people might think, and enjoying the release of this stress is a necessary part of the healing process.
So says my therapist at the more frequent appointments we’ve had the past few months in preparation for not only the lawsuit ending but me starting a new rawball season. Lots of beginnings, lots of healing, lots of good things.
I power back the rest of my beer and flag the bartender. “What are you guys drinking? Sky’s the limit.”
Seb whirls on me. “I’ll get their drinks. You need to go up for your first song, right?”
The stage is at the rear of the bar, but they haven’t kicked off karaoke yet and I’m not the first slot. That was already claimed in the app by someone who put their name down as Alexo the Magnificent. Sounds more like a kid’s magician than a karaoke name, but whatever, I don’t judge.
Lies.
I totally judge.
If you’re gonna go to all the trouble of coming up with a karaoke nom de plume, then my gods, commit.
Seb nudges me toward the stage, but I brace myself on the barstool. There’s a weird look on his face, like he’s trying to cover something. Or distract me from something?
He lists to the right and sits up taller—trying to block me from seeing over his shoulder. The TV screens.
Which is hilarious. He’s a little guy—significantly shorter than me, as pale as I am but all unruly blond hair, glasses, and sass against my half-giant height and bulk—and him trying to block anything from me is like a chihuahua hurling itself in front of Cerberus.
All I have to do is flick my eyes up and to the left, and the screens are in full view.
The closest one shows a news report about—I squint, then roll my eyes. Looks like another group of Galaxrien Vossen cultists tried to resurrect him. Summon him? They can’t seem to decide whether their demon lord is alive or dead in the hell-pit my patron god—Urzoth Shieldsworn—locked him in centuries ago.
This time, their ceremony involved a tuft of hair—ew—they swear was from Galaxrien’s mortal descendant. Whoever they are. Most of the people who worship Galaxrien through the official religion have demonic ancestry, by nature of Galaxrien being a demon, so they probably grabbed hair from one of their own worshippers and called it good.
Regardless, before the ceremony could be completed, members of Urzoth’s church charged in and the proceeding tussle set fire to a pizza parlor, since the resurrection ceremony had been set up in an abandoned Best Buy in a strip mall.
Because, as everyone knows, demon lords trapped in hell-pits will only deign to come to earth if they’re resurrected at an electronics store.
The fuck is wrong with these cultists.
I almost reach for my phone, certain it’ll be lit up with texts from my mother talking about this latest drama, complaining about the Galaxrien cultists and how idiotic it is to think they can undo Urzoth’s work, and so on and so forth. I could throw a little wrench into her rant by pointing out that the Urzoth worshippers used unnecessary force, but I know exactly what she’d say to that: Force is strength, Orok! When was the last time you challenged anyone to a fight? When was the last time you displayed your strength outside the rawball field?
My phone stays safely in my pocket.
I frown at Seb. However shit-stirring that news report will be with my mother, that can’t be what he didn’t want me to see.
He’s got this aggressively hopeful look on his face, wide smile and forced levity.
“Go on now.” He bats my chest. “Git.”
My eyes cast up again as I start to move off the barstool—and I catch the other screen.
That’s my face. My headshot is next to one of the ostentatiously ragey sports reporters who always tries to have the most boisterous opinions on every single move we make during games. The reporter is gesturing wildly, stabbing his finger to make a point, his face red as he shouts, but luckily the TV’s muted.
Are they talking about my trade? My stats? How I was one of the Vegas Chimeras’ best defensive tanks when they won the rawball championship last season? How the Philadelphia Hellhounds got a steal when they traded for me?
Doubtful. Not by the way the reporter looks one blood pressure spike away from a stroke, and then the symbol for Urzoth, a stone with an axe jammed into it, flashes over my headshot, followed by Orok Monroe: Traitor?
Call me a traitor to the magical community for bringing down Camp Merethyl, and it’s annoying, sure, but anyone who says that can fuck off.
Call me a traitor to Urzoth, and my stomach sinks, all that beer I chugged shaking up at the sudden lurch.
Because they’re right.
Or they will be, at least.
Yeah, I’m definitely not looking at my phone now.
I rip my eyes away from the TV. They land, instead, on Seb, whose forced levity vanishes at the look on my face.
