Chapter 13 Rhianelle
The palace remembers me.
I know this because when I step through the first corridor, the candles light themselves. One by one, a quiet chain of flame that tracks my movement like a greeting. The palace is cleaner than it was the first time I came here. Dust no longer blankets the floors or clings to the carved pillars.
The stained-glass windows glow more brightly, casting pools of jewel-colored light across the stone. Even the faces carved into the pillars seem less stern, as though the palace has decided I am no longer an intruder but a guest.
I know this place now. I recognize where the corridors branch and which way each path leads. I remember the library with its towering shelves, the hall of mirrors and the throne room with its black marble floor.
And the altar.
My cheeks burn with memory.
Every time I come here, I steal something. It has become a ritual between the masked man and me. Sometimes I take a book. Sometimes I pocket some forgotten treasure simply to make him chase me through the palace.
The question is not whether I will steal something tonight. It is what I should take.
I walk barefoot through the halls, trailing my fingers along the stone walls. The palace is vast enough that I could wander for hours and never see the same room twice.
Last time I stumbled through it blind and breathless. This time I explore.
I pass a ballroom with a ceiling painted to look like a night sky, stars picked out in silver leaf. Beyond it is a hall lined with weapons, swords and spears, each one mounted on velvet. Farther on, I find a garden that shouldn’t exist inside a palace.
I am looking for him.
I will not admit it, even to myself, but I am.
The study finds me the way the throne room did the first time. I discover a door I do not remember seeing before, standing slightly ajar. Warm light spills through the narrow opening like an invitation.
I push it open.
The room is smaller than I expected. Intimate. A fireplace dominates one wall, cold and dark, but the candles are already burning, as though the palace knew I would come.
Bookshelves cover every available surface. Unlike the pristine leather volumes in the library, these books have been read. Their spines are cracked and softened, their pages marked and folded.
A heavy desk sits beneath the window, its dark surface scattered with letters, maps and half-filled pages.
This is his room.
Not the throne room where he performs. Not the altar where he...
This is where he lives. Where he reads and thinks. The private heart of whoever exists beneath the mask.
I should leave. Stealing a sculpture from a display is one thing. Entering this room is another.
This feels less like stealing and more like trespassing somewhere I do not belong.
I step inside anyway.
The desk draws me first. I do not read the letters, though the temptation itches in my fingertips.
Instead, I circle slowly and study the objects scattered across its surface.
A brass compass. Smooth black stones hold open a map marked with territories in an ancient human language, while a small sketch of a wyvern peeks from beneath a stack of correspondence.
Then I see the ring.
It sits in a shallow dish beside the ink pots, among other small objects.
I know this ring.
I have known it my entire life. It is the Wiolant family ring. Rainer’s ring. My family’s ring, passed through generations, meant to be given to whoever my husband is when I marry.
Why is it here?
My fingers close around it before the question finishes forming. The metal is warm, as though someone held it only moments ago. I turn it over and find the inscription inside the band, the same letters I traced as a child while sitting on Rainer’s knee.
The ring never fit him properly. He carried it with him but rarely wore it. Yet there is no mistaking it. This belongs to my family, and somehow it has ended up on a stranger’s desk.
I keep it. No hesitation or guilt this time. Whatever the reason, this belongs to my family. It belongs with me.
But my eyes catch something else.
On the shelf behind the desk, surrounded by books, papers and forgotten trinkets, sits a small glass display box. Such containers are reserved for objects too delicate or precious to be left exposed.
Another ring rests inside.
It is not gold or silver. No gemstone catches the candlelight. The band is made from rattan, braided tightly and worn smooth with age. It is the sort of simple ring that might be found in any village market.
Yet someone loved it enough to place it behind glass. Someone could not bear to let the fibers decay or lose even a single piece of the careful weave. That devotion makes it more beautiful than any jewel.
I lift the box carefully and turn it in the candlelight. When I open it, I discover that the ring itself is sealed beneath a second, thinner layer of metallic glass.
It is molded so closely around the band that I almost mistake it for part of the weave.
I slip the protected ring from the display and cradle it in my palm.
It is nearly weightless, and the glass has preserved the texture and color of the rattan beneath it.
