Promises of a Deadly Bind {Sequel to Games of a Different Kind}

Chapter 5

Danielle's POV

The Basilisk's poison, though it had been run out of my body with the healing power of the serum, still left me slightly weakened. My limbs felt sluggish and slow to my command and walking chased away the little colour that I had left in my cheeks, leaving me with a ghostly pallor that Tyros cheerfully told me reminded him of a corpse.

Despite my former argument against resting; I was all for it. Tyros rigged up lodgings for us in a mostly abandoned high-rise hotel. Its luxury was a pale echo of Delicacies, of bone chandeliers and black granite floors. The apartments were large and spacious- I imagined this was the demonic version of the Four Seasons. There were three rooms: the master bedroom, a smaller bedroom and an extra room that reminded me of set scenes from a horror movie I had once watched.

Instead of electricity, this hotel had a gothic theme with thin tapers- the flames dancing and melting the silver wax. The shadows of the small fires against the wall, left leaping black characters which raced and jumped.

"What is... this?" I heard Liam ask Tyros. The two were surveying the other room, which I had already dubbed as the R&R directed for the sick-and-twisted clientele. Liam stood gingerly in the doorway, his hands clenched on the richly patterned silver of the wall. Tyros laughed from inside the room, his expression slightly gleeful.

"Exactly what Danielle thinks," he replied, the casual mention of my name making me jerk upwards from my lying position on the bed. "The sick-and-twisted version of Rest & Relaxation."

"Can we back away from the torture room?" I suggested bluntly, pissed off that Tyros was edging his unwelcome way through my thoughts yet again. I didn't like the lack of privacy, and with my near-death encounter, my tolerance was at an all time low. "Unlike you, I don't enjoy causing other people pain."

"Oh Danielle, don't be... ah, what would you mortals say? A party popper."

Liam snorted at the casual mis-use of the words which did not sound at home in Tyros's formal home language. I rolled my eyes at them and flopped onto my other side, the move actually stealing breath from me. Great. Right now, I was as unfit as a retired Santa.

"So, if you didn't guess by now, I'm calling shotgun on this bedroom," I called out to them, my voice muffled by one of the feathery pillows. Despite my distaste for anything demonic, I had to give it to Tyros- he did know how to select a good hotel. I had been a little sick of beds that might as well have been sacrificial slabs.

Not to mention, they had been used as such, considering the way Liam and I had been treated at the Branded establishment.

"I believe I earned the right to use the other bed," Tyros immediately jumped in, his voice slinking over the words. "After all, I paid for this."

"You didn't pay for this!" Liam argued, his bitter voice causing me to clutch a pillow over my head. The words still penetrated through the pillow much to my distaste. "You just threatened the concierge and told him you would draw and quarter him if he so much as didn't give you the penthouse suite."

"Same thing," the demon brushed it off dismissively.

"I'm a mortal who needs more rest," Liam said. I heard a sound, of what I imagined to be a footstep. It could have been the start of a punch-up though.

"I broke every bone in my body today just to save your girlfriend," Tyros lazily replied. I resisted the urge to pipe up and inform him I wasn't Liam's girlfriend. The thought that I would sound like a middle-school special infiltrated my mind clamped my mouth shut.

"You don't care about what I feel; you just want to shove it in your brother's face that you're rebelling and have her kill him."

"Admittedly... true."