No.
Tonight’s about freedom. About celebrating the end of a four-year-long lawsuit, but it stretches beyond that, all the way back to our childhood. To our days at the magical paramilitary training camp that became the source of all my nightmares.
Literally.
I haven’t slept in months.
I scramble for some of that good feeling again.
The lawsuit ended. The verdict’s in: they’re guilty. Camp Merethyl’s directors owe us restitution for torturing us under the guise of training. The world knows what they did and how wrong it was.
Yeah, the world knows.
Including people like the Chimeras’ managers and my other teammates. After my testimony came out, they knew that someone who belonged to a god made out of stone and handled conflict with his fists was patiently fielding a lawsuit, so how bad could my experience at Camp Merethyl really have been?
If I were a true Urzoth follower, I would’ve fought back when these supposed atrocities happened.
If I were a true Urzoth follower, I wouldn’t have gone through with a lawsuit; I would’ve challenged the head of the camp to a fight and let that victory lay out the guilty party.
The pro rawball community seems almost evenly split between knowing I was right to stand up against the abuse and knowing I’m a weak coward.
All that buzzing in my skin fatalistically shifts from excitement to anxiety, creep-crawling up my spine and wrapping around my throat.
Seb grabs my forearm. “Hey. We don’t have to be out tonight. We can go back to one of our—”
Saved by the squeal of a microphone.
It wails over the crowded bar and we all flinch—well, not Marlow, who watches us and laughs—before a voice reverberates in the proceeding silence:
“Let’s get this party started! It’s karaoke night, bitches, and you know what that means. No heckling. No booing. Everyone’s welcome. If you have siren lineage, warn us before your song so the audience can cast disenchantment wards. Now, first up, we have … Alexo the Magnificent! Let’s give it up for Alexo!”
The crowd applauds. But Seb keeps his grip on my arm.
“O,” he says over the din. “We can—”
“I’m gonna go closer to the stage,” I say. We’re still wearing Marlow’s clip-ons, which are a huge help in situations like this; I know Seb can understand me even with the noise.
I pause, analytical eyes sweeping over him, and my emotions take a one-eighty. “Unless you want to leave?”
One corner of Seb’s mouth lifts. He leans back again, where Thio, in conversation with Marlow and Darian, automatically threads an arm around his waist.
That’s one of the main reasons I was able to get some much-needed healthy distance from Seb over the past few years: I knew he had Thio. I knew my best friend was taken care of.
“I’m good,” Seb says with a helplessly content smile. “I’m engaged. We won. You’re back in Philly. Everything’s great.” His smile dims. “Right?”
Right.
Say it.
Right, Seb. Everything’s great.
Except I didn’t get traded due to my stats—which is the reason Seb thinks I’m on a brand-new three-year contract with the Hellhounds. I got traded because my old team turned on me for daring to bring down the camp that almost killed me.
And my new team seems to have the same opinion on the matter.
Yes. We won the lawsuit. That era of our lives can finally be put to rest.
It’s this new era that terrifies the shit out of me.
I lean forward to peck Seb on the cheek. “I’ll be back. Cheer for me.”
Seb still looks like he wants to keep asking if I’m okay, and I love him for it. But he relents and gives me a thumbs-up as Alexo the Magnificent’s song kicks on: Journey. A pretty standard karaoke pick.
I bop Darian on the shoulder to get his and Marlow’s attention. “Tab’s open under my name. Go crazy.” I sure as hell will.
Marlow cackles. “Famous last words. Drink like a fish is a cliché for a reason.”
I grin, relieved at the feel of it, the flash of camaraderie I’ve been starving for.
Unease wiggles its obnoxious little way into my thoughts, reminding me not to get too attached to all this. Healthy steps. Boundaries, compartmentalization. I need to keep everyone at a distance until I can figure out my place here.
Seb gives me a probing look, but I shove off the stool with a reassuring smile, a long breath escaping as I peel farther away from my group.
A large portion of the crowd has pressed around the small stage at the back of the room, but I lumber through and score a spot right up against the edge near the wall, so I’m not blocking anyone. Alexo the Magnificent croons the first lines of “Don’t Stop Believin’” and a cheer goes up, but I’m pathetically scanning faces in the Silver Hound’s dim light for anyone else from the team.
