The Fairborn drive looks like money pretending to be winter—swept stone, glass facades catching the pale sun. I cut the engine. Silence sharpened everything.

Our rings flashed in the cold light on our joined hands. I breathed around the knot in my stomach and looked at Mira. She threaded her fingers through mine and squeezed once, thumb on my pulse like she owned it.

“With me?” she murmured.

“Always,” I said, and meant it.

We didn’t reach the knocker. The door opened on cue—staff always a step ahead in this house. Heat spilled into the vestibule: white tea and bergamot (Mom), and a ghost of sandalwood with black pepper (Dad) that said he’d already crossed this foyer today.

Fluorescent winter brightness slid through the glass ceiling, making the marble look colder than it felt. My heels clicked. The family portraits along the staircase watched like a curated jury.

A butler in slate-gray stepped forward. “Welcome home, Miss Cassandra. Ms. Quinveil.” His gaze brushed our left hands for exactly one heartbeat—trained not to linger—and then he was easing our coats away.

Mom appeared at the far end of the hall in winter cream, posture perfect, eyes cool and exacting. Her gaze landed on our linked hands; the platinum signet on her finger caught the light and gave a clean, contained gleam—there and gone. Dad stepped in a breath later, measured stride, suit precise. The faint tick of his pocket watch didn’t match the foyer’s clock by a hair. Noted.

“Cassandra,” Mom said, smooth as polished glass. “Mira.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Fairborn,” Mira answered, steady-warm even with all this stone underfoot.

“Welcome,” Dad added, approachable smile set to public-appropriate. His eyes dipped to our rings and didn’t flinch. Professional. Practiced.

I unclenched my hand—little crescent moons from my own nails—and laced my fingers tighter with Mira’s. No borrowed senses, no magic hum. Just us deciding to stand here.

“Shall we sit?” Mom asked, already angling us toward the sunlit room that calls itself a sitting room and has never once been casual.

Mira gave my hand one last coded squeeze—I’ve got you—and we followed Mom’s heels into the light.

I was built for rooms like this. That’s what people assume—crystal in the light, porcelain that never chips, a daughter who can pour an espresso without rattling the saucer. And most days, I can. Today the marble feels like ice through my shoes.

We take the sofa. I don’t drop Mira’s hand. Her warmth threads through the room’s curated chill, toasted-sugar comfort against white-tea air. I can do this. Captain voice. No hedging. No theatrics.

“Before anything else today,” I say, steady, “I want you to hear this from me. All of it.”

Mom’s face is perfect as ever; only her eyes sharpen a fraction. Dad leans back that practiced inch—wolf-still, every muscle saying listening without giving an inch of ground. Napkins aligned like a ruler across the tray. The signet on Mom’s finger throws a thin blade of winter light; the pocket watch at Dad’s wrist ticks a beat I suddenly can’t predict.

“You’re going to see things soon—publicly—that won’t make sense without context,” I continue. I make myself hold their eyes. “So here it is. The world beyond the Veil is real. Mira is from that world.”

A look passes between them—practiced, old—and then their attention tips to her with a care that isn’t polite, it’s informed. Dad’s mouth softens by half a degree. “We’re acquainted with… certain households,” he says, choosing each word like glass. Mom lowers her voice—not performance, protection. “And in this room, we are careful with names. For courtesy, would you prefer we say Princess of Eversea, or simply Mira?”

Mira’s thumb traces one slow arc across my knuckles. She doesn’t speak over me, but I feel the debate in her hand—drop titles, ask them to say daughter, burn the script.

“In private,” she says at last, even, “Mira is best. If a title is necessary tonight, Princess of Eversea will do.”

I lift our joined hands into the stripe of sun so the rings are impossible to pretend away. “These aren’t just pretty,” I say, clean. “We exchanged vows. I am her consort. Properly—” the word sets in my mouth, sure “—Lady Cassandra Fairborn Firebrand.”

Silence like held crystal. Dad’s thumb rests on the crown of his watch and doesn’t wind; I’ve seen him do that when he’s counting what he won’t say. Mom’s eyes move once to Mira’s face, then to our hands. She understands the weight; she just won’t speak the titles louder than the room can bear.

