Chapter 26 The Man in the Mask #2
“No,” he growls, followed by a deep, centering breath.
“You still don’t fully trust me, and I knew that to be the case.
Honestly, Claudia, I understand why you think the worst of me, but if we’re going to continue doing what we do, if our dynamic is going to be safe and healthy, you have to trust that I care for you.
You need to—” He tries to pull her into his embrace, but his touch is too hot.
This whole room is too hot. She’s burning, melting, becoming nothing but Red-hot rage.
“No, don’t—don’t—FUCK,” she bites out, burying her face in her hands.
“I don’t need to do anything.” Her voice feels thick and foreign in her mouth, like something else is slipping words onto her tongue.
It tastes like magic, like the air in the opera hall during the recital.
She can’t calm down. She can’t stop. “I thought you really wanted me. Gods, I thought you liked me. How daft can I be? After all you’ve done to me since I arrived, how could I ever believe that your affection was genuine?
I’m a fool. You’re a relentlessly selfish person and I’m a fucking fool. ”
“Be angry with me. I accept it. But I did what I had to do and I’m going to make sure you win. That doesn’t mean I don’t care for you.”
Gods, he won’t even apologize. He doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong. It’s taking all her strength not to slap him again. “There’s only one reason you want me to win, and it’s not because you care for me.”
“Claudia, I swear—”
“Stop. Don’t speak to me right now.” She walks away but turns back. “No, no, actually, Cassius—don’t speak to me for the rest of the night. Pretend I’m just like the gods, because I don’t want to talk to you, either.”
His eyes flash wide and watery as her words hit him like bullets. She’s hurt him.
Good.
He hurt her, too. He hurt her first.
In their hands, their papers turn into ribbons. Cassius’s is green for Artemis. Hers is white.
“Where is my Iphigenia?” the game master calls to the crowd.
Claudia gives one last cutting glare to Cassius before charging up the stairs. The room is deathly silent when she ascends. She stands beside the man in the white mask. Up close, she can see his eyes. It’s not another set of black button-eyes staring back at her.
They’re green. Glowing green.
No. No, it’s not him. It’s impossible. This isn’t a nightmare. This is real life. Dorian can’t get to her here.
Can he?
“Are you ready, Iphigenia?” he asks, and that voice… She knows that voice. It makes her blood sparkle and sing beneath her skin.
Struck with fear, she can do nothing but nod.
The game master wears leather gloves, but Claudia can feel the chill of his body radiating through as he plucks her white ribbon from her hands. Cold as winter. Her panic-filled eyes search the room for Cassius, but among the sea of people, he’s nowhere to be found.
He left.
He left her alone with him.
Trembling, she turns back to the man in the mask. The man with Dorian’s eyes. He doesn’t blink while he ties the white ribbon around her throat. Tightly. Too tight. Punishingly tight.
He steps back and lifts his hand. At his command, the door that leads outside opens up.
From the ceiling descend orbs of white and lavender light, racing out the door like fireflies, illuminating the way forward and the dark world that waits outside.
Below, footsteps sound as the students create an open pathway for her.
An aisle.
An aisle leading to her death.
“Who are you?” she asks over her shoulder. She can’t see the man’s mouth, but she can tell he’s smiling by the way his green eyes narrow.
He doesn’t answer her question. Instead, he says, “Run.”
Claudia takes off like an arrow, and the world outside is a menacing midnight blue.
It’s dark and daunting and devastatingly cold, but the magical orbs of light allow her to see the way.
Her heart-pounding fear is doing little to keep her warm, and her thin excuse of a dress might as well not be here at all.
The length hinders her running. She needs to find somewhere to hide, somewhere to think, somewhere to shred the long skirt of her gown so that she can have a fighting chance.
An icy, wet wind licks her bare skin as she runs. Cygnus is supposed to be autumnal, always, but now the air feels like winter.
It feels like him.
Was that really Dorian in the mask? Is he chasing after her now?
When she’s deep in the nearby woods, she realizes how much this scene looks like her nightmares—her, clad in white, running through the woods, monsters at her back, and every offer of salvation comes at a cost. With Dorian, it was a bite of her soul.
With Cassius, it’s being a bridge to the gods.
Both of these connections are tied up in her power.
It’s starting to feel like all her gifts are turning into curses.
Maybe they always were.
The trees crack in the heavy wind as if they’re being uprooted. Sharp, dead leaves fall from the branches, scraping down Claudia’s body like fingernails. Above, breath-like clouds streak across the sky.
Far away from the school, in the freezing air, Claudia starts to come back to herself, down from the indulgent high of Dolericym. In the distance, torches emerge from the exit of the grand ballroom. Her head start is over. The chase has begun.
What does she need to do? What does she even want? She thinks about throwing the whole thing just to spite Cassius, losing on purpose only because he so badly wants her to win.
“Iphigenia! Wherefore art thou, daughter for slaughter?” someone bellows from far away.
“Come out, come out, little bride!”
Braced against a thick oak tree, she sighs. She’s come so far from her home, only to end up in the exact same place with the exact same instinct—shiver, wait, pray for rescue.
Her breathing speeds up. Her heart slams against her ribs. A hot, angry breath slices through her teeth.
There are no heroes coming her way. There never are.
Fuck this. Fuck waiting for anyone or anything. She doesn’t need anyone anymore. Claudia knows how to hurt people all on her own. She knows how to kill.
