Live to Venture (#0)

07 | The Intricacies of Adventure

Novari had nowhere to be, just a ceiling to gaze up at and a conversation to repeat in her head. He'd called the lie like she'd anticipated he would, of course. He'd lost her games over and over, but that didn't mean she was any more likely to get him to crack. He'd done a lot of deals in his life and been interrogated by plenty of people.

"What's going on in that head of yours?"

She didn't look over at Sam, just kept her hands threaded over her stomach and her gaze on the ceiling. The musty air was cold on her bare shoulders, but she didn't want to move.

Sam brushed his thumb over the shape of her collarbone. He touched her with the same disbelief he'd worn ever since this started. "Novari?" he prompted.

"He's not going to tell," she replied. His fingers were slightly damp and even colder than the air.

"He's not?"

She shook her head. "I doubt it. Not without a special circumstance."

Sam scrunched up his nose. Special circumstance meant some form of persuasion. "Come on. You don't need to go that far. You're smarter than him."

"You've never even spoken to him."

"I've spoken to you, and there's no one smarter than you."

Novari traced the lines of the ceiling with her eyes. By a simple score, yes, she was the smarter conversationalist, but intelligence was both highly context and experience dependent. Even more so, her true talent was not this kind of thing; she excelled at long-term games, learning people until their character was imprinted in her head and easy to predict. She thrived in chaos, moving and changing an environment with a thousand variables. The newer the person, the less they conformed to a usual cutout, the fewer things around her to use—those were her challenges, and they happened to correspond perfectly to his current advantages.

"You're ignoring me again," Sam said, tapping her shoulder.

Novari felt a familiar strain coming over her. She should've pushed his hand away, should've sat up or reached for the blanket. She should've done something to prevent herself from getting overstimulated, but she was too proud to admit she couldn't control it with sheer willpower.

"My mother messed it up," she said. If he noticed her sudden discomfort, he didn't care.

"How so?"

Always explaining. The whole who's-fault-is-it-that-this-went-wrong thing was far too advanced for him. Does she tell him? Does she ask him to take his hand off her shoulder? Does she count all the ceiling tiles until she can't count anymore?

She felt her brow pull down a fraction. "He's a good-looking man," she said. "Maybe I should just skip the posturing. Enjoy it for the second it'll take."

Sam's lips pursed, and he took his hand away. "I thought you liked keeping your dignity."

She laughed, because technically, she shouldn't have any dignity left. Statistics-wise, half the people on this island should have something to say about her in an intimate environment—but for some reason, despite being no actual mystery, everyone still saw her as one.

"Can't you just cut him up?" Sam asked, taking her wrist and threading his fingers through hers.

She felt her whole forearm go tense, but she didn't take it away from him. Willpower, willpower. "Torture doesn't work on a man like that," she said.

"Torture works on everybody."

She didn't correct him, didn't tell him to get his hands off her. Torture wouldn't work on her, and it wouldn't work on Bardarian. Neither would tell something they didn't want to tell because of pain.