TheSerelresidencewasa cathedral of old money and even older ambitions. No matter how much the rest of New Found Haven modernized, the President’s quarters remained untouched by anything as fragile as progress. Corridors of burnished black walnut led to the great dining hall, where generations of the Heart’s rule hung in oil and canvas, every ancestor rendered with the solemnity of a funeral mask.
Greyson’s shoes made no sound on the inlaid floors, an empty man among ghosts. He paused at the archway to the dining room, and took a breath, steadying himself before entering the room then taking his seat.
If the Entertainment District was all veiled violence and artifice, this room was naked power—set like a trap, designed to draw blood with nothing but a glance.
The table stretched forever, a plank of mahogany so polished it reflected the candelabra’s flames in a perfect mirror image. At its head, sat the gold-leafed throne, reserved for Maximus Serel. President and patriarch.
Four places were set. One for Greyson, one for his father, and one for Elara, the mother who’d built the city’s mask tradition into ironclad law. Outside of these walls, she was a force to be reckoned with. She was cutting and lethal. But here, in this house, she was as trapped as the rest of them.
A fourth chair—Lira’s—stood at a carefully measured distance, closer to Maximus but always out of arm’s length.
The housekeepers moved like smoke, seen only in the periphery, never acknowledged by name. Each place setting was calibrated to perfection. Folded napkin, obsidian edged plate, water goblet filled to the meniscus. There was no music, only the sizzle of wax and the faint scratch of preparations flowing from the kitchens.
Elara arrived first, her mask a shimmer of white gold, delicate as frost. Her hand swept lovingly across Greyson’s shoulder as she roundedthe table and sat. She met his eyes behind her mask and held his gaze.
“You look tired, my dear,” she said, voice hushed. “Rough night?”
Greyson considered lying. “You could say that.”
She reached for her water glass but didn’t drink. “You should take better care of yourself. Your Vow will be in four days. You’ll want to look your best.”
He nearly smiled at her transactional tone. “Always the diplomat.”
Elara’s eyes flicked to the entrance. “It helps. Sometimes.”
Lira slipped in next, her mask a brutal geometry of rose gold angles. She wore her hair up, every long, dark strand lacquered into place. She didn’t greet her mother, nor her brother. She simply slid into her chair, arranged her napkin, and waited.
Maximus entered last.
He wore no mask, but his face was more formidable than any metal. The lines had deepened since Greyson was a boy, the jaw a little sharper, the eyes colder. He surveyed the table, assessed the seating, and sat without ceremony.
The meal was served in three silent courses. First, a soup as black as the city at midnight. Then, a slab of meat so rare it bled onto the plate. Last, a citrus tartlet.
They ate in silence. It wasn’t an awkward silence—there was nothing tentative about it—but a deliberate suppression, the kind that dared you to fill it and risk being devoured.
Greyson was the one who broke it.
“Father,” he said, careful to keep his tone neutral, “I wanted to ask about Brooker.”
His brother’s name landed on the table like a hammer. Elara’s hand trembled, just once, before she set her spoon down. Lira’s jaw clenched, so subtly only someone who’d known her from birth would notice.
Maximus didn’t look up from his plate. “What about him?”
“Where are you in your search for the Daggermouth that killed him?” Greyson forced himself to look at his father.
For a second, Maximus’s eyes flickered—something unsettling, lethal. Then he set his fork down, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and leaned back in the chair.
“I thought I told you to drop this.”
Greyson did not drop it.
He would never drop it, not until all of the Daggermouths were wiped from New Found Haven.
He ignored his father’s statement. “I heard from a Veyra captain that—”
Maximus cut him off. “What you heard is irrelevant. He was murdered, and I will not risk more of my men to satisfy you with a name.”
Elara tried to intervene, her voice brittle. “This is not the place—”
