Deviant Descendants (Descendants Academy #2) - Belle Malory Page 0,15

smacks and kicks and bites, were more akin to showing affection.

As the night wore on, and after all the beginners were knocked out, I played more aggressively. For several hands, it was only Darius and me. Then, with a lucky pair of Aces, I took the pot. The room went wild, cheering me on, like they would at the end of a sparring match. Xander howled along with them, his eyes full of pride. But I knew it wasn’t just because of the game. He was happy to see me finding my stride and making friends inside his own house.

Darius sighed, shaking his head. “Well done, little hustler.”

“I did mention I’ve been playing a while,” I said with a smirk.

He laughed. “I enjoyed every second of this defeat.”

I reached for my stack of lixers and wots, looking around. “Any more takers?”

“I’ll sit in.”

I froze at the sound of that voice.

Slowly lifting my gaze, I watched as the room parted in front of me. Riley stood at the doorway, twirling a coin purse attached to a rope on her red toga. “That is, if you feel like losing.”

Icy knots coiled in my stomach. It had been such a good night—an amazing night—and now she was here to ruin it.

Xander, who had been standing several feet away with Cassius, was suddenly at my side, his hand gripping the back of my chair. I glanced up, catching the distrust in his gaze, almost as thick as my own. “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered. “Grab your winnings and we’ll sneak out.”

That was probably the smart thing to do, but something, a greater force maybe, kept me planted in my seat.

Riley was the only person here that stood a real chance at beating me, but I knew she was after a much larger victory than a pot of wots and lixers. Part of me wanted to do as Xander suggested and run, but another, more hopeful part factored in the opportunity. A few rounds of poker would force my sister and I to interact. It could remind her of all the good memories we shared, before we became enemies. The night might not be ruined after all…

I also knew Riley’s tells, an advantage I could use. And we could finally talk. The surrounding crowd didn’t exactly allow for privacy, but it was better than nothing.

“Let’s do it.” I looked straight at her, refusing to cower.

Everyone stopped what they were doing, gawking in silence. The tension in the room grew by the second, like a ticking bomb about to explode.

Trailed by Calypso and Anastasia, Riley approached the table and sat in the chair across from me. She dropped the purse’s contents on the table, making me wonder where she’d gotten all of that money. Certainly not from Dad, who had forbidden her to enroll at Arcadia. Not Grandpa either, who was away searching for Dad.

“Deal.” She gestured to my stack of cards.

I slid the cards into a row and then back again, never taking my eyes off her. There was a noticeable gleam in her gaze. She was up to something. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I would find out soon enough.

For a while, we took turns winning hands, playing it safe. Sometimes she would fold, sometimes I would. Neither of us made any risky moves. I lost a few wots to her pair of queens, then she lost it back to my pair of nines. I caught on to her when she was bluffing. She’d fan back her hair or carefully arch a brow. But overall, it was a pretty boring game. I tried to talk to her between hands, just little things like, “Remember that time you hid cards under your shirt, then you forgot and got up to pee, and they all fell out on the way to the bathroom?”

Riley only nodded and said, “Yep.”

“Or the time we invited the Littles over,” I said with a meaningful laugh. The Littles were our younger, homeschooled neighbors. Dad made us invite them, even though Riley and I thought the sister and brother duo were super weird. “Remember how Bethany kept farting and blaming her brother, and he kept referring to himself in the third person, by his full name. Every hand started with, Jeremy Little calls.”

It was a story we used to cackle over for hours, but Riley didn’t even crack a smile.

I let out a small breath.

This wasn’t working.

My stomach sank as a frightening thought crept into my head. Maybe