What's Yours is Mine

[Laszlo]

Fighting to contain his outrage, Laszlo had leaned back in his chair, pressing his forehead into the backs of his fingers. His eyes were shut, but Victor's voice drifted in currents to his ears, drowning out all the other sounds at the Wager, maddeningly warm and carefully dulcet. There was no concern for Laszlo's dilemma, or the thousand stabbing worries rushing through his thoughts. Victor was only waiting for the game to continue, and he'd still be there when Laszlo opened his eyes. They stayed closed for now. It was a small consolation to delay the inevitable. "Life isn't a game, Victor," Laszlo retorted flatly, as if he were speaking to a child. He remained immobile in the chair, not yet ready to unfurl himself. Knowing that the human had taken advantage of Laszlo's allegiance was going to take a few moments longer to process. The betrayal of trust was never easy to accept. "For you and Seven, perhaps, but not for everyone else." Moving quickly on before Victor decided to rebut. "And you know I can't hypnotize you. Once you're aware of it, you're perfectly immune." Or so Seven would have told him. It might have been a better strategy for Laszlo to keep his secret weapon in its sheath. In retrospect, he really should have, but possessing magic that controls the thoughts and actions of others was dangerously seductive ability. The temptation to rise to Victor's challenge was impossible to deny. Laszlo's clawed hand fell away from his eyes, which finally opened. Momentarily they met Victor's steely gaze, but then quickly glanced away. His eyes burned. That sliver of a moment was all he used to push the compulsion into Victor. If all went well, he would want to raise his hand to bat at tuft of hair, only to miss and prod his eye. Unfortunately this meant that Victor would know Laszlo lied to Seven, but at this point did it really matter? Seven seemed to love liars.

[Victor Lark]

“Ah, petch.” Victor managed to pull a knuckle back to his itching eye before he realized what had been done. “Oh, ha! You’re tricky. I knew I liked you.”

He rubbed the tears in and wiped the corner of his eye for good measure, leaning as he retrieved some change from his pocket. The pair of silver coins skipped and rolled to the other side of the table, and Victor’s eyes followed them to his dagger, his property. If the Ravokian held sentiment for anything, it was the strength he felt when he held that blade. He needed it back. And as amusing as this game of eyes and fingers was, there was no way for it to end in the dagger’s retrieval, much less in the satisfaction of Laszlo’s passion.

Again, Victor was forced to wonder what influence the ethaefal had in his thoughts, what secrets he had probed and what motivations were still his own. He glanced up to that spidery face, resuming the search for some passing reaction. He refused to believe that Seven had lied, which meant that their business partner must have been more conniving than he had anticipated. The uncertainty was more than unsettling, but the mystery was invigorating. Amethyst rings flared around Victor’s pupils.

“But back to the game at hand. You want to know your girl is safe, and instead of asking nicely you’ve offered me the chance to gamble for her life. Does this mean that, if you lose, I’m free to kill her?” He was not sure if he would, or even if he could being death to a face that was so intriguing in life, but there was no use telling her lover as much.

“If you can control my hand—” His fingers flourished against the table, as if under some imaginary spell. “Then surely you can get a secret out of me. Roxanne’s hair is somewhere in this building, and I will not tell you where, not willingly. If you can find it, you can give it to Abalia as a token of my good faith.”

His tongue filled one cheek as his eyes danced from Laszlo’s eyes to his broken finger, settling yet again on the dagger. “And when this is over, you’ll trust me enough to give me back what’s mine.”