Only then does the cup click against its saucer—too loud—and Mom flinches in the eyes at the sound, a crack not meant for anyone to see. “You are seventeen,” she says, porcelain warmed in the hand, not a weapon. “We dislike the timing. The danger.”

“I know how old I am,” I say. “And I chose her. Not to make a point. Not for headlines. For me.”

Mom’s gaze drops to our rings. Her fingers tighten around the signet; the platinum throws a thin flare and—there, gone—a little prickle skates along my wrist when she reaches to smooth a nonexistent wrinkle at my cuff, the kind of maternal correction muscle memory can’t suppress. Not a shock, not a spell. Just… old metal with a history I don’t know.

Dad’s eyes stay on Mira a beat longer, then return to me. “There are agreements in this city older than the houses that sit on it,” he says, measured. “We are… mindful of what we reveal. And when.”

Which is not permission and not denial. It’s a boundary with teeth. And something sharp and unspoken under it; a bargain I wasn’t there to hear.

Mira’s thumb presses once at the base of my finger—here. I hold her hand tighter and keep my voice clean. “Then start with this: we will be prudent. But we won’t pretend.”

“How long?” slips out before I can stop it. “How long have you known—about all of this?”

Another glance between them. Not guilt. Not glee. Something harder. “Long enough to understand what we’re asking you to be careful with,” Dad says, measured. “Some accords in this city predate the foundations.”

Mom’s eyes flicker—there and gone—the kind of softness that belongs to late nights at Elliot’s bedside, not galas. “We knew the Firebrands when knowing them meant nothing outside a very quiet circle,” she says, and then the mask closes, not cruelly, just… carefully. “But this conversation is about you.”

Translation: we are not opening those doors today.

They’re not robots. They’re scared. For me. For him. For the image that keeps the donations flowing and the hands steady around a fragile boy in a hospital bed. For boundaries they call safety.

“We won’t forbid you,” Mom says at last, steel stitched through velvet. “We expect prudence. Discretion. Your image matters—for many reasons. Your safety matters more.”

Dad adds, “And hers,” with a pointed, courteous look at Mira that stops short of friendly but is not contempt. It’s assessment. It’s, Are you going to break my daughter or keep her breathing?

Mira inclines her head, respectful without shrinking. “I take care of what’s mine,” she says quietly, the only line she gives them. It lands like an oath without a court listening.

I let out the breath I’ve been holding. “We hear you,” I say. “I’m not hiding her.”

Mom exhales through her nose—the smallest surrender to a timeline she can’t choreograph. The signet flashes once more. “We have the gala this evening,” she says, pivoting with surgeon’s calm. “We will continue after. For now, we get dressed, we smile, and we do not invite a scandal before midnight.”

There it is: love, translated into logistics.

Dad stands, smoothing a nonexistent crease. “I’ll have the car and the right eyes informed of what we intend them to see.” His hand rests on my shoulder as he passes—brief, warm, real. He squeezes once. It says I hate this and I love you more.

Mom stands last and doesn’t make me come to her; she closes the distance and presses a kiss two inches from my temple like she did when I was five and feverish. Then she steps back, posture perfect again. “Come,” she says, voice gentler than the word. “We’ll get you both ready.”

I squeeze Mira’s fingers—one beat, two, our yes—and rise. The house looks the same as it always has: glass, stone, light. Only now the edges are honest. Only now the truth is set out between the espresso cups like fine china, and somehow nothing shattered. Not yet.

Mom’s dressing suite is winter-light and quiet enough to hear fabric breathe. Pale walls, a triptych of mirrors, a row of gowns sleeping in garment bags. White tea steams on a low table; jasmine hairspray hangs faintly in the air, precise as a signature.

Mom doesn’t call a stylist. She lifts a silk robe from a hook and hands it to me without looking away from Mira.

“You’ll dress second,” Mom tells me—gentle, not up for debate. To Mira, with a small nod: “Come sit.”

