Chapter 15 River
RIVER
The gown settles over my skin like a bruise—but one that’s still throbbing.
Satin pressed tight from my waist to my throat, mocking every breath I draw.
I stare at my reflection—pale painted mask, rich fabrics, a gilded cage.
No one who sees me tonight will know what I was once made of: dirt, chains, silent terror.
Skeela stands beside me, a silent shadow in the flicker of torchlight. Her mask is iron-toned, her eyes bright with purpose. She’s no player in this. She’s the blade that will cut the world open.
“You ready?” she asks.
I swallow. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
She hands me the mask—white porcelain with spiderlike filigree wrought in black steel. When I press it to my face, everything sharpens. My vision narrows. The tapping of nails, the echo of boots, the breath of fear in the nearest crowd. I swallow the nausea that tries to rise and follow her down.
The staircase into the ballroom is carved obsidian lined with gold veins.
Every step echoes like it might carry a curse.
The air grows hotter, thicker, with each breath.
At the bottom, a massive arched door yawns open, spilling out music that pulses low and heavy, like the heartbeat of something ancient and waiting.
Inside, the ballroom swallows me whole.
It's not light and crystal like human courts—it’s all shadow and fire.
The vaulted ceiling is lost in smoke and shimmer.
Braziers hang from heavy chains like glowing fruit, their flames green-blue and low, casting the room in hues of decay and desire.
Obsidian columns snake up toward the ceiling, wrapped in ivy that drips silver dew and whispers.
Carvings of monsters leer from every surface—their mouths open in silent, laughing horror.
The guests float through the dark like predators pretending to be saints.
Velvet and scale, silk and bone. Their masks are elaborate and cruel—beasts and gods, things with antlers, tongues, veiled faces and jeweled fangs.
Perfume curls through the air—jasmine, sulfur, musk.
Underneath it, faint but present, the copper tang of blood.
I move like one of them. Almost. My steps are measured, my mask unreadable, my heartbeat a drum drowned in the noise. A noble glides toward me—tall, serpentine, his mask carved like a viper's maw. He bows low, then offers his hand.
“May I have this dance, my lady?”
His voice is smooth, but the edges are barbed. I place my hand in his, fingers stiff with the memory of other hands that didn’t ask. He spins me into the crowd, where the music devours sense and time.
“You’re dangerously lovely,” he murmurs, his mouth near my ear. “Who owns you?”
I tighten my smile. “No one owns me.”
He laughs softly. “Then they’re fools.”
I let the dance carry me for a few more measures before slipping away, offering a smirk over my shoulder. I disappear into a throng of silk and smoke. I need to move. Watch. Find Skeela.
She’s near the far edge of the ballroom, positioned by a jagged archway that leads to a collapsed terrace overgrown with ivy and guarded by shadows.
Her mask is sleek, her stance soldier-still.
I join her without a word. She lifts the crate from beneath her cloak—blackwood and steel-bound, weight humming with dangerous promises.
Our hands touch briefly over it. Hers cold and sure. Mine clammy, trembling. She doesn’t acknowledge it, only nods once. “This changes everything,” she says.
“I know.”
I peel away before anyone can notice us lingering. Another noble intercepts me—a woman this time, mask like a moth's wings dripping pearls. She smells like night-blooming orchids and ambition.
“You’re new,” she purrs.
“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe I’m old and hiding.”
She laughs, dark and rich, then twirls away in a trail of embroidered moons.
The music thickens, dragging bodies closer. I slip past servers offering dark wine and trays of honeyed meat. I don’t trust any of it. The nobles talk in code, in poetry layered with venom, and I have to keep pace, smiling when I want to scream.
Then I see him.
Laertiez.
He stands near a raised dais, flanked by twin guards in silver armor shaped like skeletons.
His robes are layered, deep obsidian with the sheen of beetle wings.
His mask is simple, but his eyes—dark and unblinking—roam the ballroom like arrows.
He is old power dressed as elegance. Slim. Sharp. Unmoving.
I freeze. Just for a breath. If he looks at me, sees me—if he recognizes me—
But he doesn’t. His gaze cuts past, disinterested. He’s hunting someone else.
I turn, retreating into the crush of bodies. My lungs feel too tight. My heart’s hammering in my throat. Skeela finds me near the wine table, her eyes sharp through her mask.
