CHAPTER 37: MASKS AND DAGGERS (2)

Ayren leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled beneath his chin. His violet eyes narrowed slightly, and the room seemed to grow colder despite the morning sun streaming through the windows.

"Tell me, Soren Thorne...what is your house?" The question sliced through the air, sudden and sharp as a blade in the dark.

Soren felt his pulse quicken. This wasn’t about politics anymore; this was personal. The truth was simple, but admitting it here felt like laying down a weapon.

"I have none," he said, meeting Ayren’s gaze steadily. "I’m gutter-born."

"Gutter-born," Ayren repeated, rolling the words on his tongue like he was tasting an unfamiliar wine. His lips curved into a smile that never reached his eyes. "Then you are the most dangerous kind. A blade with no sheath, no scabbard, no master. Such blades cut everything...including the hand that wields them."

The shard pulsed against Soren’s chest, a single beat of warning. He kept his face carefully blank, though his mind raced with implications.

Ayren leaned forward, the movement so fluid it seemed choreographed. "Would you betray my brother, if another house offered you more?"

The question hung in the air between them, a trap laid bare. Soren felt sweat prickle at the back of his neck. One wrong word here could undo everything.

Valenna’s voice flickered in his mind, cool and urgent: ’Do not let him pin you. Speak as if you were playing.’

Soren took a slow breath, considering his words with the care of a man handling broken glass. "Depends on what they offered," he said finally, "and how sharp their leash was."

For a moment, silence stretched between them, thin as a blade’s edge. Then Ayren laughed, a sound smooth, cold, and theatrical, like ice breaking over a frozen lake.

"Good," he said, genuine amusement dancing in his eyes. "You learn faster than most recruits. Perhaps you’ll even survive."

He rose from his seat in one fluid motion, the chair sliding back without a sound. Soren watched as Ayren crossed the chamber, moving toward a glass cabinet he hadn’t noticed before.

Inside, ceremonial masks rested on velvet stands, faces carved from polished wood, hammered silver, and gleaming onyx.

Ayren’s fingers, long and elegant, selected one with deliberate care. The mask was obsidian dark, with veins of amethyst that caught the light in ways that perfectly matched his eyes. He lifted it from its stand, the movement reverent.

"The Midnight Court mask," Ayren said, his voice soft with something like affection. "Worn only during the darkest negotiations, when blood prices are set and alliances broken."

He placed it briefly before his face, his eyes gleaming through the eyeholes. The effect was unsettling, Ayren’s features, already sharp and perfect, became something inhuman, a creature of shadow and calculation.

He lowered the mask, setting it down with the same precision with which he’d lifted it. "Remember this, Thorne: men wear armor on the battlefield, but masks at court. Only fools fight without either."

Soren nodded, understanding washing over him like cold water. The lesson wasn’t about houses or politics, it was about survival in a world where words could kill as surely as steel.

Ayren stepped closer, his voice dropping to a smooth, deliberate murmur. "My brother wants a knight. My father wants a knife." His eyes fixed on Soren’s, searching for something in their depths. "I want... to see if you can be both."

The words settled in Soren’s stomach like stones, heavy with implication. The shard against his chest seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat, a reminder of all he had to lose.

"Return tomorrow," Ayren said, turning away in clear dismissal. "We’ve only begun carving you into something useful."

Soren rose from his chair, recognizing the command for what it was. He bowed slightly, not too deep, which would suggest servility, but enough to acknowledge Ayren’s position.

The noble’s back was already turned, his attention returned to the papers on his desk, as if Soren had ceased to exist the moment the conversation ended.

The corridor outside felt unnervingly silent after the intensity of Ayren’s chamber. Soren’s boots made no sound on the polished floor, as if the very stone had been trained to swallow noise.

He passed the tapestries of bloodlines and portraits of dead nobles, their painted eyes seeming to follow him with new interest.

As he walked back toward the barracks, Valenna’s voice murmured in his mind, clearer now that he was alone. "That one plays with daggers, not blades," she warned. "Be careful...the cut is slower, but it bleeds longer."

Soren clenched his fist around the shard beneath his shirt, feeling its warmth against his palm. The weight of this new battlefield pressed down on him, a place where the wounds were invisible but no less fatal.

’Knights and knives,’ he thought, remembering Ayren’s words. Could he be both? Did he want to be either?

The barracks door loomed ahead, and with it, the stares and whispers that awaited. Behind him lay a path into power and danger in equal measure. Ahead, the uncertain futures of those who would either rise with him or fall beneath him.

Soren took a deep breath and pushed forward. One step at a time. One battle at a time. One mask at a time.

The shard pulsed once more against his heart, as if in agreement.

Soren stood at the doorway to the barracks, bracing himself for the onslaught of stares and whispers. The morning’s lesson with Ayren Velrane still echoed in his mind, each perfectly articulated word etched into his memory like knife marks on wood.

’Knights and knives...huh’ he thought again, the phrase turning over in his mind as he pushed the door open.

The expected hush fell over the room. Recruits froze mid-conversation, their eyes tracking him as he moved toward his cot.

Soren kept his face carefully blank, his shoulders relaxed despite the tension coiling beneath his skin. He’d worn this mask in Nordhav’s streets too many times to count, the look that said he noticed everything but cared about nothing.

"Still alive, then?" Dane asked as Soren reached his bunk. The big recruit was polishing his boots with methodical care, his massive hands surprisingly gentle with the worn leather.

"For now," Soren replied, sitting down on his cot. The thin mattress barely yielded beneath his weight.