Mira obeys. The stool squeaks once; she stills it with a fingertip like she can calm objects the way she calms rooms. She’s barefoot, ring bright on her left hand—unhidden, a small sun.

Mom stands in front of her, hands clasped, studying. Not hunting flaws; mapping the person.

“You’re taller than photographs suggest,” she says.

“I slouch when I’m trying to look small,” Mira replies, wry.

“Don’t.” Mom’s voice is soft iron. She reaches for a comb and, without touching, waits. “May I?”

Mira inclines her head. The first stroke is careful, reverent as a prayer you don’t entirely believe in but can’t stop saying. The comb slides through starlit dark, copper-gold threads catching the light. I watch my mom’s hands—steady, practiced—do a new thing.

“Hold still, darling,” Mom murmurs, automatic.

We all hear it. Mira goes perfectly still.

“What do you do,” Mom asks, eyes on the mirror, “when a room decides you are the story?”

“Find the exits,” Mira says. “Then find Cassie.”

My throat tightens. Mom’s gaze flicks to me in the mirror, then back to Mira. “Good. Again.”

She pins a loose curl behind Mira’s ear, then opens a flat velvet tray: bracelets, pins, a narrow hand-chain delicate as a sketch. She hovers it above Mira’s ring, weighing intent.

“We’re not hiding it,” Mira says. Not defiant. A fact.

“We’re framing it,” Mom answers. “May I?”

At Mira’s offered hand, Mom fastens the fine chain from wrist to band. The gold kisses skin and settles. It draws the eye to the ring without swallowing it—acknowledgment over apology.

“You stand like someone who knows the cost of staying,” Mom says, meeting Mira’s eyes in the glass. “And like someone who’ll pay it if she must.”

Mira’s mouth lifts. “Only if she’s worth it.”

“She is,” I say before I can help it.

A corner of Mom’s mouth softens. She opens a garment bag and lifts a gown: ember-deep satin, clean lines, nothing caged about it. “Try this.”

Mira rises. Mom doesn’t summon attendants. She helps—an efficient, quiet choreography: zipper teeth, the soft thud of silk settling, her palm smoothing a seam that doesn’t need smoothing because touch is sometimes the point.

“Breathe,” Mom says.

Mira does. The gown doesn’t wear her; it recognizes her. The hand-chain glints like a vow that learned manners.

“Two questions,” Mom says, voice even. “What do you value most about my daughter? And what will you refuse to do to her, even when the world insists?”

Mira doesn’t look away. “I value her honesty when it costs. And I won’t make her small to soothe anyone else.” A heartbeat. “Including me.”

Something unclenches in my chest. Mom hears it too; I can tell by the way her shoulders ease a millimeter.

She turns to her vanity, opens a shallow drawer, and takes out a slim gold cuff etched with a faint laurel. Not flashy. Heritage made quiet.

“This was my grandmother’s,” she says, as if discussing weather. She slides it onto Mira’s bare wrist. “It’s gone through rooms meaner than tonight.”

Mira’s expression shifts—surprise, then gravity. “I’ll bring it back.”

“You’ll bring it back,” Mom agrees. “And in the meantime, it brings you through.”

For one breath, the suite is all mirror and pulse. Mom steps back. “You’ll do,” she says, and somehow it’s both formal and warm.

“Thank you,” Mira replies, simple as open hands.

Mom turns to me at last. “Your turn.”

I shrug into the robe’s cool silk and pad barefoot to the stool Mira just warmed. The cushion holds a little of her heat; I pretend it’s courage. Mom gathers my hair and sets the comb at my crown.

“You were very calm,” she says, and I realize she’s talking to me about the sitting room downstairs, not the comb in my hair. “Measured without being cold.”

“I had practice,” I say. “With the world. With her court.”

“And with me,” she returns, not unkind. She parts my hair cleanly. “Do you intend to keep the ring visible?”

“Yes.” I meet her eyes in the mirror. “If I’m ashamed of it, others will decide I should be.”

“Good,” she says softly, and slips a pair of earrings—ice-clear stones, thin gold—onto my lobes. “Turn.”