“It’s done,” she says.
“Then we leave.”
We’re almost to the door.
Skeela and I move in tandem, masks low, cloaks sweeping. The weight of what we’ve done clings to our heels like soot. My pulse still rattles from the handoff—smuggling a crate of firearms through a masquerade of monsters dressed in velvet and vice isn’t something I’ll forget soon.
But we’re so close.
The stone arch that leads to the outer hall yawns open ahead, framed by blackthorn sconces and a pair of guards who haven’t looked at us twice. One step more and we’re free of this place, of its stench of opulence and rot.
Then I hear it.
A voice I haven’t heard in years, oiled and low.
“Well now. That walk’s familiar.”
I stop. Not because I want to—but because my body betrays me. Freezes. Breath catches, shallow and sharp.
Skeela glances back, but too late. The noble is already on us.
Tall. Lean. Silver thread winding through his dark braid.
His mask is lacquered bone, grotesque and grinning, but I know what’s underneath.
I know the voice. The stance. The tilt of his chin.
His name was Vaeron. Once. Back when names had power over me.
Back when he trained me like one trains a beast—to heel, to break, to bleed.
Skeela catches the shift in my body and steps forward slightly. But Vaeron is fast—too fast. He’s already curling his fingers around my upper arm.
“Well, well,” he purrs, dragging me closer. “River, was it? The little gift that escaped the box.”
My stomach flips, bile sour at the back of my throat. I keep my mask in place. Keep my face blank. I want to scream. I want to slash him open here in the middle of this gleaming nightmare. But the guards would be on us in seconds. He knows it. He counts on it.
Skeela starts to speak, but I shake my head minutely. Her eyes narrow. She understands. This is mine.
Vaeron grins like a man watching a spider crawl across his favorite glass. “Didn’t think you’d be so bold as to come back. And to a party, no less.” He leans in close, breath hot and wine-sour. “You always did like dressing up, even when we told you not to.”
“Please,” I whisper, pitching my voice small, tremulous. “Not here.”
That’s all it takes.
He smiles wider, triumphant, and gestures toward one of the side chambers lining the ballroom’s western wall.
“Then let’s find a quieter place. Somewhere we can reminisce.”
He doesn’t ask. He pulls.
I let him.
My heels click softly on the obsidian floor, each step measured, careful. The music thrums in the distance, muffled now. Skeela’s gone from my peripheral vision—vanished into the crowd. She knows better than to cause a scene.
The side room is dim, lit only by a few enchanted candelabras and the glow of a hearth set deep into volcanic stone. The walls are draped in crimson and black silk. A chaise lounge sits crooked in the center, like it’s waiting for something awful to happen on it.
Vaeron closes the door behind us and bolts it.
I turn, still silent, mask still on.
He saunters forward, leisurely now. Comfortable.
“You always were my favorite,” he says. “So clever. So obedient—until you weren’t.” He circles me like a hawk, eyes glittering. “Did you think I wouldn’t recognize you? I remember the sound your breath made when you were scared. Still does.”
I keep my hands at my sides, loose.
He reaches out, fingers grazing my cheek through the mask. I don’t flinch.
“You’ve aged well,” he murmurs. “Though I suppose that’s easy when you’re free. Must be nice. Eating what you want. Wearing silk instead of chains. Pity you didn’t stay broken. You wore it so well.”
His hand drops toward my collarbone, and I move.
Fast.
The trench knife slides out from the hidden sheath under my gown’s sleeve. He doesn’t even register the movement until it’s too late.
I slash upward—clean, precise.
His eyes go wide. Blood blooms like dark wine across his throat, spraying hot and thick onto my gown, the floor, the chaise. He stumbles back, gargling, clutching the wound with both hands.
I don’t wait to watch him fall. I wipe the blade on the hem of the chaise’s cushion, sheathe it again, and adjust my mask. My breath comes slow, controlled. My heart’s a war drum, but I lock it down tight.
I unlock the door and step out like I belong.
Back into the ballroom, back into the music and perfume and masks. My steps are deliberate. Calm. I feel every eye that isn’t on me and keep walking.
Behind me, a wet thud. I think it’s over…until I hear, impossibly, the sound of him scrambling to his feet. I try to keep walking, but I’ll stand out more if I don’t look back along with everyone else.
