Chapter 30

  Days Remaining - 41

  The night passed in a blur. It felt like a fever dream: sweat and restlessness clung to him. Then suddenly it vanished.

  For the first time in what felt like months, his body woke without ache. Essence moved through him warm and alive, as if some hidden weight had finally slid off his shoulders. He flexed his fingers and watched the muscles answer, faster, sharper, smoother than before. The exhaustion that had clung to him since his escape was gone, burned off like fog.

  He knew it wouldn’t last. The cold always came. Holding this shape would exact its price, slowly but surely, as the day dragged on.

  Rest was a luxury he hadn’t expected. Today the real work began. He swung his legs off the bed—and froze. Long, slender legs filled his view. Hers, not his. The sight sent a shiver through him. The disguise clung like oil. Necessary, yes. But every second inside this stolen skin turned his stomach.

  A voice broke the quiet, deep and rough.

  “You ready?”

  His head snapped toward the old man in the chair—until his mind caught up. Calira.

  “Did I get you?” She cackled in his head, sharp and unkind. “Ha. Memory of a goldfish.”

  His heartbeat slowed. The jolt faded. In its place a plan started to line up. They needed information. Norvil’s whispers ran thickest where the wine flowed: high-society gatherings, parties where gossip sold better than gold.

  Leaving their “chaperones” behind, River and Calira walked the halls side by side. Most would call the manor beautiful—marble pillars, intricate woodwork, gold-leaf frames winking in the light. To River every detail felt poisonous. Bronze children smiled from pedestals, their perfect faces fixed in cruel positions. Oil portraits and polished stone floors stood as monuments to the fact that no one had ever punished the monsters who lived here.

  He reached out with his senses and brushed against the low hum of essence. There—life. Familiar, steady, close enough to touch.

  He pointed. “That way.”

  They quickened their pace until the house opened into its heart. The living room sprawled, decadent on purpose. Tapestries in showy colors hung like captured banners; low velvet sofas sprawled like lazy cats.

  Servants moved in a muted rhythm—dusting, sweeping, soft shoes on marble. Then one noticed him in the doorway and stilled. Brushes froze mid-stroke. Brooms ceased. One by one, heads bowed. Silence stretched until it felt like the air itself held its breath.

  What would Beatrix say? The thought clawed at him as the stillness thickened.

  He raised his hand with practiced boredom. “You may continue,” he said, voice dipped in superiority, as if the people before him were his livestock.

  The room exhaled. Footsteps resumed, work shuffling forward—except for a small woman who peeled away from the rest. Hair thinning in brittle clumps. Skin almost the color of the stone beneath them. She bowed, stiff with fear, and when she spoke her voice trembled.

  “What would you and Lord Christoffer like for breakfast before you attend the festivities?”

  For a heartbeat River’s mind slipped. What festivities? Then of course—the Games. The arena.

  Before he could answer, Calira rumbled in the old man’s throat. “Steak and eggs, please.”

  The woman blinked, uncertain.

  River’s thought lashed across to Calira: Goddammit. We have to act like them or we’ll get caught. You need to be cruel.

  I don’t like this, she shot back.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Neither do I.

  “Don’t look at me.” He held Beatrix’s posture—chin high, shoulders still. A female steward’s gaze snagged on his right hand; Beatrix wore her signet on the left. He switched the goblet, letting the ring catch the light, and the glamor settled.

  The girl went bone white. “Ss—sorry.” She fled for the kitchens.

  He exhaled once, set his face to Beatrix’s usual bored disdain, and walked on.

  The morning slipped by in near silence, broken by the scrape of cutlery as Calira tore into breakfast. She ate like someone repaying weeks of hunger, and River let her. When the plates were cleared and the last wine gone, they both knew it was time.

  They crossed the marble hall toward the front, their footsteps echoing. A man waited by the doors, unlike the others—tall, slender, dressed in black that took the light and gave it back in a soft shimmer.

  His eyes stopped River, red as embers. Fire essence banked underneath like a predator asleep with one eye open.

  “Who do you think that is?” River brushed the thought to Calira.

  No answer. She didn’t know either.

