Chapter 10
Timothy
I fasten the last button of my charcoal shirt and slide into the slate-gray suit coat Graves holds out for me.
The fabric is heavy, expensive, the kind that whispers money and menace in the same breath.
My reflection in the mirror is all hard lines and hollowed shadows. My mid-forties look good on me.
“You don’t have to take her,” Graves says, voice low, handing me my wallet like he’s handing me a loaded gun. “It may be too soon.”
Too soon.
The phrase rattles around my skull like loose change.
Too soon after the fire that destroyed Strong Manor and killed Owen Hexley.
Too soon after the cage she was kept in, just feet from my bed.
Too soon after the river ritual, when my Barons dragged her out shivering and half-drowned, water streaming down her body, and she looked at me with those wide, reverent brown eyes, as though I were both salvation and damnation in one breath.
I still see it when I close my eyes. She didn’t cry. She didn’t look away. She looked at me like I hung the fucking moon.
Arianette wants this life.
I’m just not the man to give it to her. Not for real. And I sure as hell don’t think she has the mental fortitude for it. I’ve seen the result of that particular journey.
“Societal propriety doesn’t give a fuck about my personal timelines,” I’ve dressed for war in dining rooms before. “It’s expected that I show off my new bride.”
Graves arches a brow. “When do you do what’s expected?”
I meet his eyes in the mirror. “When it can get me closer to what I want.”
Tonight, the mayor is hosting a cocktail hour at his brownstone, but everyone knows the real currencies traded in those rooms are whispered rumors and blood-oath promises.
I need ears inside that house. I need favors called in.
And a beautiful, young, obedient wife on my arm is the fastest way to remind the old guard that the Baron King is still a man to be feared, not pitied.
Graves produces the mask: matte black, high-cheeked, crowned with gold-tipped horns that curl like smoke. The House of Night’s formal attire. I slide it over my face; the weight is familiar and comforting. It hides the worst of the exhaustion.
“I’ll go get the Baroness,” Graves says as I leave the dressing room and stride down the corridor toward the foyer. Stone echoes under my Oxfords. Lamp light flickers in iron sconces, throwing long shadows that dance like devils across the vaulted ceiling.
Then I hear her.
The click of a stiletto on stone.
Arianette appears at the mouth of the eastern hall, moving toward the same destination. She stops when she sees me, breath catching.
Christ.
The dress is black silk and tulle, severe and romantic at once.
Thin straps bite delicately into her shoulders.
The bodice is squared low across her chest, framing the soft swells of her breasts, the barest hint of shadow between them.
Corseted waist, then an explosion of netted skirt that ends scandalously high, just above her knees, revealing miles of leg and the fragile architecture of her ankles in those wicked heels.
Her braids are twisted in a tight bun, exposing the slender column of her collared throat.
She looks like a sacrificial ballerina dressed for her own funeral.
How appropriate.
Heat licks low in my gut, unbidden and unwelcome. I remember the wedding night, how she’d trembled beneath me as I gave her pleasure, the way she’d arched when I finally took her, the way she’d clung to me after, as if I were the only solid thing in her world.
I drag my gaze up to her eyes. They’re lined in kohl tonight, huge and luminous. She offers the smallest curtsy, barely a dip, but it’s enough to make the tulle flutter around her thighs, and I see the dark band of elastic holding up her stockings.
Say whatever you want about the Baroness, she’s a stunningly beautiful woman.
Graves opens the massive front doors. Night air rushes in and I don’t wait. I don’t offer my arm. I simply walk past her, out into the darkness where the car idles like a beast.
He’s right again, I think, as the gravel crunches beneath my shoes.
It’s too soon.
The partition is up. Kendrick pilots the Jaguar through the city, heading toward the mayor’s mansion–a brownstone inconveniently located in South Side.
Arianette sits beside me, spine straight, knees pressed together.
The scent of her hits me in waves: something soft and floral in her hair, the faint sweetness of the lotion she rubbed into her thighs and throat before we left.
It curls inside my lungs and refuses to leave.
Fuck me.
She’s quiet. Too quiet. Her hands are knotted in her lap, fingers twisted so tightly the knuckles blanch.
She tries once to smooth the rebellious tulle of her skirt; the netting sighs and springs back up, exposing the delicate lace tops of her stockings and a hand-width of skin above.
A tease or an innocent accident; with her, I still can’t tell.
