Because knowing better and wanting less were different muscles, and she'd always been stronger in the first than the second. Because the man who'd trembled when she showed him his portrait was real — she'd staked her career, her eye, her entire philosophy of seeing on the ability to distinguish masks from faces, and he was not a lie she'd invented. He was a truth she'd uncovered, and the fact that he'd buried himself again didn't make the uncovering false.
But it made it useless.
She turned from the mirror. Sat on the bed. Pressed her hands flat against her thighs and breathed — in through the nose, out through the mouth, a habit learned in her mother's hospice room, when the smell of antiseptic and endings had made the air feel thin and she'd needed to stay upright long enough to hold a dying woman's hand.
The gathering was in two days. She had a role to play. Eyes down. Silent. Obedient. Unremarkable.
She could do this. She'd been doing it her whole life — performing composure, wearing the mask of the woman who didn't need anyone, painting the truth she couldn't speak. The only difference was that now she knew what Skarreth's mask felt like from the inside.
TWENTY-TWO
The monsters arrived in silk.
They came in private shuttles and armored transports, in vessels that gleamed with the profits of human misery. They came with retinues of bodyguards and attendants and acquisitions displayed like jewelry — living beings in collars, walking two steps behind their owners with the rehearsed blankness of people who had learned that expression was punishable. They came bearing gifts: rare spirits, exotic weapons, data chips containing intelligence worth more than planets. They came smiling.
Skarreth greeted each one at the entrance to his estate with his hand extended and his fangs displayed in the approximation of warmth that had taken him three years to perfect. Lord Maeven, whose breeding operations on Tanaris IV processed six hundred beings a year. Commander Draya Solke, retired military, who now ran supply chains through the Kael-Voss corridor with the logistical precision of her former career. The Ghannet Twins, whose faces were identical and whose cruelty was competitive — each trying to outdo the other in creative degradation, a sibling rivalry written in scars across their property's skin. Tarek Mohn, quiet and grandfatherlyand responsible for the death of every slave who'd ever tried to escape his compound, their bodies left at the gates as advertisement.
And Rheth Voss, arriving last because Voss understood theater, stepping from his shuttle in a suit that cost more than Skarreth's entire cover operation, his smile so warm and genuine that you'd trust him with your life right until the moment he sold it.
"Skarreth." Voss clasped his hand with both of his. The grip lingered a beat too long — a display of dominance dressed as affection. "Your estate is more beautiful every year. You really must share the name of your groundskeeper."
"I keep replacing them. They never quite meet my standards."
Voss laughed. The sound carried across the entrance hall, and three of his attendants flinched at the edges of the room. The flinch was invisible to everyone except Skarreth, who cataloged it as he cataloged everything: another data point, another wound he could not yet heal.
"Come," Skarreth said. "The others are already settled. Dinner is about to be served."
The dining hall blazed with light. Skarreth had designed the table arrangement himself — a long obsidian surface that reflected the chandelier overhead like a dark mirror, seating for sixteen, each place set with crystal and silver and the understated luxury that communicated wealth without vulgarity. The room said: I am richer than you, but I am too refined to mention it. The slavers appreciated this. They were, in their own estimation, refined people. Cultured people. People of taste who happened to trade in flesh.
He took his seat at the head of the table and raised his glass.
"To another prosperous year."
Sixteen glasses rose. Sixteen mouths echoed the toast. The liquid was a seventy-year Meridian vintage that tasted of smoke and stone and had been aged in barrels made from trees that no longer existed. It cost more per bottle than most laborers earned in a decade. He drank and tasted nothing.
The conversation flowed with practiced ease — market fluctuations, territorial disputes, the inconvenience of increased Free Worlds patrols along the Tanaris border. Skarreth navigated each exchange with the fluidity of long practice, offering intelligence sparingly, receiving it greedily, laughing at the right moments. Maeven told a joke about a shipment of humans that had been mislabeled as livestock. The punchline involved customs fees. The table roared. Skarreth's lips split over his fangs in what passed for amusement, and the sound that emerged from his throat was indistinguishable from genuine laughter.
Seven years.
He'd been doing this for seven years. Nearly three thousand days of swallowing knives. Of smiling while people discussed breeding programs and break-in techniques and the optimal caloric intake for maintaining a slave's working capacity without giving them enough energy to run. Of raising glasses to prosperity that was calculated in bodies. Of being so convincing that Voss — who trusted no one, whose instincts had never failed him — still invited him to the inner circle, still shared intelligence, still considered him an ally.
Eight hundred and twenty-three freed. The number sat behind his sternum like a coal. Some nights it burned warm enough to justify this. Tonight it was ash.
Commander Solke leaned across the table, her silver hair catching the light. "I heard you acquired something interesting recently, Skarreth. A human woman. An artist." Her eyes glintedwith professional curiosity. "Unusual choice for you. Your taste usually runs more... functional."
"Diversifying my portfolio." He swirled his wine. "She has a particular talent that I find useful."
"What talent could a human artist possibly?—"
"She paints the truth." He said it with cold amusement, as if discussing a parlor trick. "Show her a face and she'll strip it bare on canvas. Every secret, every lie, every hidden motive rendered in oil paint. I find it... entertaining."
The table processed this with varying degrees of interest. Maeven's eyes narrowed — a man with many secrets assessing the threat. Voss smiled like a man who'd been handed a new piece in a game he was already winning. The Ghannet Twins exchanged a glance that communicated volumes in their private, wordless language.
"Bring her out," Voss said. It wasn’t a request.
Octavia stood behind his chair in a dress of deep burgundy that Nadir had selected — fine enough to signal her value, modest enough to deflect attention from her body. Her locs were pulled back with a silk tie. Her hands were clasped in front of her. Her eyes were down.
Everything he'd ordered.
