Текст книги "Daggermouth"

Автор книги: H. M. Wolfe

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

Chapter twoThe Boundary

Shadera Kael shouldered into Wolf’s Head like a bullet entering bone. The neon script and skull motif above the door spat a red and violet haze, scattering color over a room packed with Daggermouth mercenaries who would kill for less than a full day’s ration.

Shadera blinked past the stinging light, let her vision settle into the shadows, and read the crowd the way a butcher might inspect the next carcass—efficient, unsentimental, already hungry for the cut.

It wasn’t the worst den in the Boundary, not by a long shot, but it stank of iron, old sweat, and the sweetly synthetic tang of antifreeze. The walls were poured concrete scored with graffiti and scars, posters for dead uprisings and missing rebels fluttering above chipped tables.

The main event tonight, as every night, was the slow consumption of chemical despair, poured by the glass, in a dozen brands of Shadera’s favorite bottom-shelf poison.

Liquor.

The regulars tracked her approach. A few nodded, some looked away, and a handful braced for violence. Word of her return ran ahead of her boots, a nervous twitch running through the Daggermouth ranks. She’d broken her last assignment in half—literally—a Cardinal ring snitch. The cleanup crew was still scraping bits of them out of the storm drains.

She moved past the battered pool table where two wiry teens played for credits, one of them cradling a splinted hand, the other sporting a swollen black eye. Shadera passed by the half-circle bar, returning the old bartender’s offer of a smile, and threaded toward the back wall where the real authority lurked.

Jaeger Nolin, the Wolf.

Daggermouth guild master.

He sat alone at a corner table under a sickly pink corona of cheap LED, left hand curled around a chipped glass, right one palming a dull coin he flipped and caught with impossible rhythm. Even in shadow, his eyes tracked everything—his people, the doors, the angles of approach.

Most thought there was no warmth in him, not for his mercenaries, not for anyone. But Shadera knew better. She’d seen his heart, seen the way he took care of the Boundary and its people, seen him take orphans off the street and care for them.

She’d been one of those orphans.

She stopped in front of him and he flashed a thin smile.

“Kael.” His voice was coarse but never raised, a low predator’s rumble. “Take a seat. You look like shit.”

She slid into the chair opposite him, leather jacket creaking as she lifted a sculpted brow. “You always say that. I’m starting to get offended.”

He grunted, nodding for the bartender who appeared and set four clear shots on the table in front of Shadera then vanished back into the crowd.

“Heard you finished the Dunmore contract early. Nice work.”

“Guy had it coming. He really thought no one would find out he was helping the fucking Heart.” Shadera inspected her nails, flecked with black paint and old blood. “You got another?”

Jaeger reached into his coat. The movement was casual, deliberate, no threat implied—but every Daggermouth in the room tensed except for her. No, instead she reached for the shot glasses in front of her, swallowing the liquid down without flinching, one after the other. She dropped the last glass on the table and placed it on its side. A signal she was ready for another round.

His hand came back with a thick envelope, wax-sealed and ringed with the Heart’s crimson insignia. He slid it across the battered table, never breaking eye contact.

She broke the seal.

The inside was lined with a thin, scan-resistant mesh, an extra precaution taken only by buyers who resided in the Heart, to make sure the contract made it past the ring checkpoints. She let the envelope fall open, and began to read.

Shadera’s eyes widened, darting from the paper to Jaeger and back to the contract. “Is this a fucking joke? This has to be a setup.”

Jaeger grinned across the table. “Vetted it myself. I assure you, this contract is as real as they come.”

She snorted. “It says the target is Greyson Serel. The Greyson Serel. This’ll start a war.”

Jaeger shrugged, taking a sip of his drink as Shadera looked back down at the contract.

“What’s the price?” she asked.

“Enough to pay off this whole joint for the foreseeable future, and feed every family in the Boundary camps for a year.” Shadera choked on the gasp that flung itself out of her lungs as Jaeger tossed the coin once, let it spin on the table until it slowed, then snatched it up again. “You up for it?”

“Of course I’m fucking up for it.” She scanned the brief, already memorizing the information supplied. “You want the mask or the corpse?”

Jaeger leaned in, the table creaking under his weight. His burn-scarred throat flexed as he swallowed the rest of his drink. “The mask, too dangerous to try and sneak that corpse into the Boundary.”

