Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
LYRA
Casimir tosses a beautifully crafted mask down on the desk in front of me.
I frown at it. “What is this?”
“We’ve been invited to a ball,” he says, as if that is any explanation at all.
“You have those around here?”
He doesn’t answer my question, instead watching me—studying my expression with unnerving scrutiny.
Things have been tense between Casimir and me lately.
Or perhaps I should say more intense than the usual current surging from me to him.
Outside of our brief interactions during my training—which he has been leaving to Neilina more and more after what happened, who I’ve since begun to form quite the kinship with—and him accompanying me to the Astral Chamber while I continue entering the Veil for my training, which has been frustratingly stagnant, seeing as the Veil hasn’t shown me anything intelligible since the first time I entered—he and I haven’t really spoken much. Not that I’m complaining.
I thought I was going to actually attempt to kill him after he stole away the only glimmer of hope I’ve found since being here.
It had to have been around midnight when he knocked on my door and strolled into my room unannounced.
It was a little over two weeks ago. Why he was there or what he wanted from me, I still don’t know.
But he had wanted to say something, and he wandered into my chamber to say it.
I drift briefly into the memory, allowing myself to taste the bitter ashes of it on my tongue as a small fire comes alive in the pit of my stomach.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Casimir, whipping the Ever-Know Quill behind my back as I scurried from my bed.
His brows scrunched together. He had entered the room with a particular softness—something unarmed and almost conciliatory. Yet the air around him shifted—sharpened. “What are you hiding behind your back?”
My heart dropped. “Nothing,” I lied, avoiding the urge to grit my teeth. There was no way I could truly hide the Ever-Know Quill—not with his eyes boring into me like that.
He stepped toward me, flicking his eyes to my ruffled bed, where a piece of worn and wrinkled parchment sat half-covered by bedsheets.
Something flashed in his eyes, and I was surprised to find hurt at the forefront of it.
Yet just as quickly as I thought I saw the emotion, it was gone, instead replaced by a cold rage.
He extended a hand. “Give it to me.”
I feigned ignorance. “Give what to you?”
He was in no mood to play games, and the sharpness of his tone and icy threat glinting in his amber eyes said as much. “The magical quill you are hiding behind your back.”
It was an act of the resting gods I didn’t openly blanch at his correct deduction.
Instead, I tucked the quill into the band of my undergarments, annoyed at how useless my nightgown was to me at that moment.
I held up my now free hands, exposing my palms to him.
“I haven’t the faintest clue what you’re talking about. ”
His lips thinned as he seemed to actively check his visibly increasing anger. “This is the final time I will ask you.”
I remained silent.
He wielded a strike of air magic so forceful, it thrust my gown up over my face and the quill tumbled from its precarious position against my body and onto the floor.
I thrusted the silky fabric back down, rage igniting the blood I could already feel pounding in my ears.
“What the hell is your problem?” I snarled.
Ignoring me, he strode to where the Ever-Know Quill laid resting on the hardwood floor, picking it up and examining it closely.
After, he curled his fingers around it so tightly, his knuckles paled.
“Will we never be enough for you?” he asked, his low voice crackling like the first signs of a coming storm.
I blinked at him, confusion, anger, and irritation all clamoring in my chest. “It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. I miss my friends. My home. How you can stand there and pretend it so preposterous I feel that way is beyond me.”
“Because I will never understand how you continue to defend the version of your life where you were treated like dirt. We have been good to you. I have been good to you.” There was almost a plea in his words.
He stomped forward and ripped the parchment from the bed, the last words Draven wrote to me still seared onto the page.
Are you alright?
Casimir stared at it, and his nostrils flared. “And this?” He waved the parchment in the air for emphasis. “This is how you repay all my kindness?”
I saw red.
“What about kidnapping me is kind? What about murdering one of my friends is kind? What about forcing me into the Veil every week, my body feeling wrecked each and every morning after, is kind? Where is the kindness in your plans for genocide and revenge? Tell me, what am I missing?”
Casimir prowled toward me, stopping only when there was a breadth of space between us.
“You can say what you will about all the actions I have taken,” he murmured so low, I could barely hear the rasping words.