I turn. She opens another garment bag—glacial silk, a line that says I know how to stand and I know when to lean. She holds the hanger, waits for my nod, then helps me step in. Zipper up; a whisper of static lifts the fine hairs along my arms. Her hands are steady until the clasp at my nape; there, for the length of half a breath, they tremble. She conquers it, clicks the clasp home.

In the mirror, her platinum signet ring catches a sliver of light. For a blink, it shimmers—heat-haze faint, like a ward tasting the room and finding our truths acceptable. Then it’s only metal again.

“Look here,” she says, tapping the mirror’s center. “When a camera calls your name, you do not look at the lens first.”

“Where, then?”

“At the person you chose.” Her gaze flicks to Mira, who’s adjusting her cuff with unbothered competence. “Let them see you choose each other. It saves you explaining a thousand lesser things.”

“Noted,” Mira says, meeting my eyes so cleanly the room narrows to a line between us.

Mom reaches for her clutch, then pauses. She smooths a nonexistent wrinkle at Mira’s shoulder—the exact gesture she used to settle me before childhood recitals—and then does the same to mine.

“I am trying,” she says, low enough that it’s almost private.

“I know,” I answer. And I do.

A discreet knock. “Mrs. Fairborn? The car is ready. Mr. Fairborn is waiting.”

“Two minutes,” she calls. To Mira: “You aren’t what I expected.”

“Neither are you,” Mira answers, and somehow they both smile.

Mom offers me her arm. I take it, then tilt my head toward Mira. “With me?”

“Always,” Mira says, no flourish.

We move as three. Rings unhidden. Chain catching light. The mirrors hold the picture longer than they have to, as if even they approve.

Mira

Helena threads her arm through Cassie’s and steers her toward the front steps, a sweep of silk and winter perfume. The door hushes shut behind them; the house exhales. I’m left in the spill of a quieter corridor—leather and paper, the library’s breath. Lamplight pools on parquet; a glass case throws back a thin reflection of me, ring bright, hand-chain catching like a thought I keep remembering.

“Your Highness.”

Jameson Fairborn steps out from the shadow of a bookshelf, smoothing an already perfect cuff. He isn’t blocking the hall. He’s editing it—placing himself where I can’t avoid him without pretending I didn’t see.

“Mr. Fairborn,” I say. My fingers start their three-beat staccato against my seam—tap, tap, tap—and I flatten them to stillness.

“A word,” he says mildly. It isn’t a request.

We stop between two tall cases—histories on one side, ledgers on the other. He adjusts his cufflinks once more, a man rehearsing the gesture of thought while his mind works elsewhere. When his gaze settles, it’s steady, not unkind.

“You understand,” he says, “that my daughter’s life is not leverage. Not for court, not for optics, not for you.”

“I do,” I answer, plain. “I’m not here to take anything from her. I’m here to stand with her.”

A small incline of his head—acknowledgment, not yet approval. He draws a silver pocket watch from his waistcoat, checks nothing, closes it with a soft click that sounds more final than loud.

“What do you want from Cassandra,” he asks, “when no one’s watching you answer?”

The urge to smooth my cuff rises; I let it crest and pass. “Her honesty,” I say. “Her time. The right to help carry the weight when it gets too heavy. And the right to be told when I’m the weight.”

One brow ticks up. “And in return?”

“Everything I am,” I say, before I remember to wrap it prettier. “I don’t always package well. But I keep what I swear.”

He studies me the way he probably studies term sheets—looking for the clause that will bite him later.

“If you hurt her,” he says, very even, “I will make it my business to remove you from her life.”

I huff the smallest breath. “Sir, I’m… not the boy in this story,” I say wryly, because humor robs the line of its teeth before it can find mine. “But I am the one who will protect her. From courts, optics, myself—whatever needs it.”

Something eases in his posture—almost a laugh, if he allowed himself such things at twenty paces from a foyer full of cameras. He glances at my left hand then—at the band that’s not subtle, the fine chain drawing the eye to it on purpose—and back to my face.

“You are very young,” he says.

“So is she,” I answer. “And neither of us asked for the pace to be kind.”

He weighs me a second longer, then nods once. Not grand. Not grudging, either.