At the next table, a brawny Daggermouth grinned, showing gold-capped teeth. “You mess it up, Shade, I’ll take the job off your hands. Bet I can get to the little heirling first.” He leaned back, boot propped on the bench. “Hell, I’ll even split the payout if you’re lucky.”

Shadera didn’t bother with a reply. She simply reached into her sleeve, thumbed the edge of her blade, and flicked it across the gap between the tables. The knife bit into the meat of the Daggermouth’s shoulder as he slammed against the wall at his back. Blood ran quick and dark, painting the wood beneath him.

The room went silent.

She got up, crossed the short distance, and pressed a boot to his thigh as her fingers wrapped around the blade and twisted. He howled in pain and tried to bring a hand up, but she slapped it away.

“Anyone else want to take this job off my hands?” she asked, glancing around the bar. “Speak now, or shut the fuck up.”

No one did.

The gold-toothed mercenary glared, pulling the blade free with a snarl and a spray of blood, then slumped back, holding his ruined shoulder. Shadera plucked the knife from his hand as the bartender set four more shots at her table. She wiped the blade on her sleeve before tucking it away casually.

Jaeger sat back, eyes shining with mirthless amusement. “Never change, Kael.”

She downed the first two shots. The liquor tasted of melting plastic and old fruit rinds, but the burn steadied her hands. She took the third shot slow, savoring the way it seared the back of her throat.

“Anything else?” Shadera asked, throwing back the last of the shots.

“Yes.” Jaeger’s gaze was all edge now. “If you fail, we are all on some pretty short lists.”

“Nothing new there,” she said. “Anything I should know about the Heart’s precious little heir?”

Jaeger’s laugh was a single, low bark. “He’s not little. And he’s not an idiot. He’s as calculating and ruthless as his father. He may have grown up in the luxury of the Heart but he sure as hell doesn’t fight like it.” Jaeger rolled his jaw. “Do not underestimate him, Kael.”

The bartender appeared, collecting the empty glasses, and dropped a fresh round in front of Shadera. She took one, eyed the men and women around them, then drank the rest.

“When’s the next drop from the Heart coming to the Boundary? I need more antibiotics,” she asked, voice lowering.

“Sometime this week. The rebels are going to intercept it again, but we haven’t received a concrete day.” Jaeger tucked the coin into his pocket.

Shadera slid from her chair and stood. “If you get word before I do, send a runner. I’ll be at the usual spot.”

Jaeger nodded, eyes already moving on to the next problem. “Don’t get killed, Shade. There’s no one left who could replace you.”

Shadera grinned. “I know.”

She left the bar through the back, into the alley where rain hissed against the hot neon, and let herself think—just for a second—about the thrill of it. Hunting Greyson Serel, the city’s golden bastard.

The thought tasted better than any liquor.

Like most, she hated the Heart. Hated the way it watched, the way it judged, the way it decided who mattered and who got ground into the slop beneath its boots. Hated the Veyra, the masks. Hated how the Heart pretended the Cardinal ring was any less a prison than this shithole.

But above all, she hated President Serel and his whole fucking family.

The rage that boiled inside her at even the thought of that name, burned a hole into her soul. It was that family name, that family’s legacy, that created the oppression of New Found Haven, that created the rings and outlawed even the basest of human emotion. It was that family who was to blame for all the suffering in this godforsaken city.

Killing Greyson Serel would be an honor for Shadera.

It would be a pleasure to take a life from the very people that had taken so many away from her. Greyson deserved to pay for his crimes as Executioner, but his family was the hammer, and people like her were always the nails.

Shadera kept to the alleys, the black arteries of the Boundary where even the rain couldn’t cleanse. Nothing stayed clean for long. The gutter water frothed underfoot, leeching out the names of dead brands and long-forgotten products from the trash that choked every drain. Chemical stench clung to her hair, her boots, the exposed skin of her neck. Her every sense was tuned to the next threat, the next twitch behind a broken window, or whisper down a pipe.

The walk from Wolf’s Head to her home was three blocks, if you took the high routes, twice that if you looped the long way to lose a tail. Shadera always took the long way, moving with a killer’s patience and paranoia.

People watched her pass, but didn’t bother her. In the Boundary, you learned early: keep your face blank, your hands visible, and your intentions hidden. Shadera’s reputation bought her quiet, but never safety. There was always someone newer, hungrier, or dumber on the block.