I clear my throat. The sound is too loud in the hush.
“You stay by my side,” I say, voice pitched low, meant for her ears alone. “You speak only when spoken to. If anyone asks about the honeymoon, you say it was quiet. Time for the two of us. Nothing more.”
I watch her profile as I speak. She’s afraid to look at me. Good.
“Eat and drink half of what you’re served,” I continue. “Smile. Nod. Give them nothing else. These people aren’t our friends. They’re a consequence of the job.”
“I know how to behave. I was trained, remember?” She turns her head, and I see that her eyes are wide, clear. There’s no glaze of shock tonight, no muddled confusion. Something glints there, resignation, maybe, although that is probably wishful thinking. It unsettles me more than tears ever could.
“What if they ask me about the fire?” she asks, soft but steady.
I meet her gaze. “You tell them it was a tragedy. That you don’t remember much. You remind them your uncle was a good man, and you leave it at that.”
Her throat works as she swallows. She nods once, but we both know Owen Hexley was a fucking bastard.
The car slows as we approach the row of homes, headlights gliding across manicured hedges and iron gates.
“Can I ask you something?” she says tentatively.
I nod, already bracing.
Arianette looks up at me for a long moment before she speaks, those soulful brown eyes fixed on my face. “Is it uncomfortable?”
It’s such an innocent question, carrying a weight she can’t comprehend. There’s no doubt what she’s asking.
“No,” I say. “I’m used to it.”
She considers that, then frowns slightly. “Why do you wear it all the time? Can’t you take it off?”
“Tradition,” I reply, though the word feels thin even as it leaves my mouth. Too easy. Too rehearsed. “The Barons have always worn masks, and when I took over the crown, the decision was made to never take it off.”
Her gaze doesn’t waver. She waits for more and for once, I give it to her.
“The masks allow us to set aside our identities,” I continue, more honestly now.
“So when we enter a ritual, we come whole. Unburdened by names and faces. Masks are conduits–between the living and the dead, the present and what came before us. They honor ancestors. They carry us into transformation.”
I glance out the window as the mayor’s house comes into view, lit like a shrine.
“They represent duality,” I add. “Light and dark. Fertility and decay. Life and what feeds it. When we wear them, we don’t just observe, we embody. Spirits. Deities. Sometimes beasts. It’s how protection is ensured. How rebirth is earned.”
Arianette is quiet, but attentive. Then she asks, softly, “But why do you wear it outside the rituals? Like tonight?”
“The mask remains on for everyone.”
She swallows. “Even me.”
“Even you.” I reach out, touch her chin, tilt her face toward mine. There’s so much innocence in this Daughter of Darkness. “It’s for your protection.”
Her brows knit slightly.
“The histories of our organizations are bloody,” I say. “Jealous. Driven by greed and hunger for power. By keeping my face covered, I’m freer to speak the truth. Faces invite leverage. They invite threat.”
What I don’t say is how heavy the mask truly is.
Not in weight, but in meaning.
It hides the truth that my uncle and my cousin are both dead. One at my hand. That Amber’s infidelity didn’t stop at betrayal, that she tried to sacrifice Whitaker before he could even walk. That she poisoned the bloodline from the inside and called it devotion.
The mask cloaks more than my identity.
It conceals guilt. Shame. The humiliation of what my family became at their hands.
I wear it because some truths cannot survive the light.
The car rolls to a stop. Lanterns burn on either side of the steps; silhouettes of Forsyth’s wealthy and powerful shift in the windows.
My Shadow opens the door, and I step out first, then turn, extending my hand because the drop from the car is steep and those heels are weapons in the wrong hands.
She takes it without hesitation, small fingers curling into mine, trusting.
She gathers the skirt with her free hand and swings her legs out. The movement parts her thighs for the length of a heartbeat.
No panties.
The porch lamps catch on the smooth, bare skin and the glint of delicate silver. Damon’s work. Another ritual. Another mark.
Her scent drifts up to me, and my cock jerks hard against the seam of my trousers before I can stop it. She doesn’t notice; she’s too busy steadying herself on my arm, the tulle settling back into place like nothing happened.
My hand slides without conscious thought to the small of her back, palm spreading wide over the rigid corset boning, fingers pressing just enough to remind her who she belongs to tonight. Whether she wants the touch or not.
Time to see if we can pull off this charade.
God help us both if we can’t.