Chapter 7 #2
“That second one isn’t far from the truth.”
I should be irritated. I should bristle at that. Instead, I just feel tired enough that even offence sounds like an effort I can’t afford.
He finds glasses. Runs water from the tap. The sound is too normal, too domestic for everything else that has been happening in my life. He fills one and brings it to me like this isn’t strange at all.
The gesture is what unsettles me most.
“Drink,” he says. “You are dehydrated from the portal transit.”
I take it because refusing feels pointless. Our fingers brush when I do.
The binding reacts immediately. A low, quiet hum under my skin. Not painful. Not comforting either. Just there. Always there.
I drink the water so I don’t have to think about that.
“The gala is tonight,” Kieran says from the tablet. He’s already scrolling through details, as if time means something to him in a way it doesn’t to me right now. “8 p.m. Black tie. The collector?—”
He pauses.
His eyes flick to me.
“Harrison Whitmore. You know him?”
The water in my mouth turns to ash before I can swallow properly.
“Yeah,” I say anyway. “I know him.”
Azrael’s attention shifts immediately. Sharper. Focused. “How?”
“We dated.” The words come out flatter than I expect. Like I am reciting something that happened to someone else. “Two years ago. For six months.”
I set the glass down harder than necessary. It clinks against the counter as if it’s offended.
“He’s going to be there. At his own exhibit opening.”
“Is that a problem?” Kieran asks.
I laugh before I can stop myself. There’s nothing in it. No humor. No relief. Just disbelief that this is even a question.
“Is it a problem that my ex-boyfriend, whom I ghosted after he proposed to me, is going to see me walk into his event on another man’s arm?” I shake my head slightly. “No. Not a problem at all. Totally normal situation.”
I don’t add that I’m still forced to maintain semi-regular contact with him because we run in the same high society circles.
Kieran mutters something under his breath in what sounds like an ancient language. I don’t know what it means, but it doesn’t sound kind.
“We adapt,” Azrael says again, as if that is the only answer that exists in any universe. “Whitmore knows you as Morgana Bellamy, a wealthy heiress. Tonight you are Morgana Bellamy, a wealthy heiress attending with her new lover. He may be jealous. He will survive it.”
“And if he makes a scene?”
“Then I will handle it.”
The certainty in his voice isn’t loud. It doesn’t need to be. It settles in the room anyway, heavy and absolute, like the decision has already been made for everyone.
“The gala starts in six hours,” Kieran says. “We should prepare.”
Azrael nods once, then turns his attention to me. “Do you have appropriate clothing?”
I gesture vaguely toward my bedroom. “Walk-in closet. Left side. Evening wear.”
“Show me.”
“I can pick my own dress?—”
“We are posing as a couple. What you wear affects the image we project.”
He’s already walking. Like the conversation ended the moment he decided it did.
I follow because the binding leaves me no real alternative. Not because I care what he thinks. Not because I’m curious about what he will choose. I tell myself that last part twice.
My closet is obscene.
It’s always been, I just stopped noticing at some point.
Twenty feet of gowns in colors I never associate with myself anymore.
Shoes arranged like art pieces. Jewelry sorted with obsessive precision by metal and stone.
Everything maintained. Everything expensive.
Everything untouched in a way that makes it feel like it belongs to a version of me I stopped being without realizing it.
I haven’t missed any of it.
Azrael moves along the racks slowly. His hand brushes fabric here and there, not lingering, just assessing. Like he is reading something no one else can see.
Then he stops.
“This one.”
He pulls out a black silk dress. Backless. Dark enough to swallow light. The slit runs high enough that it stops being subtle and starts being intentional.
“That’s practically lingerie.”
“Exactly.” He holds it out to me. “You need to look like someone worth stealing. Someone I would want badly enough to bring into a public room and not care who sees.” His gaze lifts to mine, steady and unblinking. “Someone I cannot keep my hands off.”
Heat climbs up my neck before I can stop it. “We’re pretending.”
“We are selling a story.” His voice lowers. “Make it believable.”
He turns and leaves me standing there with the dress in my hands, and the strange, irritating awareness that my pulse has started behaving differently than five minutes ago.
Six hours later, I’m standing in front of a mirror I barely recognize myself in.
The dress is a problem in every way. It fits too well. It moves too easily. It exposes just enough skin to feel deliberate rather than accidental. The back dips to the base of my spine. Every time I shift, the slit reveals more leg than I’m used to showing.
I look expensive.
I look dangerous.