She spotted a kid loitering at the corner, maybe ten, maybe younger. No shoes, hands tucked into the sleeves of a coat five sizes too big. He eyed her, then the alley behind her, then vanished into a crawl space like a rat. Shadera clocked the move—informant, or spotter for a micro-gang. The predators out here ate their young. Most didn’t live past their twenties on these streets.

A couple blocks on, she slowed as the city’s noise dipped—a silence that always meant trouble. Two men hunkered by a barrel fire, backs to her, their voices pitched low. She caught the shape of a knife in the first one’s hand, the glint of a cheap gun on the other’s hip. Daggermouth wannabes, from the look of their patches. She moved past them without breaking stride, projecting the unspoken threat that the only thing they would receive if they messed with her, was a shallow grave.

The men shrank away from Shadera as she passed by and slipped into a narrow alley. She reached up, pulling down a rusted fire escape ladder, and watched as it descended in front of her. She hoisted herself onto the wobbling metal, climbed to the top of the abandoned warehouse, and pulled the ladder up behind her, locking it into place.

Shadera paused to scan the horizon and sucked in a deep breath.

The skyline was jagged, teeth of concrete and glass rising above the smoke. In the distance, the twin towers of the Heart glowed bright and white, a fixed star above a dead planet. She ground her teeth together as she stared at them.

She remembered the night they came for her parents. Remembered the live stream, the screaming, the way her mother’s body hit the platform and didn’t get back up. She remembered what it felt like to pick up the knife afterward. How easy it was to carve out the soft parts of a man’s throat if you kept your hand steady.

They’d called her a monster for what she did to that first Veyra. She didn’t care. Monsters were the only ones that survived this fucking city.

She turned away from the skyline, letting the memories burn in the back of her mind. The utility door on the roof of the warehouse sat underneath a battered metal sign she’d drilled into the concrete.

Kael Recycling—she let her eyes glide over it. It was the only physical evidence left in New Found Haven that her parents ever existed.

To the Heart, she no longer existed. To the Heart, she had died the night of the raid.

Shadera keyed the code into the lock, listening to the whirl of the mechanisms behind the door before it popped open. The stink of oil and hot metal was a comfort here, a private ache that belonged only to her.

She stepped through the door, closing it at her back and waited until she heard the click of the last lock before moving away from it. Her lair was larger than it looked from the outside—a forgotten warehouse, once belonging to a logistics firm, now honeycombed with her own custom upgrades. Mismatched lamps shed pools of yellow light on the concrete, illuminating the walls covered in Heart blueprints, topographical overlays, and mug shots. The centerpiece of it all was the sprawl of the Heart itself, mapped in lines of red and black tape, every guard rotation, every checkpoint, every secret maintenance crawl noted with obsession.

Dotted through the charts were faces—masked and maskless, pulled from black market feeds or captured by her own hand. The Serel family’s masks dominated the wall: the President, his wife, daughter, and two sons. Every face of that family was punctured by a knife, a dart, a sharpened bit of rebar, and in the eldest son’s case, a thick red X.

Brooker Serel had been murdered. No one in the outer rings knew how or why, but one day he was on-screen completing live executions, the next his funeral was being broadcast. It didn’t take long for Greyson to step up and take his brother’s place as the Heart’s Executioner, which didn’t surprise Shadera. She knew how deeply the Serel family enjoyed the shedding of innocent blood.

Her lips curled into a cruel smile as she stared at the wall and chucked another dagger toward Greyson’s masked photo. Soon, both sons of Maximus Serel would be dead, and he would have no male heir to run his poisoned little kingdom, when Shadera killed him next.

She crossed to the wall, traced the path from the Cardinal’s service tunnels up to the base of the Heart, and marked a fresh access point she’d scouted months ago on the map. If the patrol schedules held, the tunnels would be dead from midnight to three a.m. More than enough time for her to get in unnoticed. Once she made it into the Heart, she’d climb the elevator shaft out of the maintenance tunnels, then split for the Serel residence tower. It was a suicide run for anyone else. For her, it was the only kind of job she accepted.

A heavy sigh passed over Shadera’s lips as her tattooed arms slipped from her jacket, the black metallic ink shimmering against her brown skin. She shrugged out of the leather and draped it over the metal chair that sat in front of the desk pushed against the wall.

Her eyes dropped to her skin as her fingers slid across the ridges of a newly healed scar on her forearm. She had a lot of new scars, but this one she earned lifting a package scanner from a Veyra officer. The job had been easy enough, she just hadn’t expected him to be so quick with a blade. In the end she got what she needed, and his body was slowly decomposing underneath chemical waste in the Cardinal.

