CHAPTER 1
I was going to kill Zoey.
Heat simmered in my belly as I crept up behind her. She was oblivious to my presence, gazing over the stone balcony toward the forest. Rotting tree stumps littered the field below, but nobody lurked in the shadows.
Now was my chance to take her out.
My fingertips tingled as I slinked closer, the desire for vengeance flooding my veins. How should I do it? I could shove her over the balcony’s edge, but that wouldn’t guarantee a kill. We weren’t high enough from the ground, so it would depend on how she landed. I could shoot her, but my trembling fingers couldn’t guarantee my aim. And I needed her to die.
I sounded like some homicidal maniac, didn’t I?
Well, trust me—she didn’t deserve my mercy. Not after what she did.
A dagger should do it. Sinking a blade into her back would be the most gratifying way to take her down, anyway. God knew she’d stabbed me in the back enough times that killing her now wouldn’t even the score.
I unsheathed my blade and closed the distance between us, steps stealthy and silent. Zoey was still except for her long blond tresses fluttering in the breeze as she stared into the distance. Focused. Unwavering. What the hell was she waiting for? It didn’t matter—I inched closer, raised the dagger, and plunged it into her back.
“Dammit, Crystal!” Zoey shouted from the squishy recliner. She threw off her pink gamer headset that matched her blond hair’s pink ombre tips as the alert ShardsOfGlass eliminated DaggerQueen29 with a dagger popped up on-screen. My cat, Whiskers, leaped from the nook between her socked feet and zoomed upstairs. Poor fuzzball—it was bad enough my esports team had invaded her turf in our basement den at the crack of dawn.
I rubbed my lips together, trying to suppress a grin and failing miserably. I couldn’t decide which was more satisfying: the fact that I was the last player standing in this round, scoring fifty extra MortalBucks on top of ten for killing Zoey, or that it was one last chance for her to earn them before the statewide MortalDusk tourney on Sunday.
I couldn’t believe it was only two days away. Two days until we’d know who’d win the tourney’s solo and team prizes, each $250,000. Two days until we’d know who’d advance to the annual MortalDusk Crown in New York City next month along with the other states’ winners. I could see it now: standing onstage at the tourney with my friends in our costumes, accepting the prize in front of a cheering crowd and all those cameras—not to mention the all-expenses-paid trip to New York for the crown and the sponsorships that’d roll in. Sponsorships I’d kill for.
And did I mention the crown’s solo and team prizes were $3 million? That’s right. Three. Freaking. Million. Dollars. Can you imagine having that kind of cash at sixteen years old? You’d be set. I mean, sure, I personally had no shot at winning the solo competition, and if we won the team prize, it’d be split five ways. Still, though! I was no math whiz, but even I knew that amount would change my life.
We had a legit shot at winning the team tourney, too, and not just statistically speaking, since Vermont had the fewest competitors. We’d monopolized our state leaderboard for months.
Problem was, only five of us could play on a team at the tourney … and all six of us wanted in. So we’d decided to compete for it: the first five to earn twenty thousand MortalBucks would claim a spot.
And I refused to be the rotten egg.
“Welp, Crystal’s not messing around,” said Dylan, our newest recruit. We sat cross-legged on the couch, his knee an inch from mine—not that I’d noticed or anything. Was he complimenting my badassery, or implying I was a traitor? He met my gaze over his tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses and lifted the corner of his mouth, revealing a dimple in his cheek. God, why was he so hot—I mean, so hard to read?
“Well, we are down to the wire—”
“Guys, get down here!” Zoey screeched. The rest of our team was upstairs; Dylan had been the only one to stick around to watch after getting killed in this round. “Next round’s starting—”
“Shhh,” I said. “My family’s still asleep.”
Zoey’s sharp features twisted into a scowl, our main form of communication these days. Ugh, I hated competing like this. But winning the tourney would be the difference between my family living in this house and, well, not. My parents’ divorce last year had been quick—too quick—and Mom had been struggling to pay our mortgage ever since. It was my fault Dad took off so fast, so I had to win that prize money. I couldn’t let Zoey keep me from competing. We’d do fine without her blade combat skills, anyway.
My bestie, Akira, was first down the stairs, her heart-shaped face so flushed you could’ve fried an egg on it. “What happened?” I asked, but she wordlessly curled up on my other side, stuck her headset over her chin-length, shiny, jet-black hair, and perched her laptop on her hip. In MortalDusk, she was our top architect, a harbinger of death to anyone who got lost in her structures. But right now, she looked like she wanted to erect a fort around herself and hide until the end of time.
Her boyfriend, Randall, came downstairs next, chuckling as he raked back his shaggy light-brown hair that looked sun-kissed at the ends—a blatant lie, like his tan complexion, as he hardly ever got a lick of sun.
“It’s not funny,” Akira snapped.
“Oh, it’s plenty funny,” said Randall, tossing her a granola bar, though his own cheeks were a bit rosy.
I flicked Akira’s arm. “Kiki, what happened?”
But she just flicked my arm back as Matty hustled downstairs last, Diet Coke in hand, honey-brown eyes glimmering with amusement under his backward blue baseball cap. “Your mom caught them necking in the pantry,” he told me.