  “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Lith,” the man said, smooth as poured glass. He didn’t bow. Didn’t look away. He simply held their gaze with a quiet defiance that made the air feel heavier.

  When they reached him, he turned without comment and opened the door, unhurried and fluid. The heat of his essence flared—a precise, dangerous thing.

  “Would you like to go directly to the Arena?” he asked. The faint glow in his eyes sharpened as they met River’s.

  The question wrong-footed River, not for its bluntness but for its weight—as if the man wasn’t offering a destination so much as taking the measure of the answer. The fire in him didn’t just burn. It watched.

  “I would like to see Virella and William first,” River said.

  Only after the words hung between them did he realize he couldn’t say why he’d chosen them.

  “I would like to share my condolences for the recent tragedy.”

  The man simply nodded and angled toward the caravan waiting at the gate.

  River’s chest tightened. Every step toward the carriage reminded him he didn’t know how to be Beatrix. He had known only her edges—never warmth, never anything soft. Wearing her felt like a skin that didn’t fit.

  Calira slid into his thoughts, dry as a desert. “Calm your tits. You think too much. Relax.”

  A breath escaped him—almost a laugh, not quite. Relax. Sure.

  He climbed into the caravan. The plush cushions and faint perfume pressed around him. He closed his eyes and folded inward, returning to the rhythm of his soul-strengthening forms. Essence gathered under his will, moving from one affinity to the next—fire, lightning, light, shadow—until all four pulsed in a single, steady cadence. Tighter control. Cleaner. That small win settled the restless creature in his chest.

  It didn’t last.

  Calira tugged him back to the waking world as the door eased open. The fire-eyed man stood there, unreadable. “I have informed them of your arrival,” he said evenly. “Per your usual request, I will remain here on guard.”

  River hesitated. Thank him? Sneer like Beatrix would? Uncertainty twisted. He settled for a small nod and stepped down.

  The house he had once called home (briefly, and not in ways that mattered) loomed, grand, unyielding, somehow colder than memory. He drew a slow breath and made his feet move. Instinct took over; with every step, the old edge of fear dulled by a degree.

  Great doors swung on silent hinges, held by servants trained to be invisible. Inside, the air was heavy. Grief had a weight and it lived here.

  Virella stood in the center of the hall, a ghost of the woman he’d met months ago. Silks traded for rumpled pajamas. Hair that had once been pinned with military precision now a tangled snarl. The careful mask of cosmetics gone, leaving swollen eyes and a face carved by hours of crying.

  William stood at her side, spine straight, expression like stone. When River met his gaze, the mask crackled—not on the surface, but deep in the gold of his eyes. There, under the hardness, lived loss and helplessness—the quiet kind of pain that doesn’t fade when you look away.

  River spoke before silence betrayed him. “I’m sorry for your loss. If we might have a word in private… it would be appreciated.”

  They nodded and led him toward the library. Calira kept close. With each step his heart drummed louder. Not caught yet. Not caught yet.

  The library was dim, smelling of paper and dust—comfort, of a sort. The door shut behind them with a weighty thud. River let the illusion over his eyes peel back, the veil slipping like shed skin. The familiar spectrum of magic flooded in, threads bright as wire, the world suddenly truer.

  He didn’t dare drop the rest. If he couldn’t become Beatrix again on command, the plan fell apart.

  Beside him Calira’s eyes flared crimson; her body shimmered and lengthened into wings of molten gold and scarlet. She returned to her phoenix form without a shred of worry.

  No one spoke at first. Their eyes measured one another—reading, testing, choosing.

  William broke the silence. “River? Is that you?”

  River nodded—afraid his voice would break if he trusted it. The disguise held; the dam didn’t. Heat blurred his sight. Tears fell.

  William didn’t waste time. His gaze flicked to Virella; something unspoken passed in that look.

  “Then we don’t have long,” he said.

  They leaned in, voices dropping to a rasp, and shaped a plan, sharper, riskier, than anything River had imagined on the ride over.

  Outside, beyond the library windows, footsteps crunched on gravel. The measured tread of the fire-eyed guard. Each step landed like a spark on dry leaves.

  Does he know?

  River’s pulse thundered. Whatever came next, there wasn’t a road back; only through.