“Then don’t make me regret trusting you,” he says, “at my own gala.”

“I won’t,” I tell him. It lands like a promise because it is.

He steps closer—not looming, simply closing the space to what fathers consider honest distance—and sets a hand briefly on my shoulder. Warm, steady, human. The house doesn’t prickle; no copper-noise lifts the air. Whatever old magics hum in these walls, they don’t mind him touching me.

“For what it’s worth,” he adds, lower, “she looks… lighter today.”

“That’s her doing,” I say. “I’m just the proof she let herself.”

The corner of his mouth almost bends. He releases my shoulder, slides the watch away, and offers the corridor back.

From the foyer: the thunk of heavy doors, the cold hiss of winter air, a white-pulse stutter of flashbulbs testing their hunger. Showtime.

I straighten my cuff—once, only once—find the exits, then find Cassie in my mind and let that be the direction. When I step into the bright, Mr. Fairborn falls in beside me for the first few yards—not a wall, a witness. Then he peels off toward the host’s place, and I take mine—at her side, ring unhidden, ready to stand.

We don’t take the grand stairs; optics prefer doors. Mom threads Cassie toward a side corridor where winter air ghosts under the sill. A liveried driver waits beneath the porte cochère; the Fairborn sedan idles with its breath in the cold. Dad handles the front like a man who knows the choreography—valet, timing, the unobstructed lane that lets a camera think it discovered you.

The driver opens the rear door. Cassie slides in first—terrace-red silk, rings unapologetic—then offers me her hand. I take it. Warmth, steady. The door seals the house out; the glass turns the night into a soft, curated blur.

“Breathe,” she murmurs.

“With you,” I answer, and mean it.

The sedan makes a short, deliberate loop around the circular drive—thirty seconds of distance so the arrival can be an arrival. At the front portico, flashbulbs test their hunger. The driver steps out, smooth as punctuation, and opens our door to the white hiss of winter.

We exit to a polite stutter of shutters. Cassie takes my hand as if it’s the only thing that matters—because it is—and we walk the ten paces that turn a hallway into a stage. The doors bloom wide.

The Fairborn atrium blooms around us in white and gold—marble underfoot polished to a mirror, chandeliers like frost caught mid-fall, a string quartet stitching winter-light into the air. Flashbulbs soften to a polite glitter here; money has a way of teaching light to whisper.

Our rings catch the chandelier fire at once—two small suns flaring where everyone can see. I feel the room pivot. Whispers start as a silk rustle at the edges, then braid into a current: Firebrand. Consort. So young. Of course.

Cassie’s hand finds the small of my back. I let a breath out and loosen the heat in my skin a fraction—enough warmth to cut the lobby’s museum-cold, not enough to steam the glass. She stands a half-step in front, and I stand a half-step with her. Together reads better than led.

Perfume does its expensive war—citrus tops, iced florals, a little ozone from overworked chandeliers. I mark exits, cameras, the reflective planes that will betray us if we forget to be perfect from behind. Tap, tap—my fingers begin their treacherous rhythm, and Cassie shifts her hand back without looking, hooking my pinky in the space behind her and stilling it. We’re ridiculous. We’re practiced.

“Champagne?”

The tray appears on our left, perfectly level. The waiter is slim in black, nametag plain: Gary. He angles the tray with his left hand. With his right, he sets the stems exactly three taps apart on the silver—tap… tap… tap—too casual to be casual.

Hazel-green eyes. Cinnamon gum, cheap aftershave, a breath of paper dust that does not belong at a gala. The knit beanie is gone, but the bookstore-counter posture lives in his shoulders.

“Welcome,” he says, the same low rasp as the night I walked out with a ledger I shouldn’t have known existed. “Always good to see… readers.”

The small cut he makes before the last word lands like a wink with its eyes open.

I pause half a heartbeat—no more. Cassie feels it anyway; of course she does. Her thumb presses once at the base of my ring finger—question, ready, say the word—and I turn a fraction toward Gary, toward the tray.

