Read Chapter 24: The Masquerade Trap

The ballroom blazed with candlelight, a thousand flames reflected in the gilded mirrors lining the walls. Anya moved through the swirling masks—foxes and peacocks, lions and doves—her own silver mask fitted snugly against her face, the onyx ring tucked deep in her bodice where no one could see it. Kael walked a half-step behind her, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword beneath his crimson cloak.

Elara had positioned herself near the eastern alcove, dressed as a healer's acolyte, her eyes tracking every face that passed the King's throne. The King himself sat elevated, beaming beneath his golden crown, believing tonight celebrated his daughter's recovery.

"Anyone familiar?" Anya murmured, scanning the crowd.

"Everyone is familiar," Kael replied. "That's the problem."

Twenty years. The sorcerer had worn a familiar face for twenty years. Every lord who had ever bowed to her father, every lady who had pinched her cheeks as a child, every servant who had brought her morning tea—any of them could be Malachai.

The musicians struck a new chord, and the dancers parted. A figure approached through the center of the room, masked in obsidian black, robed in deep violet. No herald announced him. No guard challenged him. He simply walked as if the space belonged to him.

Anya's blood turned cold.

"Kael," she breathed.

"I see him."

The sorcerer stopped ten paces from her, tilting his head. His mask covered everything but his jaw, and that jaw curved into a smile she recognized.

"Princess Anya," he said, his voice smooth as poison. "So good of you to attend your own celebration. I thought you might try to run."

"Who are you?" Anya demanded, though her fingers itched toward her bodice, toward the ring.

"You know who I am." He reached up and removed his mask.

Lord Ashworth. Her father's most trusted advisor. The man who had taught her history, who had attended every birthday, who had brought her sweets when she was ill.

She felt the world tilt.

"Twenty years," she whispered.

"Twenty years of watching you forget." His smile widened. "Do you know how tedious that became? Waiting for midnight, waiting for the blank look, waiting to introduce myself all over again. I confess, I grew rather bored."

Kael stepped forward, sword drawn. "You'll not touch her again."

"Kael." Malachai said his name like a taste. "The guard who wrote her little book. How devoted. But you misunderstand the nature of the game."

He raised his hand, and the onyx ring tucked against Anya's chest grew suddenly hot. White-hot. She gasped, clutching at her bodice, but the ring was no longer there—it flew from her clothing as if summoned, arcing through the air to land in Malachai's palm.

"No!" Anya lurched forward, but the sorcerer simply closed his fist.

The world went hazy at the edges. Memories—recent ones, sharp ones—began to dissolve like mist in morning sun. She saw Kael's face, but the image flickered, and with it the memory of their first meeting, their conversations in the garden, the night he had shown her his father's burned papers.

"Stop!" she cried.

"These are borrowed years," Malachai said softly, almost gently. "Borrowed from your mother's sacrifice. I'm only taking back what she stole from me."

Kael swung his sword.

Malachai laughed and raised the ring. A wall of black force erupted from it, catching Kael mid-lunge and hurling him backward across the ballroom floor. He crashed into a column with a sickening crunch, his sword skittering away. The guests screamed and scattered, masks forgotten, revelry turned to chaos.

"Kael!" Anya started toward him, but the sorcerer's power wrapped around her like cold chains, freezing her in place.

"You fear losing him," Malachai murmured, stepping closer. "But you've already lost him. You just haven't forgotten him yet."

He held up the ring. It pulsed with a dark, hungry light.

"All those nights you wrote in your little ledger. All those desperate attempts to capture what I took. Such a futile gesture, Princess. You cannot cage the wind with ink."

Anya's chest burned where her locket lay warm against her skin. The crescent-moon locket. Her mother's final words, Elara had said. She had held it while reading the note, and something in her gut told her the key to breaking the ring was in her hands. Or rather, the key was her hands.

"What will it cost me?" she asked, her voice steady despite the terror clawing at her throat. "To break your curse, to destroy your anchor? The message said it would cost me what I love most."

Malachai's eyes flickered with something like pleasure. "Everything, Princess. Everything you have, everything you are, everything you've become. I'm going to enjoy taking it."

Behind him, Kael stirred, dragging himself to his knees. Blood streaked his temple. He was reaching for something—his sword, too far away. His dagger, still sheathed at his hip.

"Kael, don't," Anya whispered.

But he was already moving, lunging forward with the dagger in his fist, aiming for the sorcerer's exposed back.

Malachai didn't even turn. He simply flexed his fingers, and Kael was thrown again, this time against the grand piano with a sound of splintering wood. He crumpled to the marble floor and did not rise.

"No!" Anya screamed. She wrenched against the invisible chains, and they gave—because the ring was no longer on her finger. Whatever anchor Malachai held, it did not hold her as tightly as it had before.

She was free.

She tore the locket from her neck, the chain snapping. The crescent moon dangled from her fist, warm and alive with a light she had never noticed before. The message from her mother said the ring was a cage. But the locket was the key.

Malachai turned, startled, just as she hurled the locket directly at his face.

The crescent moon struck his cheek.

And the world exploded in light.