My thumb follows the braided pattern through the transparent covering.
A strange ache opens behind my ribs. For a moment, I feel like I’m going to cry, and I don’t know why.
I take this too.
The family ring goes into the fold of my dress. I slide the protected rattan ring onto my finger. It fits perfectly, as though it was made for my hand.
The tug inside my chest sharpens into something that almost hurts before fading again.
Two rings. Two stolen things tonight. I am becoming a habit.
I turn to leave, and the masked man is standing in the doorway.
He does not move.
His shoulders nearly fill the frame. His eyes stare through the openings of his mask, fixed upon my hands. Upon the empty glass case I am still holding. Upon the finger where the rattan ring now rests.
“Put them back.”
There is no warmth in his voice. He does not tease me or call me little fawn. There is no almost-smile at the corner of his mouth. Only three words, flat and serious enough to make the room feel colder.
I set the glass case down on the desk. “The family ring is mine.”
“Put. Them. Back.”
“No.” My chin lifts.
I refuse to yield. “The Wiolant ring belongs to my family. I don’t know how you got it, but it’s mine and I’m keeping it.”
His jaw tightens. I can see the muscle flex beneath the mask. “And the other?”
I curl my fingers, feeling the rattan ring warm against my skin. “It’s pretty.”
Something flickers in his eyes. Something raw and exposed that vanishes so quickly I almost miss it. Pain or grief, perhaps. It is the ghost of something so old and carefully guarded that even this dream cannot hold it for more than a heartbeat.
“That ring is all I have,” he says. His voice is different now, lower and tightly controlled, as though every word costs him something. “Please give it back.”
Please?
He has never begged me for anything.
A spark of wicked delight moves through me. Perhaps this will be fun after all.
“No,” I say, with all the maturity of a spoiled child.
His hands remain at his sides, but his fingers curl inward. Not quite fists, though close. Tension runs through him like a wire pulled taut. He is trying very hard to remain patient, and some reckless part of me enjoys making it difficult.
“It’s my family ring,” I say again, holding up the band so it catches the light. “This one, at least, you can’t argue. It has my family’s name inscribed inside. It belongs to me and my future husband.”
For one unguarded moment, he looks as though my words have struck somewhere deep.
His eyes close behind the mask. Only for a second. When they open again, the raw emotion is gone, replaced by resolve.
“Give them back, Rhianelle. Both of them. Now.” His voice lowers. “Do not make me chase you.”
His words send a strange flutter through my chest.
I bolt.
I am faster than last time because I know the palace now.
I dart through the study door, race down the corridor past the weapons hall, and fly past the ballroom with its painted sky.
My feet are silent on the stone, my breathing controlled, my body low and quick the way Astefar taught me to move when something bigger and hungrier was close behind.
The difference is that last time he was playing.
This time he is not.
I hear it before I see it. A sound like sailcloth snapping in a gale, and then a rush of air that blows my hair forward. I look back over my shoulder and my legs almost give out.
Wings.
He has wings.
They spread from his back in two vast arcs of darkness. No feathers cover them, only dark membrane stretched over powerful bones. Each wing is so enormous that the tips nearly brush the walls on either side of him.
The candles gutter in their wake. Shadows spill from the wings like smoke, pooling across the floor before racing ahead of him like hunting dogs freed from their leashes.
I scream and run faster.
The halls blur around me. I take every turn I can find, trying to lose him within the maze of the palace, but the shadows are faster. They slide along the walls and stream past my feet. Corridors darken before I can enter them. Doors slam closed just as I reach them.
He is herding me.
Every stone, every passage and every shadow in this place belongs to him.
I crash through the first open doorway I find and stumble into an enormous bedroom. A broad bed stands at its center, draped in layers of dark fabric. Candles flare to life as I enter, illuminating tall windows and heavy carved furniture.
Another door stands across the room.
I sprint toward it.
It slams shut before I reach it. Dense shadow spreads across the wood, thickening and twisting until it resembles the shape of a man. Darkness peels away from the door and steps into the room.
The figure matches the masked man in height and build, with the same dark hair and an identical mask concealing his face. But this version has no wings.