If they’re going to believe the fuckers saying that our claims about Camp Merethyl’s cruelty were lies, that I should’ve handled any perceived slight through stone-cold aggression, I don’t want them here.
I’d hoped this team would be different. That I could be back home in every sense of the word. No one on the Hellhounds has spoken to me about the trial yet, and everyone’s been welcoming and kind, if overly formal. I knew once the verdict landed that it’d all come to a head, and I’d hoped I could get in front of it, invite everyone out, play it off as something positive before they had a chance to believe the worst of me.
We’re a team. Spells, explosions, obstacles—all that and more get thrown at us every time we step onto a rawball field. Trust is what keeps us alive.
The Hellhounds don’t trust me, do they? It’s gonna be the Chimeras all over again.
I stretch my right arm instinctively, phantom pain radiating from the hairline fracture I got in my elbow during the championship game.
Weak. Weak to worry about all this. To be disappointed. All this, just—gods, weakness.
I shake my head, hard, as Alexo the Magnificent takes the midnight train going anywhere. His voice is smooth, flowing over me in a crooning wash.
My eyes drift to the stage—
And my jaw drops.
Holy.
Shit.
I take back all my previous smartass thoughts about his karaoke name. Magnificent is completely accurate.
He’s about Seb’s height and size, but thinner, slighter, wearing a scarlet satin shirt unbuttoned to his stomach so it billows away from his bare chest, with tight black pants tucked into clunky gold boots. His pale skin is covered in a dusting of rosy golden glitter, and with his overall demeanor, I can’t figure out if it’s makeup or he’s part pixie.
Alexo sways in the musical interlude between verses, eyes shut, more of that rose-gold paint shimmering across each eyelid, his messy tangle of strawberry-blond curls gleaming pink in the stage lighting.
Wow, my brain supplies. And then keeps repeating that word in a dumbstruck rollover when Alexo the Magnificent dives into the next verse.
His eyes fly open, deep onyx brown, highlighted in thick black liner and mascara, and as the music builds, rage sparks there. A small pool of it at first, then it grows and grows, spreading across his whole face until he’s snarling with the swell of the words and music, livin’ just to find emotion.
When he belts out that first long note, I don’t want to look away, but my head swings back, and I catch Darian’s eye. The whole damn bar is watching Alexo perform, most people slack-jawed, others bobbing to the song.
Darian meets my gaze over all the heads, and when I cock an eyebrow in an unspoken Are you seeing this?, he says something that gets picked up by his enchanted earring and subtitles under his face:
“This is why you leave karaoke to the professionals. You have to follow that.”
I roll my eyes and turn back to Alexo, because fuck Darian, that’s not what I meant. I’m not sure what I meant. I just—gods, this guy is throwing his whole body into the performance, dancing across the stage, and the crowd claps along. But Alexo seems unaware of them, each word of each verse coming from the very pit of his soul. I almost wonder if I missed him telling the audience he’s a siren and he’d be inadvertently casting an enchantment on us with this routine, but he doesn’t have the look of someone casting spells. This is for him. Just for him.
But I take a little of it for me, too.
There’s this god who fell out of favor centuries ago—Cendis, the god of small fires. Candlelight, sparks, embers, tiny touches of heat. He dropped away as people were more drawn to raging elemental fire gods, but I always found what he represented to be far more potent. He was the god of beginnings. Of having the ability to start a fire in the first place.
That’s what I see as Alexo bares his soul with this song. Someone trying with every wisp of their existence to begin.
To be free.
Where the crowd is fully enjoying the song, dancing and laughing, a partying Thursday night, I go more and more slack as the music carries on. The lyrics drop in the last interlude, and Alexo’s previous dance moves were a warm-up.
He pirouettes around the stage, back arching, legs kicking up to his face, arms pinwheeling in a mesmerizing braid of limbs and fluidity. All the while keeping the mic cord from tangling and playing around the karaoke machine with the lyric screen he’s not once looked at—and avoiding a few reaching hands from the audience.
I jolt forward at that, shoulders bunching. I’m close enough to the edge of the stage that all I have to do is move to get the attention of the front row. When I glare, they sink back a few good inches.