“Always good to be… understood,” I reply lightly, and take two flutes. I pass one to Cassie; her smile is pure social sunlight. Gary inclines his head like a man who’s filed us under something new and drifts away, already another piece of furniture.

“Bookstore,” Cassie murmurs without moving her mouth.

“Mm.” I sip. “Upgraded costumes.”

Across the room, Mom is a column of winter peony and glass, already receiving senators and donors like weather receives the sea. Dad’s cufflinks flash as he moves from cluster to cluster, pocket watch a quiet weight in his vest. Elias is here too—warm hazel making a safe perimeter around a minister who laughs too hard. He catches my eye, gives the smallest nod: step, breathe, you’re fine. It unknots a tension under my ribs I hadn’t noticed I’d tied.

We move with the current—Cassie’s gown reading like a commandment in that terrace-red, my suit catching light in molten ripples. A waiter glides past on silent soles—black trousers, cream blouse, posture carved. “Marielle,” says the nametag. The air around her smells faintly of jasmine and old parchment.

She presents a tray of canapés at the exact height of our joined hands and lets her gaze rest on our rings for half a beat too long. Not prying—cataloging. A precise nod follows, not deference and not challenge. A ledger mark. Then she’s gone again, a shadow returning to the architecture.

“Friend?” Cassie asks, amused.

“Watcher,” I say. “Day Court under a very tidy hat.”

We circle the fountain that pretends to be natural rock. More whispers. Some smiles are genuine; many are made of practiced teeth. One noble’s eyes flick from my hand to Cassie’s to the way we stand—a geometric proof he does not like. I tip my head in a way that says: seen, not fed.

“Your mother,” Cassie murmurs, not looking.

The temperature shifts before the doors finish parting. Burnt orange and clove thread the air, warm as a story you’re not allowed to tell. Conversations fall half a note, just enough for the chandeliers to sing to themselves. Power moves the way heat does—quietly, until you remember it can burn.

Seara Firebrand steps into the atrium as if it grew to meet her. The crowd ripples, recalculating. Selene is at her shoulder, dawn in human shape. I feel the court in them both, the old geometry of attention folding itself along new lines toward us.

Cassie’s spine stays easy. My hand finds her back again. Our rings flare once more in the chandelier light—deliberate this time, like the punctuation of a sentence we’ve already chosen to finish.

“Showtime,” I murmur.

“Always,” she says, and smiles like a blade she’ll only ever point away from me.

The crowd parts the way wheat parts for flame.

Seara ascends the room without moving faster than anyone else—only the air announces her: amber resin humming low, burnt orange and clove cutting a path that leaves the chandeliers tasting sweeter for it. She wears gold like a verdict. Nobles align as if magnetized, constellations clicking into a new sky.

Her gaze skims the room, lands where it was always going to land: on the two rings that refuse to be rumors.

“Princess,” she says, polished warmth laid over razors. Then, to Cassie—her smile turning the faintest degree: “Miss Fairborn. We are—” a silken beat “—pleased to see the Consort… thriving.”

Ownership, wrapped in velvet. A neat little stamp that reads sanctioned, supervised, still ours.

Cassie doesn’t flinch. “Thank you for having us,” she says, tone pure host-daughter, posture unbudging. I feel the small muscle at her jaw soften instead of lock. She reads the room the way she reads a judge’s face—cataloging veneers, measuring tells.

Selene slides in on Seara’s wake, sun-honey and composure. She touches my arm—two fingers, quick press, a sister’s yes-you’re-here—and the knots in my shoulders loosen a notch. “You look strong,” she murmurs for me alone, then turns that steady warmth to Cassie. “Cassandra. Welcome.” Simple, and it lands like shelter. She shifts her stance half a foot, and suddenly Cassie has a clean line to both exits. Protector’s geometry, invisible unless you’re looking.

“Ambassadors,” someone says; “donors,” says someone else, and the cluster widens, eyes flicking to our hands and back. A hundred versions of control hum under the string quartet. I keep my heat low and even, set my palm at the center of Cassie’s back—a small, quiet anchor—and let Seara do what she does best: shape the story in a voice the hall can hear.