Next, she moved to the set of six lockers in the corner of the large space as she unsnapped the holster wrapped around her waist and thighs. She never left home without both her favorite guns strapped to her body. A CZ 75 and a Sig P320. Both had been used to try and kill her, and both Shadera had used to kill their previous owners. There was a beautiful kind of poetry to that, she thought.

Her fingers wrapped around the lip of the first locker and pulled it open, setting both guns on the first shelf, and hanging the holster on a hook. She reached into the locker and snapped out the backing to reveal a hidden compartment, and a grin spread onto her lips. Her fist clamped around the handle of a slim black case. She pulled it out, walked to the desk, and set it on the surface before unlatching it.

Inside, nestled in black foam, was the newest member of her arsenal. A Veyra-issued nine-mil, with the Heart’s insignia etched along the barrel. Shadera had been waiting for the moment she could use this gun. Waiting for a contract she could make look like an inside job. The beauty of Greyson being the one that would receive its bullet, when he’d put the very same bullets into hundreds of those from the Boundary, was a special kind of karma.

She would make him kneel, she thought to herself, as she began to strip and clean it. She would say the same ritual words to him that he’d said hundreds of times before murdering innocent men and women.

Greyson’s father had used the very same make of gun when he put the bullet in the back of her parents’ heads, when she was only ten years old. And in the twenty years since that day, she’d been waiting for her moment to take something from him.

Chapter threeAsk No Questions

The Heart’s Entertainment District ran on blood and artifice. Every club and theater was a living organ in the city’s anatomy, pumping the elite through arteries of polished obsidian and gold-veined marble. On nights like this, the whole district shimmered with the pretense of pleasure—one-way glass and pheromone fog masking the rot beneath.

Greyson moved with the indifference of a man born into luxury, onyx mask fixed so tight it seemed part of his skull. The stares that clung to him in the club lined corridor were all protocol and predator. Dancers in their crystalline bodysuits hoping he’d open his wallet, masked patrons high on Boundary spice, too out of their minds to recognize him. He ignored them, or pretended to. Every gesture was observed, cataloged, and noted for use in future blackmail if needed.

Tonight, Greyson’s steps took him to the far end of the entertainment sector, an establishment dressed in platinum trim, playing shifting holograms of dancers whose bodies stretched and bled into one another with every pulse of the music. Above the entrance, sat a simple sign.

Thane.

Even in the Heart, only fools used family names for clubs—unless you were too powerful to care, or too dangerous to be touched.

Callum Thane was both.

The inside was a velvet womb, with shadows clinging to every corner. Low light accentuated the dancers on their platforms, and the masks staring up at them. Even for this early hour, the club was packed. There was always an uptick of business in Callum’s clubs the days after an execution, as if the elite needed to remind themselves that they were still alive.

Greyson pushed through the crowd, making his way to the back where stairs leading to Callum’s office sat. He didn’t need a meeting, didn’t need an appointment to see himself up. The two guards standing at the base of the spiral stairs didn’t bother scanning his biometrics as he approached, only stepped aside so he could pass.

He took the steps two at a time, hands pushed casually into the pockets of his black business casual attire, and watched as the large glass door slid open at his arrival.

Callum waited for him, perched in a leather desk chair, mask shimmering with gold and copper filigree. The rest of him was covered in a dark suit, the top buttons of his crisp shirt open to accentuate the deep brown of his tattooed flesh where necklaces hung against his bare chest. His ringed fingers tapped a restless code against the desk. He was always in motion, even seated. Excessive energy coiled under the practiced languor of a Heart-bred host. The air in the room tasted of smoke, expensive gin, and bleach.

“Grey,” Callum greeted as Greyson stepped inside the spacious office. He didn’t rise, just flicked two fingers in a lazy salute. “If you’re here to shut down my club, you’ll have to stand in line. Three Veyra have already come this week. But you can skip to the front.”

Greyson eased the door closed behind him, the lock whispering shut. He crossed to the drinks cart—neatly curated with an array of options—and poured two fingers of gin into a tumbler.

“Only three? I would’ve expected the entire militia with those private anti-scan rooms you just opened.”

“You know how it goes. Law makers never live within the law. Of course, they left satisfied, and I gained three more secrets to keep them off my back.” Callum winked at Greyson as he lifted his own glass to the slit in his mask.

