Invitation in Silver Ink
SERAPHAE
Xander was exactly where I had left him.
On my couch, drinking my wine, looking more tired than I'd ever seen him. He looked up when I came in. Held my gaze a beat too long. Assessed me as if he were trying to find signs of whatever deal I had just made with Maven.
“You're back,” he observed.
“I talked to Maven.” I shrugged off my cloak and laid it over a chair, smoothing the folds as I kept my back to Xander.
“And?” His voice was careful.
Before I turned around, I built what to say in my head that would make it sound like I knew what I was doing. Even if I didn’t.
Gods, I didn’t.
I turned to face him. “You're safe.”
“Define safe.” He searched my face for a tell but found none.
“I took a job,” I said softly, like a confession.
His expression didn't change, but his fingers stilled on the rim of the glass.
“Sera.”
“It clears you,” I cut in before he could tell me this was a terrible idea. Worse than all the others he’d dragged me out of.
Before he calls me reckless.
His shoulders sank as he placed his glass on the table and didn’t pick it back up.
I set the knife on the coffee table between us and stepped back. Gold caught the lantern light.
Xander stared at it for a moment.
“It’s charmed,” he said.
I nodded. “It’ll make it easier.”
“Who?” he asked gently, like he was afraid of the answer.
I turned to him. His brown eyes fixed on mine, steady and unblinking. I couldn’t hold it. My gaze dropped to the floorboards at his feet.
“Caelan Vaelor.”
The name landed like a wound.
Xander leaned back. Then forward, his elbows on his knees as if he couldn't find a position that fit. He exhaled through his nose and dragged a hand over his mouth.
“That's not a job,” he said. “That's a funeral.”
“It clears your contract.”
“You can't kill him.”
For a second, I almost looked away. Instead, I tilted my chin up and met him head-on.
“I can kill anyone.”
He looked at me the way he looked at things he found na?ve.
“No, Sera.” He shook his head. “Not him. Not what he is.”
“I know what he is,” I snapped.
Untamed.
The word had lived in taverns for years. Passed over ale by people who liked to feel informed about things they'd never seen.
Xander tapped the table as if punctuating a very important point.
“They don't call him the Prince of Darkness for no reason.” His voice grew louder with each word. “He has raw magic. It doesn't follow any rules.”
“Most of it left him during the accident,” I argued.
He looked at me as if I had lost my mind.
“And when that happened, the queen never made it out. It turned the sky into permanent night.” He pointed toward the sky. “The last untamed before him ripped the Hollow into the earth where monsters still crawl. You think you can kill someone like that?”
I thought about the stories. How the sky over what was then the borderlands had turned dark. It had been dark since. Which was why the borderlands ended up being named the Kingdom of Twilight when they were recognized. I knew his powers, and I knew the risks.
“He won't be easy,” Xander said.
“They never are.”
“That's not what I mean.” He stared at the ceiling. “You are a good fighter, but you need more than just that. You're going against a fae who wields magic. I did that. I missed.”
I'd be lying if I said I hadn't considered that. Xander was just as skilled as I was, and he had missed. If I wanted to succeed, I would have to do things differently. Instead of hiding in the shadows, I could choose to be seen.
“I don't plan to miss.”
Because if I did, I was already dead. Before the Obsidian Hand could even get to me, the prince would have killed me already.
Xander looked at the knife. “You can still walk away.”
“It’s too late.”
I already took the contract. Even if I hadn’t, I wouldn't leave him. Not if that meant him strung up on the pier for the birds.
He nodded once and let a breath leave him.
“Then we'll plan.”
I sat on the sofa and folded my hands on my lap, my fingers still cold from the outside air. The sound of Xander’s pacing cut through the quiet of the room.
“His estates are guarded and likely warded,” he said, one arm crossed, a finger tapping his chin thoughtfully. “Climbing walls or roofs won’t be an option.”
I nodded and added, “The guards aren't human. They don't tire. Don't look away.”