Just because it’s unsafe. I don’t want him to trip. Obviously.
Alexo doesn’t notice. He whirls back into the last swell of lyrics, clinging to the mic with both hands, and singing, singing his fucking heart out. Each long note becomes its own mini performance piece, his spine folding so far backward he’s defying gravity, and that part of my brain still going wow, wow, wow now adds he’s flexible along with pathetic little whimpers.
The song fades out as Alexo holds in the position of the final note, hands still death-gripping the microphone, eyes pinched shut.
The music barely ends when the crowd explodes, hooting and cheering and clapping.
Alexo’s eyes blink open like he’s coming out of a trance. He straightens up and his gaze casts over the crowd, a slow smile lifting one side of his mouth—
His eyes land on me.
Something flashes through his expression, a quick scroll of surprise—and fear.
If it isn’t people fearing me for my aggressive patron god, it’s people fearing me for my size. Both valid reasons, unfortunately, but I don’t want this guy to be afraid of me, a want that flurries desperately in my chest.
I’m right up against the stage, arms folded over my chest, and he’s got the higher ground on me from this angle. I let my arms drop to my sides and try a grin. Encouraging, awed.
Alexo lets his eyes dip down my body before they ping back up.
He smiles.
It’s wide and wondrous, digging dimples into his cheeks and illuminating his dark eyes.
Oh, for gods’ sakes. Give a bi guy a chance, would you? Fucking dimples.
Alexo eases the mic back onto the stand, faces the crowd, and sweeps into an elegant bow.
The bar manager comes out from backstage and leans into the mic. “Alexo the Magnificent, everybody!”
The crowd goes crazy again, and it kickstarts what’s left of my brain so I clap along.
“Up next,” the manager announces, “the Big O!”
See? I take my karaoke stage name seriously.
It catches the crowd’s attention, and their cheering turns to equal groans and laughter.
The shift lets Alexo slip off the stage, on the opposite side from me. He’s so damn small that I instantly lose sight of him, and I bound up onto the stage to spot him again, and—there he is. Talking with someone near the hall that leads to the bathrooms and back exit.
“Give it up for the Big O!” the manager tells the crowd. “The Hellhounds’ own newest defensive tank!”
Before I have time to connect that I’m on the stage and I don’t know whether the crowd might hate me, they cheer. A few chant, “O Monroe!” and “Hellhounds!”
A grin blooms across my face and some of the anxiety fighting to burst free settles.
Fans have always loved that I do shit like this, make a fool of myself in public displays of nonsensical joy. That hasn’t gone away. Well, with the Silver Hound’s crowd at least, but I’ll take whatever support I can get.
My song starts.
And I’m suddenly aware that Alexo gave a Grammy-level performance and here I am, planning to butcher Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste.”
With a self-deprecating shrug that makes the crowd laugh anew, I pull the mic stand closer, eyes flicking to the lyric screen—
But I find myself shifting back to stare at Alexo. And that guy he’s talking with.
My mouth opens for the first verse when the guy leans way too close.
I can only see the back of Alexo’s head, so I have no idea how he’s responding to the guy’s advances, if he’s interested, and that’s why I linger. Why the song plays on and I miss the first line.
The guy’s face devolves into fury, eyes narrow, lips peeled back as he talks down at Alexo.
The crowd’s gone silent, staring at me, a few errant chuckles as they assume I’m choking on stage.
But I watch Alexo shake his head at that guy—who then seizes Alexo’s arm.
Alexo tries to yank away.
Nope.
Heat swells up from my stomach, soothing calm focus over me as I leap off the stage. The crowd parts in a confused shuffle when I beeline through them to reach Alexo and the guy, still in an argument. And that guy’s still digging his fingers into Alexo’s arm.
Nope, I think again, and I should probably think more than that, but I’m all narrow-minded goal, the meditative intensity I fall into during a rawball game. Only instead of defend my teammates, that narrow-minded goal is get Alexo away from this guy.
Again, without thinking—really cannot overstress how little I’m thinking—I do what I’ve done to Seb a hundred times when I want to move him somewhere:
I wrap my arm around Alexo’s waist and pick him up.
He smells like fruit. Apples, maybe? Because of course he has to smell edible.