Greyson huffed, it was as close to a laugh as he could muster. He set the glass down on the desk’s edge, and leaned over it, head lowered. For a moment, neither spoke.

Callum’s mask caught the light, fracturing it into patterns that crawled across Greyson’s hands.

“You’re not here for pleasure or shit talk,” he said. “Something’s wrong.”

“Everything’s always wrong.” Greyson straightened, folding his arms. “Today it’s only more so.”

Callum waited, letting the silence thicken. He always did this, forced Greyson to fill the void, to name the thing that clawed at him.

Greyson looked away, eyes settling on the dance floor below through the one-way glass walls. “I hesitated, Cal. At the execution yesterday.”

Callum stilled for only a breath, then lifted his glass to the slit in his mask again, taking another swig as the rings on his right hand clinked against the crystal. “I saw.”

Greyson felt the anger again, rising hot beneath the cold. “She begged. Begged. It wasn’t dignified. But it was—” He couldn’t finish it, so he let the silence say the rest.

Callum stood, smoothing his jacket with both hands. He closed the gap between them in four strides and rested a hand on Greyson’s shoulder. The gesture would’ve been dangerous outside the walls of this club where Veyra eyes could construe it as weakness. Here, it was necessary. Their masks hid nothing from each other, not really.

“You do the best you can,” Callum said. “You always do.”

Greyson looked at him. “That’s not true.”

“You’re not your father, Grey. No matter how many times he tries to carve himself into you.” Callum squeezed, gentle but immovable. “You’re better than him. You still have a heart.”

The words should’ve comforted, but instead they scraped him raw. “If I’m so much better, why did I put a bullet in that man’s head? Why have I put a bullet in hundreds of rebels’ heads?”

Callum shrugged. “Because you’re not a fucking idiot. You still have survival instincts. If you didn’t, you’d both be dead. Maybe that’s not enough. But it’s something.”

Greyson exhaled a slow, shaky breath. “He’s arranging a Vow. Moraine Daunt.”

Callum whistled, low and sympathetic. “That’s quite the match. They’re not even pretending, are they?”

Greyson shook his head. “He wants to make an example. Show the city I’m loyal. If I’m married off to that family, there’s no room for rumor.”

Callum took his hand from Greyson’s shoulder and tapped his ring against the desk’s surface once. “They’re fucking right about that. Are you gonna do it?”

“I don’t have a choice.” Greyson didn’t say the next part. That he was both afraid that he would, and that he wouldn’t.

Callum eyed him, searching. “Why did you really hesitate, Grey?”

Greyson didn’t answer at first. The memory of the woman’s scream hung in his mind, a ghost that refused to be exorcised.

“Because,” he started, “her only crime was falling in love with a man from the Boundary.” He surprised himself with his honesty. “And though I cannot fathom being willing to die for such a feeble emotion, I thought maybe, if I let her go, it would . . . balance something. That it would start to heal the hurt my family has caused.”

Callum shook his head. “Balance does not exist in New Found Haven. And it doesn’t matter whether it was by your hand, or the Veyra, she was never making it off that platform alive.”

Greyson nodded. “I know.”

“Besides,” Callum started again, his voice lighter now. “Love has brought down empires, and your father knows it.”

Greyson snorted. “What do you know about love?”

“Nothing.” Callum chuckled. “I only know of lust, and I would do unspeakable things in the name of lust. So, I can only imagine that if I found love, I’d also be willing to die for it.”

Greyson smiled then, shaking his head but saying nothing.

“Do you not love me, brother? Would you not die for me like I would die for you?” Callum added, with mock offense.

Greyson downed the remainder of his drink. “I’d kill for you without question, but dying for you . . . that’s debatable.”

A full-bodied laugh flowed from under Callum’s mask as he sat back down at his desk and propped his polished boots onto the surface. “You may still have a heart, but you lack emotion.”

Greyson refilled his glass before falling into the chair across from him.

“You have enough emotion for the both of us.” Greyson teased as he swirled the liquid in his tumbler.

Callum’s smile reflected in his eyes. “That’s what got me kicked out of the Veyra training program. Too sentimental, and not enough of whatever the fuck they wanted me to be.”

Greyson remembered the first time he and Callum met. Late-night tactical drills, both of them exhausted, masks fogged with sweat, neither willing to let the other win. Callum would sneak rations to the janitorial staff, would hack Heart surveillance just to prove that he could. That kindness, mixed with his brilliant mind, and firm hand, was what made Callum dangerous.