I look like the kind of woman who does not get asked questions unless she allows it. Like exactly the kind of woman who’d catch a Shadow King’s attention.
Makeup took an hour. Hair took almost as long.
Raven, the art thief, feels like a rumor now.
Morgana Bellamy, society darling, feels worse. Like a costume I used to wear without realizing it was one.
The binding marks on my wrists refuse to disappear. Foundation does nothing. The marks push through like they’re a part of me in a way makeup can’t handle.
I settle for long black gloves instead. Silk, elbow-length. Old Hollywood. Careful.
The blade proves to be more complicated.
Chella solved that by producing a shadow-forged spine sheath so delicate it looks like jewelry.
Thin black chains trace the bare line of my back, crossing between my shoulder blades and disappearing beneath the silk at my waist. The blade lies flat against my spine, hidden by glamour until I reach for it.
The Shadow Court formalwear, she called it.
“Fashionable and homicidal,” I mutter.
“You look presentable.”
I turn.
Azrael is standing in the doorway.
And for a second, I forget how to speak.
He’s wearing a black tuxedo that fits him like it was made specifically to erase any argument.
Perfect fit across the shoulders I’ve felt pressed against me during training.
Dark fabric that makes his pale skin seem to glow.
His hair is slightly pushed back, not styled enough to look controlled, not messy enough to look accidental.
He looks unreal in a way that’s not comforting.
“Presentable,” I manage finally. “That’s the word you’re going with?”
“Would you prefer something else?” He steps further into the room. “Beautiful. Exquisite. Something more dramatic?”
“I would prefer we get this over with.”
But even as I say it, I cannot ignore the fact that the air between us has changed shape completely.
“Liar.”
He’s right in front of me now.
“You miss this. The games. The performance. Playing pretend in expensive places.”
“I don’t miss pretending.”
“No?” His hand lifts, tracing the line of my jaw without quite touching. “What do you miss?”
The truth settles heavy on my tongue. I miss the thrill. The danger. The feeling of getting away with something impossible.
I miss feeling alive.
But I can’t say that. Can’t admit that everything I thought I wanted now feels hollow compared to shadow-walking through darkness with his hand in mine.
“Nothing,” I lie. “I miss nothing.”
His smile sharpens.
“Now we are even.”
The Met is exactly as I remember it.
Glittering. Excessive. The kind of place where people wear their net worth and compare tax brackets over champagne.
I used to love this. The spectacle. The careful choreography of who’s sleeping with whom, who’s losing everything quietly, who is one scandal away from ruin.
Now it feels like noise I can’t turn off.
Azrael’s hand rests on my lower back, right where the dress opens, his palm warm against my bare skin.
The binding inside me purrs.
“Smile,” he murmurs near my ear. “You are supposed to be enjoying yourself.”
I arrange my face into something appropriate. Something practiced. Easy.
We move through the crowd. I recognize names, faces, histories. People who once felt important enough to matter. They glance at me and then at him, curiosity sharpening their eyes, questions forming and never spoken.
Society rules. Don’t pry unless explicitly invited.
“There,” Azrael says softly. His breath brushes my ear. “Northwest corner. There’s Whitmore.”
I don’t need to look to know. I feel it. A presence pulling attention like gravity.
“He’s staring,” I say.
“Good. Let him.”
Azrael’s hand shifts from my back to my waist, more deliberate now.
“We are establishing territorial boundaries,” he says.
“I’m not territory.”
“Tonight you are.”
I should hate how easily the role fits around us.
He turns us toward the bar.
“Play the role, Morgana. Make him believe we are lovers who cannot keep our hands off each other.”
“And how exactly do I do that?”
He leans in, lips brushing the edge of my temple.
“Touch me. Look at me like you want me. Make him jealous enough to lose control.”
My hand rises slowly, resting against his chest. I can feel his heartbeat beneath the fabric. Steady. Controlled.
“Like this?” I ask.
“Exactly like that.”
His arm tightens around my waist.
“Very convincing.”
“I’m an excellent liar.”
“I know.” His mouth curves. “I have been watching you for years.”
That lands heavier than it should.
“You are good at this,” he adds. “Pretending. Wearing masks.”
“So are you.”
“Am I?” His eyes meet mine. Indigo, unreadable, too steady to be entirely human in the way I understand it. “Who says I am pretending?”
Before I can answer, someone clears their throat behind us.
“Morgana. It’s been a while.”
I turn.
Harrison Whitmore looks exactly the same. Blond. Polished. Handsome in that prep school way. Old money written into every line of his custom suit.
He looks like every life my mother ever thought I should want.