The shadows behind me tighten, responding to the edge in my voice.
"Iammy masks. Penelope, Sera, every name I've taken. Every scar I've earned. Every monster I've bound to me."
I gesture behind me at James with his ember eyes and shadow-gauntlet hands, at Eddie with his mind and his steady, steady heart, at the vast dark presence that fills every wall and floor and breath of air in this house.
"That's not my disguise. That's my architecture. I built myself from nothing, and what I built is more real than anything you've ever peeled back or cut open or thought you understood."
I see it then. The thing underneathhismask, the thing he's spent years projecting onto others because he couldn't face it in himself.
Fear. Plain, animal, unadorned fear. Not of Daddy or the shadows or of James or Eddie or the cold. Ofme. Of the fact that I am everything he told himself didn't exist—a woman who was broken and who rebuilt herself not into something false but into somethingmore. Something that doesn't need his revelation because she already walked through the fire and came out the other side carrying it in her hands.
"You wanted to meet the girl underneath the story," I whisper.
I'm close enough now to feel his breath on my face, quick and shallow and smelling of copper.
"But there is no girl underneath. There's only the story. And the story is about a queen and her monsters." I hold out my hand expectantly to the side.
Behind me, I hear the soft whisper of steel clearing leather. In my peripheral vision, James's hand extends from the shadows, holding his favorite knife. He settles it into my waiting palm.
The handle is warm from his grip, the weight familiar in a way that settles something restless in my chest. The blade catches the faint light from the ceiling, just enough to draw a line of silver in the dark.
The fear in Red Hands’s eyes crystallizes into something clearer, something like recognition. He sees me, finally, and not as a specimen. Not as an unfinished project. As the thing he always claimed to be looking for but never actually wanted to find.
The truth.
"And this," I say, moving the blade close enough to catch his reflection, "is what happens when you steal from a queen."
Chapter 13
Sera
Thebladedoesn’thesitate.
It parts his skin the way truth parts lies. A line opens from the corner of his left eye to the hinge of his jaw, deep enough to bite muscle, deep enough to flood. Blood surges, hot and obedient, painting his cheek in a slick, red curtain that drips off his chin and patters onto the packed earth.
Red Hands screams, a high, ragged sound that claws up from his throat and bounces off the basement walls.
Thisis the truth he worshipped, and it’s messier than he ever imagined.
“You like to reveal things,” I say, leaning close. The smell of his blood is iron and salt, sharp enough to coat my tongue. “Now I do too. Let’s see what’s underyourskin. Daddy, it’s your turn.”
The shadows holding him tighten like a vise. Then tendrils finer than razor wire peel away from the mass, glistening with a cold, wet hunger. They aren’t blades, but they do cut. They slide under the collar of his shirt, along his sleeves, down his pantlegs, and where they pass, his clothes shred. Fabric rips, threads snapping. In seconds, he’s naked on the dirt, pale skin prickling in the crypt-cold air.
So vulnerable now. Just meat like he always talks about, quivering and exposed.
“The first mask,” I say. “The costume of the everyday. Gone.”
James steps to my right, a solid wall of heat and shadow. He laughs down at Red Hands, his ember-flecked eyes burning with that boyish, feral delight.
“Is that a pecker between your legs?” he asks. “I cannae tell.”
The shadow-tendrils don’t stop at clothes. They trace the ridge of his collarbone, the dip of his navel, the soft give of his belly, and yes, even the sad, floppy thing between his legs. They coil around his wrists and ankles, not just to hold, but to dig in, piercing skin with needle-fine points that draw blood.
Red Hands’s breathing turns to quick, shallow gasps.
“What made you the way you are?” The knife in my hand is a steady, familiar weight, already sticky with his blood. “Do you have mommy issues? Do you think yours wears a mask? Does she not love you enough? Is this where it all stemmed from? Hmmm?”
He whimpers, but I don’t really care that he doesn’t answer. What matters is him, not what made him him.