He pointed at me. “So you go through the front door?”
“Yes.”
Then, in unison, we said, “The masquerade.”
He crossed the room and stopped in front of me. “You'll need an invitation, but once you get one, you're in.”
A corner of my lip lifted. “That won't be difficult.”
He matched it. “No. I don't suppose it will.”
The next morning, I put on the burgundy dress.
The long-sleeved one for the cold with a deep neckline.
It was structured at the corset and flowed like water down the skirt.
It did things to my eyes that Xander said were criminal.
I let my chestnut brown hair down in loose waves instead of the braid I wore when I was killing someone.
I added earrings that caught the light when I turned my head.
Charm was the only currency that opened doors where coin couldn't. Blackwater Cape was good at this game, but I was better.
The wine shop was off Harbor Row, where the shelves were taller than the men browsing them and the air was dense with the particular heaviness of old wood and cork.
I sat at a tall table in front of the large store windows and asked for a bottle of vintage. It was expensive, but the invitation to the masquerade was worth it.
A portrait of the Mother of Magic hung between two shelves near the back.
A woman with golden-brown hair. Palms up with an orb hovering in each.
The gift of magic. She was unremarkable unless you knew who she was.
History said she had found a way into magic and then given it to humans. The fae had not liked that.
If you had magic, you were her descendant.
I was lucky enough to have been born with it. But unlucky enough that it did nothing but light up a dark room. I wasn't sure whether to thank her or curse her for it.
Xander had much better luck. His magic allowed him to see the aura of magic itself. Useful for identifying wards in our profession.
The doors to the wine shop opened, and a fae who called himself Lethren Valliard walked in. The sunlight coming through the window washed the gold out of his tied-back hair, turning it nearly silver.
There weren’t many faes who lived in Thalvarn. Those who did were here for diplomatic reasons or trade.
Today, he was my way into the masquerade.
He noticed me before I spoke. “Sera,” he said as he brushed snow from his sleeves. “I can’t say I'm not surprised you reached out.”
I beamed at him. “How are you, Lethren?”
He smelled strongly of herbs. Probably from whatever magical remnant he was trading between the two realms.
“What are you trading this season?” I asked, pouring from the bottle.
“Silvermoss from the Verdant border,” he said. “Though those are getting harder to come by since Verdant tightened its harvesting restrictions.”
I frowned. “A shame. Thalvarn has an appetite for those.”
The kingdom of Verdant sat right behind Twilight. Nearly half of both Thalvarn’s and Primoria's magical flora came from there.
“Thalvarn has an appetite for anything that crosses from Primoria.” He took a sip and nodded once in approval.
“The apothecaries here have built entire practices on what grows in fae soil.” He leaned back and looked out the window.
“Half your city smells like something that has no business growing in human ground.”
The reason I had always refused his attempts to meet wasn't that I couldn't imagine being with men who had longer, silkier hair than mine. Though that was true. It was his smugness and the belief that humans were beneath his kind. Yet, he couldn’t keep his eyes off me.
“And Primoria benefits from the trade agreement as well.”
“Primoria benefits from every arrangement it enters,” he said evenly, as if delivering a simple fact. “Take Tide, for example. They handle most formal trades. Everything moves through its ports eventually. You've been to the coast.”
Most Thalvarnans had been to the coast. The Kingdom of Tide was the central trading hub of the northern continent.
If you needed something you couldn't find here, you'd find it in Tide.
Need magical artifacts? Plentiful. Rare silks and furs?
They had you covered. Literally. Flora that allowed you to see your dead ancestors and possibly speak to the gods? Highly illegal and sold in every stall.
“I've been once,” I said. “It smells like salt no matter where you stand.”
“Salt and coin.” He turned the bottle to read the label. “That's Tide in two words.”
I sipped from my glass and watched him over the rim.
Subtlety was not one of his skills. His gaze had dropped to my cleavage for the third time since we sat down. I should have bought the cheapest bottle and just adjusted my neckline instead.