Randall shoved him playfully. “Yeah, whatever, man.” Somehow Akira got even redder, even the tip of her nose.
“Oh, God.” I laughed. “Did she try giving you ‘the talk’ or something?” Wouldn’t put it past her.
“Nah, she was cool,” said Randall.
“Unlike Akira’s face.” Matty flopped into his seat at Dad’s old L-shaped desk.
Akira covered her flaming cheeks, but said with a smirk, “You’re one to talk.” Matty always blushed easily.
He guffawed as he hunched over his laptop to reload the game. He was built like a basketball player—tall, broad-shouldered, and lean—though the only sports he’d ever play were pixelated. His sparkling brown eyes, round cheeks, and oversize brown sweatshirt gave him teddy bear vibes, a stark contrast to his vicious mage avatar, best at conjuring sparks and fireballs.
“What happens if none of you hit twenty K?” Randall changed the subject as he took his seat next to Matty. He was our top archer, whose aim made everyone seem like inept storm troopers. It was no surprise he’d already hit twenty K, as had Dylan, those bastards.
“I love you guys, but we are not rock-paper-scissoring this shit,” Matty groaned. None of us wanted to leave this up to chance.
“We’ll get there,” I said. That’s why we were meeting so early on a Friday morning before school. We needed every spare minute to rack up MortalBucks. We only counted earnings at meetings; Randall couldn’t exactly play while ringing up customers at Food Xpress.
“We could call it now,” Zoey piped up.
Of course she’d suggest that—she had only slightly more MortalBucks than Akira, who was in last place. But she was lucky she still had a shot at playing in the tourney at all. If I hadn’t kept my mouth shut—if everyone knew what she’d been doing the past few months—she’d be thrown off the team in a millisecond. She was good at pretending she hadn’t done anything wrong.
To be fair, we all were. Except Dylan. He was free from the memories that plagued the rest of us. The memories that made me wake up screaming in the middle of the night five years later.
“Can we not?” Akira bristled, jarring me back to reality.
I glared at Zoey. “That would be fair … how, exactly?”
She scowled again. “I’m just saying—”
Matty grabbed a pencil from the desk and chucked it at Zoey, missing by about a mile. “Can you stop saying? Rules are rules.” I grinned at him, and he rolled his eyes at Zoey, though pink spots colored his cheeks.
Zoey was still sulking as our dragons dropped us off on a fresh map. She always joked she had resting bitch face—though Akira and I referred to it more as ax-murderer face—but now she looked pointedly miserable, her full pink lips set in a pout, a line furrowed between her angled taupe eyebrows.
After a few minutes, Dylan nudged my elbow. “I’ve got a stockpile of health potions.”
“No, thanks,” I said, emptying a treasure chest. “Just found plenty.”
He smirked. “I wasn’t offering.”
I snorted in response and met his gaze for a moment, catching the glint in his eye. He thought he was so freaking clever. Or cute. And maybe both of those things were true. But really, if it weren’t for Dylan, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Over the summer, rumors swirled in the MortalDusk Discord about the annual championship. The tourneys in March would be statewide instead of regional, they said. Teams of six would compete instead of five, they said. More prizes than ever. A bigger New York City crown than ever. But we’d need another teammate to qualify. So we held tryouts the first week of junior year and recruited Dylan, the new boy in school. By the time MortalDusk announced the rules—statewide tourneys, but with teams of five—we couldn’t exactly kick him out. Besides, he did boost our odds. He was a fierce enchanter, nimbly crafting potions and spells to eliminate our foes, with solid aim, speedy reflexes, a sharp jaw, defined cheekbones, tousled chestnut hair, and these steel-gray eyes—
Oh, crap. He started pounding on his keys, clearly in a firefight with Randall, who was also annihilating his space bar.
“We got company,” said Randall.
“Dude,” said Matty, “please don’t tell me it’s Fishman.”
“It’s Fishman.” Dammit. Jeremy Fischer, alias Fishman, had dominated the top spot on the Vermont leaderboard for years—at least, until recently.
“Gah. Why’s he playing this early?” Matty was especially determined to beat cocky streamers like Fishman who already had about a zillion followers and made plenty of cash.
“When is he not playing?” said Akira, tucking back a loose strand of black hair.
Ever since Fishman realized a group of bona fide competition lived one town over, he’d made it his personal mission to seek and destroy us. His audience thought it was a riot. He’d be at the tourney on Sunday, but fortunately, his teammates were a master class in mediocrity. Still, he’d give us major trouble in the solo competition.
Zoey glanced at her phone. “I knew I saw an alert that he went live.”
“Thanks for the warning, boo,” said Randall. He ran our team’s YouTube and Twitch channels, though today Akira convinced him not to livestream while groggy as hell, pointing to his hair sticking up every which way.
I hurtled into the woods. “Where are you guys?”
Randall scratched at the hint of stubble on his square jaw. “Just north of Blackpool Lake.”
“On my way.”
“You don’t have to,” said Matty. I knew he wanted me to focus on landing more kills, to secure my spot on the team. But it’d be easier to kill Fishman together.
Copyright © 2022 by Diana Urban