Alexo makes a disconcerted noise halfway between a chirp and a gasp.
The guy releases Alexo’s arm in shock, which lets me deposit Alexo behind me and to the side, so I can use my body as a shield between them.
By the time I’m facing the guy, one arm out to block Alexo, I realize that I made a bad move.
I know better than to just grab people, and shame damn near makes my knees buckle—why the fuck did I do that?
Before I can apologize to Alexo, the attacker guy whips his hands out in a wizard offensive stance, a green spell glowing in arcane ropes between his splayed fingers.
The crowd is watching. Dead silent.
While the instrumentals for “Taste” pulse from the stage.
I foresee an uncomfortable conversation with the team’s publicists in my future about what it means to professionally represent the team. On top of the already uncomfortable conversation I was going to have with the team manager tomorrow. Great.
I lift my hands in an attempt to placate the guy. “Just back up, all right? We don’t need to—”
“You back up,” the guy snarls. He’s upper-middle-aged, not dressed at all for a night out at a bar, in frumpy jeans, a wrinkled T-shirt, and an old beat-up jean jacket. His black hair’s greasy, his teeth are bared, and he looks every bit ready to release this attack spell on me.
I step back and bump into Alexo—and my eyebrows pop in surprise. I figured he’d bolt after I picked him up.
But he’s still here, and when I move into his space, he doesn’t retreat. Just stays there, his warmth bleeding into my lower back and side, and I instinctively lean closer to that heat.
“Alexo,” the guy snaps. “Get over here.”
Alexo doesn’t move.
The guy’s glower goes murderous when it drops from me to Alexo. “We’re leaving. Now.”
“Maybe we should ask Alexo if he wants to leave with you,” I say through my teeth.
Fuck bullies, I swear to the gods.
The guy spreads his hands, that green spell stretching, intensifying. “He’s leaving with me. Now. He’s mine to order around.”
Oh, he did not just call Alexo his. Not in that tone of voice. Disrespectful asshat.
A growl rumbles in the base of my throat, my upper lip flinching in an involuntary snarl.
The crowd shifts and a few people draw closer to me, and I know without having to look that it’s Seb and the rest. Does this bar have security people?
But maybe … maybe Alexo is this guy’s, in some way?
I risk letting the guy out of my sight to look down at Alexo and make sure I’m not reading this situation wrong. That’s the last thing I need, to keep someone from leaving with their friend, however much of a dick he is.
As I turn, all the ways I could be messing up right at this very moment come crashing through me.
Because cameras start going off. It’ll be all over socials in no time, how Orok Monroe, Urzoth Shieldsworn’s tank for the Hellhounds, used his strength and violence to trap a guy at a bar. I can hear the reporters now: That’s how he chooses to embody his god? He let these alleged brutalities happen at Camp Merethyl, but he channels Urzoth for a bar fight?
But that all goes translucent with the way Alexo’s gazing up at me.
This close, I can see brown freckles clustered in with the rose-gold glitter across his nose, his lashes made impossibly long by mascara.
He doesn’t look afraid or annoyed that I’m stopping him from leaving. He looks intrigued. Studying me, eyes bouncing over my face.
“Do you want to go with this guy?” I ask him, a little of that growl still in my voice.
His wonder freezes. “I’d have to go with you instead?”
What? I throw my hands up, but to him, it’s supplicant. “Of course not. Just—is this guy bothering you?”
Wow. Next I’ll ask if he comes here often or if it hurt when he fell from the heavens.
Alexo stares at me again, studying, studying, before his lips part in a small huff. And with a triumphant smile—there’re those dimples again, fuuuuuck me—he nods.
“Yeah,” he says, and he drops his gaze to the guy. “Yeah, he’s bothering me.”
The guy makes a garbled noise of protest. “You little piece of—”
But he’s cut off in an aggravated squawk, and when I look, Thio’s counterspelled whatever the green glowing arcane lines were.
“Do we need to call an adventure party?” Seb asks me, but he’s scowling at the guy. “They can take care of him.”
Instead of showing any kind of fear at being potentially arrested, the guy laughs. A boisterous, screeching laugh, and with one last glower at Alexo, he huffs off into the crowd.
