CHAPTER 92: MASKS AND GOWNS

Two days before the first event of the Moon Festival, Rion announced that I was getting a break from training.

Apparently it truly didn’t mean a ’break’ for me. Not when Raye kept dragging me to help her with the preparations for the Moon Festival.

And if I wasn’t doing that, I was either in the library or study room. Not that Rion instructed me to do so. I guessed I got addicted in studying. I got too curious, too eager to get a stable grasp of my wolf’s power.

"I’m trying," I whispered into the quiet. "It just—" I rubbed my temples. "Every time I pull, something drags back."

It felt wrong to admit it aloud, but honesty was the only way forward: the bond answered, yes, but touching it drained me like a siphon in a barrel. As if the thread Rion had told me to seek ran through a field of thorns that snagged and bled me on the way.

The first instinct of our wolves is to protect us. That’s what he’d said.

That was why he’d shoved me—because desperation sharpens fingers. Because when death opened its mouth beneath me, my hand, finally, knew where to close.

I was still annoyed with him for it. But anger was not the same as ignorance.

I could admit the truth: it had helped. I understood the hurdle now. There was a weight on the bond, something that had not been there when I first received my wolf years ago.

Three years of suppression had altered the pathways between us, and now every reach felt like prying up nails driven by another hand.

* * *

The night of the masquerade street party arrived.

I stood before my mirror, and for a moment, I did not recognize myself.

Raye had let me wear the customized gown the Central district’s famous seamstress made for me.

The royal blue gown hugged my waist and opened like a spill of night-water from the hips, a sweep of satin that caught every stray lantern-glimmer and trapped it in its folds. The neckline was a soft queen’s curve, leaving my shoulders bare, collarbones dusted with a fine powder of light that made my skin look as if the moon had kissed it and left a blessing.

Silver thread stitched constellations along the bodice, not any map I knew but a secret one, with a cluster of stars right over my heart.

My hair, black as polished ebony, was half-braided, the braid interlaced with a slender ribbon of silver. The rest fell in soft curls to the small of my back, ends coaxed into shape by Raye’s patient, magical hands.

She’d pulled a few tendrils loose to frame my face, where my hazel eyes flecked with gold had been lined just enough to make those flecks catch like sun on honey.

Around my throat sat a delicate crescent-moon pendant that Raye had gotten from her beloved jewelry collection.

"You look amazing, Raye," I breathed when I saw her look for the night.

Amazing was far too small a word.

Her velvet dress was burgundy with a sleeping bruise’s violet in its undertone, cut to skim the body like wind obeying a map. Her pixie-cut hair looked sharper than a dagger,her burgundy eyes had gone almost onyx beneath the way she’d smudged them.

Her lips were painted in a deep red so dark it flirted with black, and when she smiled, it was the sort of smile that began wars or ended them.

"Yes, we are perfect!" she chirped, spinning so the skirt flashed like wine under lamplight.

I laughed.

She added, "Masked, I’m deadlier. I’ll be bringing three men to their knees by the end of the first song."

"Only three?" I fastened my own mask—silver, smooth as frost. It framed my eyes in a sweep of filigree.

"I’m pacing myself." She tugged me by the hand. "Come on, lovely Vivien. Undercity won’t know what to do with us."

The festival wasn’t only in the Central District tonight, every district was having its own masquerade street party.

We met the men down the hall of the castle.

Diaval and Ares were waiting beneath a chandelier that made them both look like paintings come to life.

Ares had wrapped himself in dashing gold and black, an ensemble that managed to be both insolent and immaculate. His mask was a slice of storm-glass, edges sharp, set with a single pale stone that winked when he turned his head.

He looked at Raye and me up and down, slow and appreciative, and clucked his tongue.

"You girls look magnificent," he said, offering the sort of grin that had probably gotten him slapped and kissed in equal measure. "If the moon sees you, she’ll be jealous."

"Make sure she files a formal complaint," I replied. "We’ll send her an apology basket."

Raye elbowed him as she passed. "If you drool on my skirt, I will end you."

Diaval was less flashy than Ares. He wore a deep, tempered black that drank the light. His hair had been tamed into something nearly polite, which only made the menace of his shoulders more pronounced. The mask he chose was simple—matte, clean lines, covering only enough to make his eyes look like embers banked for later.

"Where is the Alpha?" I asked, looking around.

Ares’s mouth ticked, almost a smile. "Dealing with something. He’ll join the party later."

"Hmm." I smoothed a hand over my skirt to hide the quick twist in my stomach. Annoyance, relief, something else I didn’t want to name. "Then we’ll hold the fort until His Shadowliness deigns to appear."

Diaval smirked. "His Shadowliness. I’m keeping that."

"Please don’t," Ares said mildly, then turned to me and offered his arm. It was a courtly gesture that looked almost comical on a man who could lift a huge wagon. "Shall we?"

I rested my hand on his forearm. Diaval offered his arm to Raye, who accepted it with the smile of a queen.

Ahead, the great doors were thrown open. Music floated up—fiddle and drum and the low thrumming call of a horn.

Laughter rose and fell like birds startled into flight. Lanterns waited to be stars.

"Ready?" Raye whispered, eyes bright behind her glittering mask.