“But what you cannot deny is that you have been treated far better and with far more dignity in my home than you ever were in the Three Kingdoms. And you know what makes that fact all the worse? It’s that you—as you so love to point out—are a prisoner here.
So even as a prisoner in my home, you are treated with more respect than as a citizen in yours. ”
I held his eyes, my chest heaving with anger. “Get out,” I hissed between clenched teeth.
“Gladly,” he replied. “But not before I take care of one act of business.” Without averting his gaze from me, he lifted the Ever-Know Quill and snapped it apart into tiny pieces, sprinkling them onto the floor around him.
Then, he tore the only piece of parchment I had into scattered ribbons, letting them float to the ground like snowflakes.
My chest practically caved in on itself, and I was overcome with the urge to fall to my knees.
Yet I did not let myself show an ounce of weakness in the presence of this fucking monster.
Instead, I lifted my chin and let every ounce of loathing I felt for Casimir Vivaldri twist my expression. “I hate you.”
“Yeah?” He took one step closer to me, no more than a finger’s length between us now. He leaned down, his hardened features set while some inscrutable emotion flickered in his eyes. “Good.”
I snap out of the memory, only to find Casimir still watching me. Though, now he looks as though he wants something from me. “Sorry?”
His brows twitch, but he doesn’t comment on me spacing out. “I said the ball isn’t happening here; it’s happening in Talderine.”
I jerk out of my chair so forcefully, it falls back with a loud thud. “What did you just say?”
He leans against the ledge of the interior greenhouse wall, crossing his ankles and tucking one hand beneath the elbow of his other arm. “See,” he says, wagging a lazy finger, “now that is the reaction I was anticipating.”
“Don’t toy with me,” I warn, hope swelling in my chest as a pragmatic counterweight attempts to dilute the feeling.
“I assure you, I am not.”
My body sags, and I brace one hand against my work desk. I look at Casimir, narrowing my gaze on him. “How did you receive an invitation to a ball in Talderine? Better yet, how did we receive one?”
The gravity of the question rattles through me. It means someone in Talderine knows where Casimir’s been hiding. Knows that I’m here with him.
Knows how to reach us.
“Precisely what I’d like to know,” he answers with an air of annoyance.
My heart races, trepidation leaking into my veins as I gather the courage to ask my next question, fearful to receive an answer I don’t wait to hear. “And are we…” I clear my throat. “Do you intend to accept the invitation?”
He does not answer right away, instead gazing at me intently.
Finally, after seconds that feel like years, he glances out the arching greenhouse windows and sighs.
“I do.” Seeing the hope bloom on my face—plans upon plans forming in my mind about how to escape and get word to Draven or Gray or somebody that I’m coming home—Casimir kicks off the wall and strides over to me.
“Do not get any ideas, Lyra. I still have plans I need you for. The only reason I am accepting this offer is because—” He stops suddenly, as if chewing on how to explain his reasoning without giving too much of himself away.
His jaw flexes. “There was something in that letter which I must follow up with. And though I would love to simply attend this masquerade ball alone, the letter’s only requirement for my attendance is that you join me for the evening’s festivities. ”
So it’s a masquerade ball, huh? That explains the mask he tossed onto my desk.
Still. Who is this person, and why the hell do they want me joining Casimir at some ball in Talderine? While there is no chance I’ll be passing up the opportunity, something about this seems….wrong. Orchestrated.
“Do you know who sent the letter?” I ask.
He shakes his head, irritation flickering in his eyes. “Who sent it. How they got it here. How they were capable of learning where here even is. All questions I do not have answers to but intend to receive tonight.”
“Tonight?” I balk.
“Yes,” he confirms with a small dip of his chin. “Tonight.”
Nerves, hopes, cautions, dreams—they all race through me in a blur, tangling and merging into one incohesive blob of emotion.
“I…” Casimir pauses, face scrunching as his lips purse with thought.
Another sigh, and his voice softens. “There are multiple dresses laid out for you in your bedchamber which you may choose from. I remember how poorly it made you feel when I picked out your last dress. Neilina is waiting for you. She volunteered to help attend to you in preparation for this evening. We leave at sunset.”