“Must be profitable.”
“Extraordinary.” He leaned in. “Which is why access to Primoria matters. Cut off the trade routes and the whole North feels it within a season. King Tarvin knew that. Otherwise, he wouldn't have accepted the Treaty of Ash and Iron so easily.”
“I wouldn't know,” I said, taking a sip. “I wasn't born yet.”
“Lucky you.” He grinned. “Nightmares like that don't fade. Some of us are still living in them.”
What started as a fight for resources had nearly ended both realms. Thalvarn’s late King Tarvin had wanted silversap—an unrefined liquid form of magic that flowed through Primoria. A single drop could power a lantern for days. The uses were endless.
There was a flower that grew in the wildlands between Twilight and Thalvarn, where most of the fighting had happened. Ink-dark petals that gave way to bright red edges. People said the red came from the blood that had leached into the soil from a century of war.
Lethren's gaze swept over me, taking in the silk, the earrings, the fact that I had met him today despite his many attempts in the past.
“You didn't come to meet me just for wine.”
I quirked a brow. “Not specifically.”
He lowered his glass. “Then what are you here for?”
“An invitation to the masquerade.” I leaned in, close enough that he'd remember it. “I’d like to attend.”
He studied my face, eyes dropping to the smile on my mouth.
“You understand,” he said, “that this is not a public affair. It's exclusive.”
I batted my eyelashes. “If it weren't exclusive, I wouldn't want to be there.”
He held my gaze a moment longer, as if he were considering whether I was worth it.
“If you embarrass me,” he said, “I will remember it.”
“I don't plan to.”
He inclined his head once. “You'll have your invitation by afternoon.”
“Thank you for being generous,” I said.
The corner of his mouth moved.
We finished the wine, and I listened while he spoke highly of himself. The bottle was good enough that I resented having to share it with him. If I didn't have to be financially responsible, I would have hit him with it. Vintage, of course. To match the years he had been unbearable.
But he had given me what I had come for.
I had a way in.
By afternoon, the invitation arrived in an envelope sealed with wax bearing the Twilight crest. Three stars and a bird mid-flight, or a crown mid-collapse, depending on the angle.
Xander stood in my apartment and turned it over in his hands.
“You make this look easy,” he said.
“It wasn’t,” I replied. “That man was so full of himself I was surprised he didn’t float away.”
He set it down on the coffee table. “Walk me through your plan.”
“I wait for him to be alone.” I looked at the knife between us. “Find the moment when there's no one between us and take it.”
That was assuming the guards wouldn’t follow him. And there was only one way to make him dismiss the guards.
“You assume he's ever alone.”
I smirked. “I can make sure he wants to be.”
He quirked a brow at me, already reading into what I meant.
“He has a reputation,” I said. “Everyone has heard about it. I'll use it.”
Xander had said it himself. Half of the women in Thalvarn had stories of him.
While most of Primoria avoided humans like a plague, Caelan Vaelor mingled with them.
Invited them to masquerades. Ruling over a kingdom that sat between the fae and human realms made one pragmatic about things like grudges.
“And if he doesn't behave the way the stories say?”
“Then I adapt.”
“You get one strike,” he said. “That's all. If the rumors are even half true and he feels you before you're ready—“
“He won't,” I cut in.
“You're very sure of that.”
He looked at me, willing me to change my mind. Searching my face for signs of hesitation. There wasn’t one. Not where he was involved.
I held his gaze, unblinking. “I have to be.”
He watched me a moment longer and nodded slowly.
“Front door,” he said.
“Front door.”
There would be the kind of music designed to make people forget themselves. Candlelight overhead, and a hundred people performing versions of themselves for each other's benefit.
Not the rooftops I was used to. No shadows to keep me hidden. This would not be the architecture that I was good at and had trained for. Not the dark and my blade finding its moment in the quiet.
This time, I would walk in where he could see me. And he needed to see me. That was the point.
I looked at the gold knife.
He dies, or I do.