“No,” Valentin whispered. “It’s the house’s. The real house. The game you’ve been playing isn’t for coin, Silas. It’s for what’s left of your soul.”
The sound was not the table. It was the case. A thin, sharp splintering, like ice breaking on a winter pond. The wooden case had split from age, revealing a hollow compartment behind the velvet lining.
The crack in the case widened. A cold draft poured out, smelling of wet stone and old graves. The faro king on the table began to bleed—red dye seeping from its printed edges.
And the faro scene cracked clean in two—one half a smoky backroom, the other a stairwell descending into a place where the house always wins.