The Dragon Games

The Heist

To intentionally use the Divine, there were two rules. One, see the object. Two, make a hand gesture. But when someone was unconscious, the Divine could slip out in unforeseen ways, with no regard for the rules. That was how, on the morning of the job, Regan awoke to the Divine equivalent of wetting the bed. Every object not bolted down floated through the air, like her chamber was underwater. Her hairbrush hung over her head, her dirty laundry drifted past her window, and her bed, with Regan in it, was halfway to the ceiling. Regan yelped, the bubble popped, and everything fell, crashing with a huge boom.

"Seven hells!" Her landlady shrieked, her voice piercing from three floors down.

"Who did that?" Regan shouted, slamming her fist into the wall. "It's the crack of dawn, you cur! I'll have your head!"

As the bottom floors dissolved into accusations and yelling, Regan surveyed the damage. Her room lay in destruction, her furniture cracked and strewn across the floor. Good. Better to screw up now, before the stakes become fatal. The kingdom of Scaldril was divided into four provinces, and each province was ruled by a House, which each answered to the king. The raiders were stealing from House Balthasar, the most powerful House – and the most vicious. They had a reputation for skinning their enemies alive first, and asking questions second. An unjustifiably cruel fate, unless it was Drax, of course. In that case, who was she to weigh on the esteemed judgment of House Balthasar?

Regan used the Divine to levitate a broken mirror shard in front of her face, then tied her hair back with a bandana. She grimaced at the rash Drax's Divine had left on her neck, the faint pink bumps in the shape of fingerprints. Though she supposed she got off easy. Someone without Divine will be much more affected. One stroke from Drax's Divine drills clean through their body, bones and all.

Once Regan was dressed, she took the stairs two at a time, slipping past her landlady and another tenant's screaming match unnoticed. The raiders met deep in the woods, as the first rays of sunrise pierced through the pines. All fifteen of them dressed head to toe in black, armed to the tooth. They gathered in a circle, talking in low tones as they waited for their captain to show. When Drax arrived, there would be no grand speeches, no final run-throughs. He would confirm the presence of each crew member, hand them a horse, and send them on their way. At this point, everyone knew the plan like the back of their hand. And if they didn't, it'd get branded onto the back of their hand. Which was all swell and good for Regan. She had no desire to listen to Drax or socialize with the group. She hung back, in the shadows of the pines, hoping to go unnoticed. No such luck. When she arrived, Twitch nudged the raider to his left, pointing Regan out.

"Coward," Cranks said.

"Traitor," Clawhand hissed.

Regan ignored it. She expected no less from this lot. She had a lot of friends in the raiders — true friends — until Drax took over. His first act as captain was to cut anyone with lingering loyal to Sammy. Regan, Sammy's fiercest supporter, was the only exception to the rule, because Drax refused to lose her skill with the Divine. She might not be as gifted as him or Sammy, but she was still worlds ahead of the other raiders.

"What's it like?" Viper said. "Having a ghost warm your bed each night?"

Regan scowled at him. "Sammy is not dead." While Drax insisted Sammy had abandoned the raiders, his moron cronies thought Sammy got himself murdered on some secret job.

"Is that how you fall asleep at night?" Viper said. "Chant it like a prayer ten times before bed?"

The raiders snickered.

"Enough," Autie said, appearing out of nowhere. "We have a job to do. We don't have time for petty jabs." She slung Drax's cloak across her shoulders, making her torso appear to be missing a diagonal strip. Then she turned to Regan, as if she expected a thank you and applause.