“Dominveil thrives when our alliances are elegant,” Seara tells a senator whose smile is all teeth. “And what is elegance,” her gaze skims our joined hands, gleams, “if not commitment made visible?”

From the perimeter, a shadow that thinks it’s subtle: night-blooming jasmine, crushed violet, cedar in a cool draft. Daevan stands half in the dark like a portrait that hasn’t decided to be painted, gaze too intent to be casual. Seara’s eyes skim him once—no more than an eyelash—but the message travels anyway: I see you. Behave.

“Elias,” Selene is saying, luminous as diplomacy, and my father is suddenly there at the edge of the knot—black tea and cedar smoke and the steadiness of a porch light. He doesn’t press my shoulder or make a speech; he only catches my eye—Are you good?—and then lifts his chin a hair toward Cassie. You’re alright. The smallest endorsement, built to fit a room like this. He trades the necessary pleasantries with Seara (civil weather, old tectonics) and drifts on before he pulls the gravity wrong.

Seara pivots us through two more introductions like a woman teaching a dance; Selene absorbs and deflects questions like a practiced shield. Cassie’s debate-captain gaze keeps sliding ahead of the conversation, clocking cameras, cataloging smiles that don’t reach eyes, translating every compliment into what it costs.

A waiter ghosts up as the talk thins—sleek black, expression pleasantly blank. “Another?” he asks, and his tray is already where Cassie’s empty flute will be. She sets it down; he swaps it for a fresh one without a clink.

He’s gone before I register the glitch—the tiniest wobble under the stem. Cassie feels it first; of course she does. She steadies the base with a fingertip, and her mouth doesn’t move when she tilts the glass just enough for me to see what’s been left beneath.

A plain white place card. Three ink taps in a tidy row. And, in the corner, the faintest vine-slashed sigil I’ve only ever seen in the shadows of a bookstore ledger.

Cassie doesn’t look at me. I don’t look at her. Seara’s scent is an eclipse, Selene’s hand a quiet sun at my elbow, and somewhere across the marble, Daevan watches us watch the room.

“Shall we?” Seara purrs to the donors, already ushering the night into its next shape.

We move with her, the card invisible under glass—a pebble dropped into deep water that hasn’t reached the surface yet.

We drift toward the winter-garden doors under the excuse of air, past donors and diamonds and a quartet sawing a glittering climb toward midnight. Marble gives way to a runner the color of old ice; cold breathes at the seams of the glass.

“Hold a second,” Cassie murmurs, setting her flute on a side table dressed in white linen, silver bowls of salt-frosted almonds like little moons.

The stem lands exactly where it landed before—over a plain place card that shouldn’t be there. Up close, the “embossing” isn’t a pattern; it’s a sigil shy enough to pass for one. A vine-slashed loop, hidden in filigree.

I slide two fingers under the edge and lift.

Dry-soft rasp. Heat answers my skin—not burn, not trap, just recognition. The card warms as if my name were a password.

I let a breath of what it gives me cross the tether—no deeper than a static pop. Cassie’s mouth tightens at the corner. “Copper,” she says so quietly it isn’t sound at all.

“Brief,” I answer, and let the taste die before it can turn into a siren.

Across the hall, Daevan pretends to be decor. Night jasmine and crushed violet hang around him like he’s already chosen the eulogy; he doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. Just watches, intent as a blade left on a table.

Behind him, a catering waiter I know as Gary “adjusts” a wall sconce that does not need adjusting—three taps to the base, a half turn; the light settles a shade warmer. Marielle glides on a perpendicular path and smooths a nonexistent crease in the linen at the end of the table. Two routes mapped, two signals laid. If you didn’t know to look, you wouldn’t.

The violin line climbs; the chandeliers glitter like frozen rain. The card cools in my hand.

“What is it?” Cassie asks, eyes on my face, not the paper.

“An invitation,” I say. “Or a test.” I turn it; there’s nothing written, only the ghost of that sigil. “Either way, not our game. Not tonight.”

She opens her clutch; I slip the card inside. Her fingers brush mine—steady, deliberate. I lay my thumb over the pulse at her wrist. The rings hum once, quiet as a held note.

