Chapter 33
yulia
I hated lies, disguises, and frankly, masquerades.
Whose idea was it to make a party out of lying?
Even masks themselves. Putting this one on had left me sick, standing in front of the mirror, gripping it firmly and staring at my reflection, until suddenly it wasn’t my reflection at all, but the callous face of my grandfather, looking down at me from across his desk, and he spoke in that gravelly tone of his.
You can only exist in this world by being useful, Yulia.
If you aren’t useful to those with more power, you have no reason to exist.
It had been so visceral. Such a symbol. When I wasn’t wearing the mask, I was just Yuli, a girl who would dance around the house and play with her friends. But then someone from the family would give me the mask, and I was Yulia Mikhailovna.
It had started small, distracting people while someone picked pockets. It was a fun game then. Then it was slipping into places, and then it was stealing things myself. It stopped being fun when I first had a gun pointed at my forehead, threatening to crack the mask and then my skull with it.
Instead, a blade pierced through the man from behind, and his blood spattered over my front like paint on a canvas.
I spent hours in the shower that night, crying as I tried to scrub away the blood, but it felt like it was still there, still there, still there.
It wasn’t fair. Grandpapa had ordered so many people killed, and he’d gotten to retire from running the family, living comfortably. Peacefully. Not one missed night of sleep.
And the rest of us, the ones who killed for him, the ones who would die for him, were left holding the nightmares. A ten-year-old girl holding the mask, looking at herself in the mirror and seeing his face there.
But I wasn’t a little girl anymore. I was an adult. And I’d learned to make myself useful. No matter what, I stayed loyal. I proved that much. You didn’t betray family.
So once again, I put on the mask. And once again, my senses sharpened like a blade when I did, and I’d been able to recognize the wedding band from across the room.
I’d stopped at the table in shock, staring at it. The two of them, dancing in the middle of the room, one small glimpse of the ring. They both had their mouths uncovered, but one of them had a mask that would have covered all of Vera’s scar.
Impossible.
She’s alive?
They’d completed the wedding some time ago now. I’d tried to grab Elaine and get her out to safety, but Vera and Petra together were more than I could handle.
I’d written her off as dead. It was ironic to be worried about her—we’d been trying to kill her before the Blackbirds could get their hands on the inheritance, stall the process long enough that Horizon would fall through, until Vera had set herself up to receive the inheritance.
But if she was still alive, Vera hadn’t killed her to receive the inheritance. Was Elaine working willingly for the Blackbirds now? At threat of death?
It would be a huge threat to the Whitecliffs if so. But more than that, there was something about Elaine that was hard to shake.
The way she’d looked straight down the length of my blade and hadn’t flinched when I’d lunged for her.
I knew you wouldn’t hurt me.
I know when someone is willing to hurt someone, and when someone is only hurting themselves.
I’d gripped my pendant tightly, my mind spinning as I watched them dance.
My suspicions were confirmed when I saw the man in the lion mask heading to the private room, and both of them watched him go before Elaine went to the adjacent room.
I didn’t doubt Vera would be able to see through my disguise—I’d used a lot of them through the years—so I waited until she was occupied before I snuck after Elaine, finding her kneeling with her ear against the wall, listening through.
I pressed the edge of the knife I’d taken from the tables against the back of her neck as she stood up, and she stood firmly, not turning to look at me.
“Yulia.”
“She didn’t kill you,” I said. She touched her ring.
“She… changed her mind.”
I frowned. “Changed her mind? What are you talking about?”
She turned, slowly, carefully, to look at me, eyes gleaming from under her mask. “We chose a different path.”
There was no chance Vera Farkas, the Wolf herself, had turned on the Blackbirds. This was a trick, and I wasn’t about to take my chances.
I grabbed her by the wrist, spinning her around and twisting her hands behind her back, and she gasped, struggling against it as I drew a cord from my sleeve and knotted it around them, but before I could pull the knot, the door slammed open and metal gleamed through the air.
I jumped backwards just as Vera’s knife streaked towards me, striking the corner of my mask instead, and Elaine slipped out of the bindings, sprinting for the door.
Vera stepped in front of her, drawing another knife.
“You’re persistent if nothing else,” she said.