“You ever regret not finishing?” Greyson asked.

Callum shook his head. “I get to run my own show. Only now, I serve the liquor instead of the lies. Pleasure instead of death . . . for the most part.”

Greyson flinched at the word. His only job was to serve death on that platform.

Greyson studied him. “You do more good in this club than all the Veyra combined.”

“Tell that to my father,” Callum said, voice brittle. “Last time I saw him, he told me I was a parasite. Feeding off the city’s vices.” He laughed, a hollow sound. “I told him it runs in the family.”

Greyson’s lips curled. “I’m sure that went over well.”

Callum shrugged. “He didn’t disown me. Guess he’s still hoping I’ll make a scandal big enough to get myself shot by you on live stream. Until then, he gets free drinks and plausible deniability.”

Greyson swallowed back bile at the thought, the idea that his best friend could do something to land himself on that platform, and he would be the one ordered to take his life. Greyson would never do it. He would, in fact, die to protect Callum if it came down to it.

For a time, neither spoke. The music from the club below swelled, muffled by the double glass, but still present, like the ache in his chest.

Callum broke the silence. “So, what now?”

Greyson stared at the mask stand on the far shelf, empty except for a single antique specimen—blackened iron, a relic of the first generation.

Slowly he stood. “Now, I go to my family dinner. Pretend I care about the Vow, and try not to think about what comes after.”

Callum nodded, rising as well. “And what does come after?”

Greyson hesitated. “I don’t know. But something has to change.”

Callum stepped in front of him again, this time closer. He pressed a hand to Greyson’s chest, right over his sternum. Greyson could feel his heart pounding against Callum’s palm. “Don’t let him take this from you, Grey. Not ever.”

The masks made emotion unreadable, but the heat of Callum’s hand was real.

“I won’t,” Greyson said, and meant it.

Callum pulled his hand back with a flourish. “You know the old rule, right? If you break the Vow before the ceremony, you owe me a case of Boundary whiskey.”

Greyson’s mouth quirked. “If I break the Vow, you’ll die of shock, and I’ll just be dead.”

“I’ll die happy, then.” Callum’s laugh was softer this time. “Good luck with your mother. She terrifies me more than the President.”

“Her silence terrifies everyone,” Greyson replied.

Callum raised his glass in salute, found it empty, and mimed a toast anyway. “You’re going to get through this, Grey. You always do.”

Greyson turned to go, then paused at the door. “Cal?”

“Yeah?”

“If anything happens to me, make them suffer.”

Callum’s answer was immediate. “I’ve got you, brother.”

Greyson nodded, then slipped from the room. The mask of the Executioner never left his face, but under it, for a moment, he could breathe.

He cut through the club’s main room, ignoring the hungry looks and the whispers that trailed him like the scent of blood. Outside, the city waited, hungry for another show of power. He straightened his jacket, checked the watch on his wrist, and walked toward the dinner that always ended in threats.

The Serel residence was a cathedral of old money and even older ambitions. No matter how much the rest of New Found Haven modernized, the President’s quarters remained untouched by anything as fragile as progress. Corridors of burnished black walnut led to the great dining hall, where generations of the Heart’s rule hung in oil and canvas, every ancestor rendered with the solemnity of a funeral mask.

Greyson’s shoes made no sound on the inlaid floors, an empty man among ghosts. He paused at the archway to the dining room, and took a breath, steadying himself before entering the room then taking his seat.

If the Entertainment District was all veiled violence and artifice, this room was naked power—set like a trap, designed to draw blood with nothing but a glance.

The table stretched forever, a plank of mahogany so polished it reflected the candelabra’s flames in a perfect mirror image. At its head, sat the gold-leafed throne, reserved for Maximus Serel. President and patriarch.

Four places were set. One for Greyson, one for his father, and one for Elara, the mother who’d built the city’s mask tradition into ironclad law. Outside of these walls, she was a force to be reckoned with. She was cutting and lethal. But here, in this house, she was as trapped as the rest of them.

A fourth chair—Lira’s—stood at a carefully measured distance, closer to Maximus but always out of arm’s length.

The housekeepers moved like smoke, seen only in the periphery, never acknowledged by name. Each place setting was calibrated to perfection. Folded napkin, obsidian edged plate, water goblet filled to the meniscus. There was no music, only the sizzle of wax and the faint scratch of preparations flowing from the kitchens.