Who else is playing? Seara’s laugh rings from the dais; Selene’s gaze ticks our direction, then away, satisfied we’re not currently on fire. Daevan keeps being gravity in a suit.

A clock somewhere swallows the room and speaks: 11:52.

Cassie tips her head toward the glass. “Garden?”

“Garden,” I echo.

We ease through the doors into air that smells like winter and citrus from the potted trees. The quartet’s waltz thins behind us; the noise of the hall dampens. The card is a small weight in Cassie’s clutch; my thumb stays at her wrist, warm, while we choose a path between frost-rimmed hedges and steal eight minutes that belong to nobody but us.

A sliver of warm light cuts across the winter-dark path—half-open service door, steam breathing out in faint dish-soap clouds. Inside: crates stenciled in chalk, a dolly gone still, the hush-clatter rhythm of a kitchen trying to be invisible.

Footsteps. Then a voice pitched low, the kind that expects walls to listen. Gary.

“Pickup moved to zero-forty-five. Ledger’s live.”

Another voice, lower still, velvet over steel. Marielle.

“Vault stays hungry.”

Cassie only catches the shape of it—the cadence, not the words. Her hand tightens in mine, questioning. I go still for one heartbeat, the card’s ghost weight a reminder at her wrist where my thumb rests. Routes and sigils try to spool in my head.

Not our game. Not tonight.

I angle us past the door. The light slices shut; the whispers drown beneath the muted clink of glass racks and a soft, obedient “Yes, chef.”

Cold air meets us like a clean sheet. Above, the stars keep their quiet counsel. Ahead, the garden turns silver where frost has kissed the hedges, and we walk toward it—rings warm against skin, the noise of the gala thinning until it’s just her breath, my breath, and the clock rolling us toward midnight.

The glasshouse holds its own weather—frost turned to lace on the panes, hedges wearing a sugared edge, the city holding its breath under a distant, impatient hush. Somewhere behind us the quartet slides toward the inevitable countdown; here, the air smells like cold earth and the last green threads of rosemary in the planters.

Cassie’s shoulders are high from the night. I take both her hands between mine and tuck them against my sternum. No show, no spark—just heat, banked and steady. Her fingers soften, the chill leaching out.

“With me?” I whisper.

Her mouth quirks like she’s filing the promise under something permanent. “Always.”

Inside, a swell of voices swirls around the first number—ten—then scatters into the glass. We don’t pick it up until five. I can feel her pulse counting, too; our rings hum a quiet chord where our knuckles touch, the barest ember-sweet braided into the cold.

Four.

Three.

She leans in first. Not performance, not to prove anything—just a claim laid gently and a promise laid deep. I laugh into it because I can’t help it, bright as a bell struck and kept in my chest. Her breath ghosts warm across my cheek; my hands lift instinctively—one at her jaw, one at the back of her neck—like I’m holding a spell I don’t want the world to interrupt.

“Happy New Year, Firefly,” she murmurs against my mouth.

I kiss the words, then the girl. “Happy New Year, my Firebreak.”

For a moment the city goes quiet enough that I swear I can hear snow settle. Then the fireworks break open somewhere over the river, color catching on the glass and scattering across her skin. Our rings answer each other once—soft, private—and fall still.

We breathe. We choose. The world can watch tomorrow.

By the time we thread back through the corridors, the gala has found its noise again. We make the tidy rounds—thank you for the evening, lovely to see you, congratulations on whatever must be congratulated—until we reach the gravity well at the dais. Selene meets my eyes and tips her head, something sun-warm and proud tucked in the corner of her mouth. Seara’s gaze flicks over our joined hands, our rings, our faces; unreadable as always, she gives the smallest nod that manages to feel like both benediction and warning.

That’s enough. We ghost on the next exhale, slipping through a service arch while the chandeliers sing to the ceiling. Cold air catches our hems; the night opens. In the circle of the drive the sleek black coupe waits, throwing back the fireworks in quicksilver flickers. We run for it, laughing, and the door thumps shut on glitter and eyes and noise, leaving only our joined hands and the road unspooling toward home.