She considers that, then frowns slightly. “Why do you wear it all the time? Can’t you take it off?”
“Tradition,” I reply, though the word feels thin even as it leavesmy mouth. Too easy. Too rehearsed. “The Barons have always worn masks, and when I took over the crown, the decision was made to never take it off.”
Her gaze doesn’t waver. She waits for more and for once, I give it to her.
“The masks allow us to set aside our identities,” I continue, more honestly now. “So when we enter a ritual, we come whole. Unburdened by names and faces. Masks are conduits–between the living and the dead, the present and what came before us. They honor ancestors. They carry us into transformation.”
I glance out the window as the mayor’s house comes into view, lit like a shrine.
“They represent duality,” I add. “Light and dark. Fertility and decay. Life and what feeds it. When we wear them, we don’t just observe, we embody. Spirits. Deities. Sometimes beasts. It’s how protection is ensured. How rebirth is earned.”
Arianette is quiet, but attentive. Then she asks, softly, “But why do you wear it outside the rituals? Like tonight?”
“The mask remains on for everyone.”
She swallows. “Even me.”
“Even you.” I reach out, touch her chin, tilt her face toward mine. There’s so much innocence in this Daughter of Darkness. “It’s for your protection.”
Her brows knit slightly.
“The histories of our organizations are bloody,” I say. “Jealous. Driven by greed and hunger for power. By keeping my face covered, I’m freer to speak the truth. Faces invite leverage. They invite threat.”
What I don’t say is how heavy the mask truly is.
Not in weight, but in meaning.
It hides the truth that my uncle and my cousin are both dead. One at my hand. That Amber’s infidelity didn’t stop at betrayal, that she tried to sacrifice Whitaker before he could even walk. That she poisoned the bloodline from the inside and called it devotion.
The mask cloaks more than my identity.
It conceals guilt. Shame. The humiliation of what my family became at their hands.
I wear it because some truths cannot survive the light.
The car rolls to a stop. Lanterns burn on either side of the steps; silhouettes of Forsyth’s wealthy and powerful shift in the windows. My Shadow opens the door, and I step out first, then turn, extending my hand because the drop from the car is steep and those heels are weapons in the wrong hands. She takes it without hesitation, small fingers curling into mine, trusting.
She gathers the skirt with her free hand and swings her legs out. The movement parts her thighs for the length of a heartbeat.
No panties.
The porch lamps catch on the smooth, bare skin and the glint of delicate silver. Damon’s work. Another ritual. Another mark.
Her scent drifts up to me, and my cock jerks hard against the seam of my trousers before I can stop it. She doesn’t notice; she’s too busy steadying herself on my arm, the tulle settling back into place like nothing happened.
My hand slides without conscious thought to the small of her back, palm spreading wide over the rigid corset boning, fingers pressing just enough to remind her who she belongs to tonight. Whether she wants the touch or not.
Time to see if we can pull off this charade.
God help us both if we can’t.
The mayor’sstudy smells of cigar smoke, old leather, and the faint copper tang of ambition. A crystal tumbler of club soda sweats in my hand; the lime wedge bobs like a tiny green corpse.
The mayor, red-faced, half-drunk on the bourbon he raved about for twenty minutes, gestures with his glass toward the north windows, as though the Lucia ruins are visible through brick and night.
“That whole goddamn block is a scar,” he says. “Charred timbers,broken glass, and a crater where the ballroom used to be. The Lucia mansion sits in a trust for ‘Counts’ leadership.’” He snorts. “The only members of KNT that remain are being scraped off neighboring properties.”
The deputy mayor grimaces at the description, but it’s just a facade. Carolyn Reicht is as ruthless as any man in this town.