I charge after him when a small hand wraps around my forearm. It’s just as debilitating for my sense of awareness as that meditative goal state.
Everything else drops away, crashes and topples to rubble, until there’s just Alexo putting himself in front of me, gazing up with that awestruck wonder marred by confusion, like he’s not used to people defending him. It makes my chest squeeze, that this is surprising for him.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
It’s so quiet in here, the crowd eating this up, and the music’s stopped now, too, but I watch his lips and feel those words dip off his tongue.
I really intend to say you’re welcome. Or something not quite so predatory, after all this shit.
But what comes is a runaway train of “Let me buy you a drink.”
It isn’t even a question.
I clear my throat and try again. “Can I buy you a drink?”
Alexo grins, and I am so, so fucked. He is some kind of siren, isn’t he? Or a pixie, tossing out charms on his every exhale.
But Seb and Thio aren’t affected, sharing a knowing smirk with me, then each other; and Marlow and Darian are behind them, looking concerned until Darian claps his hands loudly.
“All right, show’s over!” he shouts at the crowd. “Or—has it just begun?”
He dives on stage, whips his guitar around, and starts into the first chords of “Somebody to Love.” It earns a stifled applause, and the air of partying burbles back up as people peel away from gawking at me. At us.
Seb, Thio, and Marlow try to create something of a barrier between us and the crowd, a wall on our other side, but I still grimace, wondering how many of the pics people got had Alexo in them. I know what comes with my lot in life, but he sure as hell didn’t ask to get embroiled in a PR moment with a pro rawball athlete who’s a traitor to his god.
All that’s for later, though.
Because right now, Alexo’s brows scrunch with his smile. “You want to buy me a drink?”
“Just a drink. No expectations,” I clarify. “I’m Orok.” I hold out my hand.
He shakes it gently. His hand is doll-like against my thick fingers.
“Oh, I know who you are,” he says.
I fight back a wince, waiting for his reaction, but he’s a blank slate. So I guess, tentative, “You a rawball fan?”
“You could say that.” I get the feeling that’s all he’ll give me, and I worry he’s one of the people set against me until he grins.
He’s gonna play it coy, which is fine. Enticing, actually, and prickles race down the back of my neck, fizzle straight to the base of my gut when he bites his lower lip.
But that taunting smile dims. “I have to go, though.”
I keep my own smile up, hoping not to look too disheartened. Because it’s dumb that I feel upset—I don’t even know this guy. He’s just alluring and magical, and I can still smell him, fresh, bright apples. I want to know what he was thinking about when he was singing, what happened in his life that he wants to escape from.
Whether he’s had any luck with that.
Whether he can give me some tips.
I force myself to relax the muscles that’d tensed me forward.
“Can I walk you out?” Alertness sharpens my tone. “Or we really could call an adventure party, just in case.”
Alexo shakes his head. “No. I’ll be fine. I—I should leave.”
I don’t like the idea of him going out alone with that guy still gods know where. “Please let me walk you to your car. Or the bus stop.”
His smile. Gods, let it be what kills me.
“You’re surprising, Orok Monroe,” he tells me. And before I can figure out how to respond to that, he lifts up onto his toes, balances with a hand in the center of my chest, and motions for me to come the rest of the way down.
I comply, and he presses a kiss to my cheek.
His lips are cloud soft, barely making a brush of contact, but their warmth plunges through me in gentle whorls and I lean into it, chasing that sensation as he lowers back down.
“Thank you,” he says again, and I think he means that he’s accepted my offer, but he adds, “I can take care of myself. I promise.”
My mind is still fuzzy from his lips on my skin, from the pressure of his hand on my chest, so he gets a few feet toward the door before I turn after him.
Am I going to ask for his number? I don’t do that. No numbers. No commitments. Rarely last names, even—and this is exactly why.
Because I can already feel that overpowering possessiveness scratching away at my self-control. The need to follow him, make sure he not only gets home, but that wherever he lives is in a safe location, and then check with the local adventure parties to update them on that guy who threatened him. And before I can stop it, I’ll be consumed in him, pouring all my time and energy and need into him.
I’ve fixated on things ever since I was a kid; it’s why I was such a good little Urzoth follower. I obsessed over the rules that the church passed down and made every aspect of them my entire personality.