If all her gifts can turn into curses, maybe all her flaws and mistakes and rage can become something else, too. They’re not wounds—they’re weapons.
“You want Iphigenia?” she whispers to herself while she watches torch-lit Agamemnons crest the hill. Tearing off the bottom of her dress, she growls, “Come and fucking get her.”
She takes the white ribbon from her neck and carefully weaves it into the tight twist of her hair. Touching the pearls that decorate her curls, she whispers, “Cassiopeia, protect me.”
When three Agamemnons come close, she holds up the torn piece from her dress and says, “Is this what you want?”
One red-haired Agamemnon laughs. “Oh, Iphigenia, you’ve made this too easy.”
Another tall one says, “You’re not even going to try to run?”
The shortest one says, “It’s almost not fun this way.”
“We’re going to make it fun,” she says. She’s on her toes, light on her feet in case one of them charges. “See, only one of you can have my white ribbon.”
Torchlight washes over their faces as the Agamemnons eye one another up. Their eyes are dark and heavy with extreme emotions. She’s terrified, but she won’t show it. She’ll lose all her ground if she so much as shivers.
Steeling her spine, Claudia holds out the white strip, letting it whip and crack in the wind like a flame. White light spills from an orb above, descending upon them. “Are you willing to kill one another for it?”
There is a small pause. Then the redhead lunges forward, reaching for the ribbon, but Claudia is too quick.
She leaps out of the way, and he falls onto his stomach with a grunt.
The others laugh. Before he can catch his breath, Claudia swoops in and rips his red ribbon from his throat so hard that it leaves friction burns behind.
He stands, gasping and clutching his throat.
One down.
He looks at his kingly companions over his shoulder, his face twisted with embarrassment and shame.
Wiping the dirt from his front, he sighs and says, “I guess I’m out, boys. She’s all yours.” He pats them both on the shoulder and walks away, rubbing along his neck, muttering, “Godsdamn, that fucking hurts.”
The others stare at her with shock in their eyes.
Straightening up and dusting herself off, Claudia says to the other Agamemnons, “The competition just got easier for you two. Now you only have to duel each other. The winner gets my ribbon.”
The tall one says, “You’ll just give it to us?”
She belts the fallen Agamemnon’s ribbon around her waist. “There is no us. I’ll give it to one of you. The last man standing.”
The two of them are frozen until Claudia says, “Go.”
On command like dogs, they turn on each other, bloodlust flaring in their wide, wet eyes. The tall king swings a shockingly hard punch into the other’s face, and the shorter one collapses onto the ground. Coughing, he spits out a splatter of blood and a single tooth.
“What the fuck, Bode?”
“I’m Agamemnon now, Ezra,” he says, his voice loose and distant.
He kicks him in the ribs, and Ezra is somehow able to pull himself together enough to grab on to Bode’s ankle.
The stunted force of the kick is enough to take Bode to the ground, where Ezra crawls on top of him and aims a series of hard punches at his face.
“Who’s going to be valedictorian now, bastard? ”
It goes on for longer than it should. In between each hit, Ezra growls, “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.” Eventually, his punches slow, as do his words, until each hit becomes a languished, lazy slap, and “Fuck you” becomes strange, stifled grunts.
“Is he breathing?” Claudia finally asks.
Slowly, Ezra stands up with a loud groan, shaking the tension—and Bode’s blood—from his fist.
Bode doesn’t get up. Claudia takes a step back.
“Ezra, is he breathing?” she repeats.
“Don’t look at him. Look at me.” Ezra’s voice is wet with blood. He closes in. His face is red and swollen. Claudia is pressed to the oak tree, the rough bark stabbing into her bare arms and shoulders.
“Give me what I’m owed,” he commands.
There is something deeply unsettling in his eyes, like he burned through all his humanity while he was slinging those punches, and now, only a monster is left.
“Here,” Claudia says, hurriedly offering him the strip of fabric so that he’ll leave.
He doesn’t take it. He doesn’t step back. “You look so frightened.”
Dread pools in her stomach. She swallows, trying to keep her voice steady. “The game is over, Ezra. You’ve won. Take your prize and go.” As she speaks, he only comes closer, caging her with his arms against the tree.
“What if I want a different prize? What if I want you?”
“You can’t have me.”
He’s so close that every breath pushes her chest into his. Blood from his mouth drips onto her chest, down the white front of her dress.
Leaving kisses of blood on her neck, Ezra says, “Who will stop me?”
A rush of cold air comes between them as someone—it’s too dark to see who—pulls Ezra off her. Ezra bellows out a war cry and tries to tackle the man, but he’s not strong enough. With one quick punch aimed with perfect precision, Ezra is knocked unconscious, next to Bode.
When it’s done, the world goes silent, save for Claudia fighting to catch her breath. “Cas, is that you?”
Her savior releases an audible breath and steps out of the darkness, beneath the orb that glows above her.
It’s not Cassius.
It’s the man in the white mask. Claudia can’t speak. Her mouth goes completely dry.
Towering over her, the game master says, “He broke the rules. He had to be punished.” He leans against the tree with one hand pressed above her.
With his gloved thumb, he wipes away a smear of Ezra’s blood from Claudia’s bare chest, and then another from her neck. “I am always watching. Remember that.”
Before she can move, before she can even speak, he turns away and disappears into the dark.