The noble staggers forward, throat torn open, gurgling blood on cracked stone. His voice rattles—not words, but thick rasping gasp that blooms up the corridor like a warning. One hand clasps the wound; the other needles through dark air, pointing at me with a finger slick with red.
Time shudders.
Someone screams. A glass shatters. Music crashes into discord. And just like that, the masquerade becomes a powder keg.
“Assassin!”
“The girl—!”
“Stop her!”
I move.
Not like a dancer now. Like prey. Fast and sure-footed through chaos, cutting between silk-clad nobles and gaping onlookers. The hem of my gown catches on a broken chair leg, rips up to the knee. Doesn’t matter. I run.
A guard lunges—dark armor, red eyes, hand outstretched. I duck low, twist, let his momentum carry him past me into a pair of shrieking courtiers. The scent of burning oil hits my nose—someone’s knocked over a brazier. Fire crawls up a velvet curtain, lighting the shadows blood-red.
I sprint through a hallway of mirrored panels, each reflection a nightmare version of myself—masked and blood-spattered, eyes wild, gown torn. My heart jackhammers. My lungs burn. My mouth tastes like iron.
Guards shout behind me. “She went this way!” “Cut her off!” “Stop the whore!”
I hit the garden terrace, boots skidding on wet stone.
The moon hangs fat and cruel overhead, bathing the world in silver and smoke.
The scent of crushed flowers and spilt wine clings to everything.
I vault over a balustrade, land hard in the overgrown hedges below.
Thorns bite into my calves. I don’t stop.
Through the garden. Over crumbling statuary. Past dry fountains and ghostly trees with white bark and twisted limbs. The city walls loom beyond, black against the stars.
I see him.
Kragna.
He’s already there—half in shadow, cloak thrown back, eyes glowing faintly with that same wild light he gets when the blood’s up. His nostrils flare, and when he sees me, he doesn’t ask questions.
He just grabs my hand.
We run.
Down a narrow alley that reeks of piss and ash, past shuttered shops and flickering lanterns. The city behind us groans with panic—bells clanging, dogs barking, shouts overlapping like battle hymns.
I stumble. He catches me. Keeps going.
“You good?” he pants.
“Fine,” I rasp. “Just run.”
We cut through a drainage tunnel half-choked with moss, emerge near the outer district—warehouses and old smelters, empty at this hour. Somewhere behind us, hooves strike cobblestone. Too many. Too close.
“Faster,” Kragna growls.
I push harder. The edges of my vision blur. Sweat stings my eyes. My ribs scream with each breath, like I’m being squeezed from the inside out. Still, we don’t stop.
The gates are close. Not the main ones—they’d be closed by now, swarming with guards. But there’s a crumbled breach in the southern wall, half-hidden by ivy and old scaffolding. Skeela’s people mapped it for us days ago.
We make it.
Slip through with barely an inch to spare between patrols.
Then we’re in the trees.
The city vanishes behind us like a bad dream, swallowed by shadow and smoke. Alarms still echo in the distance, but the forest mutes them, drinks the noise like blood in dirt.
Kragna doesn’t let go of my hand.
We don’t speak for a long time.
Just breathe.
Breathe and run.
When we finally slow, it’s because we have to. My knees buckle, and he catches me before I hit the ground. We collapse into a thicket of ferns, the kind that glow faintly with bioluminescent spores. They light his face in eerie blue.
He stares at me like he’s counting my breaths.
“Did he hurt you?” he asks, voice low and lethal.
“No,” I say. “He tried. I made sure he didn’t.”
Kragna nods, slow and grim. He brushes a leaf from my hair, then traces the edge of my mask.
“You’re still bleeding,” he says.
I touch my shoulder, wince. There’s a long gash—shallow, but angry. Probably happened in the scuffle, or from a guard’s blade too close for comfort.
He pulls out a cloth from inside his cloak. Presses it gently to the wound. His hands shake, just a little.
“I thought I lost you,” he murmurs.
“You didn’t.”
“Almost.”
I can’t answer that. The words lodge behind my teeth, sticky and sharp.
Instead, I lean against him.
The night is cold. The forest smells like damp moss and old magic. My gown is ruined. My feet ache. My throat’s raw from breathing too hard. But I’m alive.
For now.