I did it with Seb, too. It took me years to break my dependency on him, and our relationship wasn’t even sexual; he became such a crucial part of my life that I ended up getting two full degrees I didn’t want or need to stay with him.
It’s usually easy to keep my walls up. I’m so obnoxiously aware of how detrimental it is for me to make attachments that I keep everything locked in tidy little compartments.
Marlow and Darian: work friends.
Seb: brother.
Thio: Seb’s.
Hookups: temporary.
So what is this? Did Alexo cast some kind of spell?
Seb is half listening to Darian perform, half watching me.
“Enchantment spells?” I ask.
Seb shakes his head. “Only the one you’re wearing.” He points under his own face, where the words are subtitled in an arcane glow. Marlow’s earring.
I turn, and Alexo’s reached the door.
He glances back. I don’t try to cover that I’m staring right at him.
He should leave. On his own. I don’t need to follow him, don’t need to pursue this desperation. I have way too many life shake-ups plaguing me right now. I can’t risk falling into dangerous habits when I’m vulnerable.
Let him leave.
Alexo pushes out into the night.
I dive forward, using every ounce of rawball training to deftly weave through the crowded bar until I reach the door, throw it open, and burst out onto the sidewalk.
The night’s warm in late summer. A few people walk by, making for one of the many bars or restaurants that pack this street. My head swivels left, right—
He’s standing at the bus stop a few yards down, arms wrapped around himself, chin tucked low. Given the fact that the guy who attacked him could be anywhere, he should be doing a better job of keeping watch. But there are other people at the stop with him, safety in numbers and such.
I step to the side of the door, leaning against the bar’s window, and dart my eyes up and down the street. No sign of that guy.
Alexo stays tucked into himself. He seems zoned out, unaware of anyone or anything around him. The way he was on stage, sucked into his performance.
I push at the inside of my teeth with my tongue.
That focus was sexy on stage. It’s worrying here.
No, I snap at myself. Not worrying. Because he’s not mine to worry about.
The bus rolls up to the stop.
Alexo doesn’t look back as he boards. Why would he? I stayed in the bar.
I should have stayed in the bar.
This is as far as it goes. He’s on the bus; he’ll get home safe. I have to trust he meant it when he said he can take care of himself. Maybe he’s a wizard, like Seb, and he was one spell vial away from fireballing that guy before I stepped in.
Back inside, Seb and Thio have claimed a standing table, while Marlow’s flirting with the bartender and Darian’s on his second song to an adoring crowd who have recognized him as a Hellhounds bard.
“Damn it.” Thio punches my shoulder. “I bet Sebastian a—thing that you wouldn’t come back.”
Seb grins at his fiancé. “Like my prize is something you’re so opposed to doing.”
When I don’t good-naturedly blanch at what’s clearly foreplay, Seb’s expression softens.
“You okay? Did he not want to give you his number?”
I shake my head, then amend, “No, it’s not that.” But my mouth hangs open.
I really, really don’t want to get into it. Any of it.
Not tonight. Not when we should be celebrating.
Why hasn’t this felt like a celebration?
“I’m gonna get some champagne. That’s what we need.” I tap a quick rhythm on the table and shove away to Seb’s disgruntled “O—”
It’ll take some time to settle out of the fight-or-flight reaction. That’s all. I need to come down from the trauma response. My therapy appointments will be more spaced out going into the season, which will help my schedule feel normalized. I’ll do my job, make sure the Hellhounds have no reason to regret accepting my trade, whether or not the team has it out for me. I’ll worry about the things I can control, and fuck all the rest.
Today marks a turning point in my life, and from now on, I’m moving forward.
No matter what.
Sara Raasch has known she was destined for bookish things since the age of five, when her friends had a lemonade stand and she tagged along to sell her hand-drawn picture books too. Not much has changed since then — her friends still cock concerned eyebrows when she attempts to draw things and her enthusiasm for the written word still drives her to extreme measures.
She is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of multiple books for teens, including the historical romantasy duology WITCH AND HUNTER, cowritten with Beth Revis; as well as romances for adults, such as THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE KISSMAS and GO LUCK YOURSELF.
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