Mask of Shadows (Untitled #1)(74)

Maud even had to show a little bracelet to the guards.

“We didn’t wear them while you were here, so none of you could steal one.” She smiled as she opened the door to my room. “Only nobles, guards, and servants are to know about the passes and who can go where.”

She still made sure the door was locked though.

“I suppose a one-in-three chance is still acceptable.” She started unclasping my cloak.

“I aim to please.” I moved her hands and shook my head. “You should let go.”

“Why? What’s wrong?” She pulled away, hands stained red.

“That’s why.”

She stumbled back and dunked her hand in the washbasin, gagging.

“That’s what I thought.” I finished undressing behind the screen and sunk into the shallow bath. “Can you wait and help me wrap my side? The stitches are getting itchy.”

Slathered in salve and bandaged a while later, I crawled into bed with Maud’s help. The sudden, crashing everything that had happened in the past few days slammed into my chest and dragged down my eyelids. I barely heard her leave.

It was my last night as Twenty-Three. The mask came off easily, sliding over my short hair. I took a deep breath and traced the bruises spilling over my chest in splotches of dark blue and deep red-pricked purple. The stitches burned.

I stared up at The Lady’s stars, memory of doing this so close but hazy as a dream, and flipped the credit coin from finger to finger, rolling it across my knuckles. They could give me as many names as they pleased, but I was doing this for me.

I’d scrubbed and scrubbed, but blood still stained my nails.

“Don’t be angry.” I swallowed and clenched the coin in my hands. “You’re all about balancing out the world and repaying debts. They owe you for Nacea.”

The stars didn’t answer.

Had I ruined it? I’d wanted to be perfect, but Shan de Pau drinking and gambling with money not his had awoken the rage in my blood born by Seve’s death. I was good—no one had seen me, and no one would ever know Pau hadn’t done it. Of course he’d protest, but anyone would.

I tucked the coin into the chest pocket of my shirt. I’d killed five people and more had died because of me, but it was all for nothing if I wasn’t named Opal. Knowing the names of the Erlend lords was nothing if I couldn’t get to them.

What was one more, five, five dozen when I’d so much blood on my hands I’d never be able to pay it back?

They were dead, blood drained and bodies burned, but they were my deaths to carry and mine to remember, no matter how dark their pasts. Just like I’d made Seve remember. Just like I’d make the others remember.

North Star. Deadfall. Riparian. Caldera. Winter.

Grell. Eight. Seven. Seve. Tonin.

And tomorrow would come no matter how much blood I’d wasted. I fell asleep beneath the twinkling stars with the scents of lemon and ink filling my dreams.





Forty-Three


I woke with the sun. Maud wafted the steam from a cup of tea under my nose and whispered my name till I rolled onto my back. Daylight burned through my eyes.

I was going to meet Marianna da Ignasi, Our Queen of the Eastern Spires and Lady of Lightning.

And I had to sit through breakfast first.

Two looked like the raging heart of a fire, dressed in deep reds and oranges, sunny yellows and golds, with a flicker of blue silk draped across her chest.

Five wasn’t there.

“He went first.” Two curled her bare hands around a steaming mug of tea, fingers shaking, and smiled. “The room feels larger without everyone else.”

“I’m sorry about Three and Four.” I poured myself a cup of tea, too afraid of getting food on my clothes to eat, and spooned enough honey in it to rile up Four from beyond the pyre. “Four was all right, even for trying to disqualify me.”

“It was so fast,” she said, not even acknowledging I’d spoken. “The last audition went on for two weeks.”

“But you’re alive.”

“It doesn’t bother you, does it? Killing?”

“It does,” I said softly, “but we all signed up knowing we could die. Everyone has an ending.”

I would remember them forever—their names, my reasons, the way their bodies slumped in death and their eyes stared through me. If I stopped, if I let their deaths weigh me down and keep me from being Opal, it was all for nothing. There was no going back.

I was what I was, and they were a part of me now.

Two opened her mouth, but Dimas bowed next to her. She twisted away from me.

“The Left Hand is ready to see you.” He gestured toward the nook.

Two rocked back and forth on her heels, lingering behind Dimas, and said, “I didn’t want them to die alone and leave me behind.”

I stared at her retreating back.

They still had, and there was nothing anyone could do to fix that. Killing like Five did with Three was monstrous, like the lords did with the shadows as their weapon. That should bother people. This was nothing.

I dunked a roll in my tea. It would’ve been awful to see Rath here—watch him kill, tremble with the weight of something he’d not known, till one day, he wasn’t at breakfast. He’d have lost himself. I couldn’t have watched it.