I felt the king's stare like a claw digging into my spine, but I didn’t flinch. I leaned into Calix instead, lifting my chin. Let him look.
When Lorcan had rattled off the rules earlier, he’d mentioned that the royal family had to draw last, as some sort of show of leadership.
Lucky us.
I scanned the room again, taking in the other Khra’gixxes with the royal markings.
Some were old, their bodies shriveled and hunched.
Some were young, looking almost as terrified as the invaders they were supposed to claim.
Others looked somewhere in between—middle-aged and cold-eyed, ready to add new blood to their aging lines.
Cousins. Uncles. Grandparents. And so on.
The lucky invaders were the ones picked by one of the old Khra'gixxes. A wrinkled, broken thing would be too tired to use them prop
