Last Light of the Gaming Legend Son-In-Law

On the giant TV, the Iron Dynasty players turned and ran.

Five of them, all at once, backing away from the Lockwood Lions as if they were scared; the Lions chased them into the narrow pass by the river, and I knew exactly what was going to happen next, because I was the one who invented it.

“No,” I said quietly. “Don’t follow them…”

Too late. The Iron Dynasty players spun around in the same second, and two more of their fighters dropped out of the trees behind the Lions. The trap closed like a fist, and the Lions’ whole team was gone in four seconds.

GAME OVER flashed across the screen. Iron Dynasty had won 3-0.

The room full of Lockwoods groaned, and on the broadcast, the famous caster Dex Carver, white hair, short beard, warm voice, went silent for a long moment.

“Folks,” he finally said, “I haven’t seen a move like that in three years.”

My hands went cold around the tray of drinks I was holding.

That move was called Crown Fall. I’d made it up at twenty-two, on a whiteboard, in a locked room, and only five people in the world had ever seen it.

“That move was stolen,” I said, before I could stop myself.

Every head turned toward the back of the room, toward me.

I’m Cole Rivers, I’m twenty-nine, and in this house I’m the son-in-law who does nothing. I wear cheap tinted glasses, a gray hoodie, and I play a candy game on my phone while my wife’s family talks about money. That’s all they see, and that’s how I like it.

Brandon, my wife’s cousin, looked up from his phone and laughed so hard his spiky gelled hair shook. “Stolen? Since when does a guy who matches candy for fun know anything about pro gaming?”

“He knows plenty,” Vivian said, stroking the little white dog in her arms. “He’s been playing baby games all night while my daughter’s company bleeds to death on TV.”

The family laughed. It was the same joke they’d made an hour ago, when I first came in with the drinks, and it was the same joke they’d made for two years.

Tyler, my wife’s twenty-year-old brother, pulled at his Monarch T-shirt and grinned at me. “Cole’s so bad at games, he couldn’t beat our grandma, and she thought a mouse was something you set traps for.”

“Tyler,” Sienna said sharply from the couch.

My wife sat closest to the screen in her black Lions jacket, her long black hair pulled into a high ponytail, her fingers holding the small silver lion pendant on her neck the way she always did when she was losing. Her team had just been crushed on national TV, on her father’s birthday, in front of her whole family.

She didn’t look at me. She hadn’t looked at me all night.

Earlier, when I’d walked down the dark hallway with the drinks, I had hit the corner of a side table so hard the glasses rattled, and the whole room had laughed at the clumsy son-in-law. None of them knew that dark hallways are the hardest places in the world for my eyes. None of them knew I could barely see the table at all.

“Let’s not ruin the evening,” Howard Lockwood said, rising from his chair at the head of the room.

Tonight was his fifty-eighth birthday. He was tall and calm, with silver hair combed back, a thin mustache and a heavy gold watch, the kind of man who never raised his voice because he never had to.

The doorbell rang, and the maid led in a tall, tanned man with slick black hair, a perfect smile, an expensive navy suit and bright white sneakers.

“Spencer!” Vivian lit up like a lamp. “Darling, you came!”

Spencer Dalton, heir of Dalton Media and owner of Iron Dynasty, the team that had just humiliated my wife, kissed Vivian’s cheek and handed Howard a small wrapped box.

“Happy birthday, sir. Sorry about the match, Sienna.” He smiled at her. “My boys got lucky.”

“Your boys used a move they had no business knowing,” I said.

Spencer looked at me for the first time, slowly, from my cheap glasses to my old sneakers, as if he’d stepped in something and was trying to decide whether to scrape it off his shoe.

“And you are?”

“The help,” Brandon said, and the room laughed again.

Howard tapped his glass with a spoon, and the laughter stopped.

“Since we’re all family here,” he said softly, “and since Spencer is almost family, I’ll be direct. Sienna, the Lions owe Lockwood Holdings a five-hundred-thousand-dollar loan payment by Monday at nine a.m.”

Sienna went pale. “Dad, not tonight…”

“If you can’t pay,” Howard went on, “the loan contract lets us sell the team to cover the debt. Spencer has kindly offered to buy it for one dollar, plus its debts.”

“One dollar,” Spencer said, smiling. “It’s more than it’s worth.”

“I’ll find the money,” Sienna said.

“With what?” Vivian set her dog down and stood. “Your sponsors are leaving, your players are losing, and your husband…” She pointed at me with one diamond-ringed finger. “Your husband works for free in my kitchen. It’s time, Sienna. Divorce this useless man, and give Spencer the answer you should have given him two years ago.”

The room went very quiet.

“No,” Sienna said, and her voice shook. “I’m not selling my team, and I’m not selling myself.”

I set down the tray and walked to stand beside my wife. I didn’t say anything. I just stood there, so she wouldn’t be alone.

Vivian looked at me, then at the glass of red wine in her hand, and threw it in my face.

The wine hit my glasses and dripped down my hoodie onto the white carpet.

“A servant,” Vivian said, “should know his place.”

“Mom,” Tyler muttered, staring at the floor, “that’s the white carpet.” It was the closest thing to kindness anyone in that room would offer me all night.

Sienna froze beside me. I could feel her wanting to say something, I could feel her family pulling at her, and in the end she said nothing at all. We’d married on paper two years ago, so she could escape a wedding to Spencer; the night-shift clerk from the corner store who always had her coffee ready had seemed like the safest choice in the world. She’d never planned to stand up for me, and tonight, she didn’t.

I wiped my glasses on my sleeve.

“Cake!” Vivian called brightly, as if nothing had happened, and the family moved toward the dining room, laughing and talking about Spencer’s new car.

I stayed behind, wine still dripping from my chin, and looked at the TV.

The broadcast was replaying the final fight in slow motion. Crown Fall, again, perfect, beautiful, mine. Then, in the corner of the screen, the game chat opened, and the Iron Dynasty player who’d led the trap typed three words.

Long live the King.

The room went silent in my ears.

That wasn’t a gamer phrase. It wasn’t something fans said. It was what Team Titan whispered to each other in our locked team room after every win, five friends, one secret, never once said in public.

Only five people alive had ever heard those words.

And one of them had just sold me out.