“Don’t compliment me too much.”
“Vera—” Elaine leaned in and whispered something in her ear, and Vera nodded, her expression tightening.
“You talk to the others. Get it handled.” She gripped the knife. “I’ll keep Mikhailovna busy.”
“But—”
“Go!” Vera pushed her out the door, and I gripped my knife tighter. I could hear movement from the Centauri room. It should have been soundproofed. I guess they’d sabotaged it.
“Why didn’t you kill her?” I said.
She smirked. “You take me for a terrible wife.”
“Frankly, yes.”
She threw another knife, and I leaped to the side, but she lunged in and grabbed me.
I twisted with the momentum, throwing her past me, and she let go and skidded across the floor, picking up one of her knives and throwing it after me.
I surprised her—sprinted towards her, turning to avoid the knife, and she couldn’t move out of the way fast enough to avoid as I tackled her, knocking her off her feet and sending us tearing through the curtains.
She was faster than I was, though—tried to push her away, but she grabbed me, and I swore as she wrenched me along after her, slamming into the railing and falling over. I grabbed the rail before I fell, and Vera caught my arm, hanging onto me.
“Thought you were more graceful and delicate than the rugby tackle,” Vera called up to me, her voice straining.
“Thought you were too antisocial to catch yourself by holding someone.” I tried to wrench my hand away—the table below would be a hard fall, fragile champagne flutes standing tall like glass knives, but Vera held on firmly, hoisting herself up and holding onto the banister next to me.
I lunged with the knife in hand, driving into her back as she did, but she’d come prepared—a protective vest under her clothes, and she grunted from the impact force, but the knife didn’t go through, Vera pitching up over the railing and skidding across the tile.
She brandished her knife, and I dropped down into the drapery, out of reach, but she wasn’t aiming for me—she threw the knife upwards, a precise strike against the sprinkler, and with a crack, it gave, spraying water into the room below as people gasped.
Subtle. So much for her expert touch.
I threw the knife through the railing while Vera was waiting for me to come over it instead, and it struck true, hitting her in the calf muscle just above her shoe, and she swore, staggering back as I leaped up over the railing and lunged in, slamming into her.
She directed us away from the railing, but I still managed to pin her to the wall, grabbing the knife at my side just as Vera grabbed it too, our hands locked as I pinned her against the wall as alarms flared around us and sprinkler water pelted me in the back.
“What’s the plan, then?” she said, gritting her teeth. “You also in on Horizon now?”
“What’s your plan? Decided Elaine’s more valuable alive?”
“Upset to see her alive?”
I clenched the knife tighter. “Even like this, you still won’t answer a damn question.”
“Vera!” Elaine’s voice called, and Vera and I both glanced at where she rushed through the curtains onto the balcony with us. “The building is being evacuated. Peter’s outside, heading for his car, but Petra’s identified which one.”
I glared. “So you are working together.”
Elaine’s gaze softened. “We both decided some things are more important. That the past doesn’t have to define us. Vera’s keeping me safe.”
“She was planning to kill you.”
“I know that now. There’s no time to explain, but… we’re not enemies right now. We all want Horizon to stop. That’s why we’re here.”
I narrowed my eyes, studying her—that intense look of quiet strength in her eyes, the one thing that broke through my defenses—but I let my guard down. Vera took advantage of the opening, shoving me, and I went staggering backwards as she pitched me over the railing.
Partly because I went willingly. I hit the banister and ducked to drop over, rappelling down into the drapery with a strangled gasp to pretend it had been an accident, and I slipped into the drapery and hung on inside to press up against the wall and listen.
“Vera!” Elaine said. “I was just saying we’re not enemies, and then you push her over the railing?”
“If we want to get out of here before they turn this building into a fireworks show, we don’t have time for a heart-to-heart. Yulia would never listen to reason anyway. She’s a Whitecliff drone through and through… let’s just move.”
“Vera,” Elaine gasped, and I watched from my vantage point as Vera snatched Elaine up off the floor and rappelled down a long curtain at the side, down to ground floor, and out of the rapidly emptying building.
Protectively.
A Whitecliff drone through and through.
I clenched my hands in the drapery.