Chapter 8 The Betrayer's Mask

The invitation came in blood.

A red wax seal. A black envelope. A single word scrawled in fine imperial ink:

Cassia.

Only three people still alive knew her real name.

One was Titus. One was Selene.

The third-Marcus.

She opened it alone.

There is a masquerade at the Palace of Mirrors. Come if you seek truth.

Come if you seek me.

It was a trap. Obviously. But love, like revenge, was rarely rational.

Selene stole the gowns.

Titus cursed every thread of silk as he tightened her corset. "You could be executed just for walking through that door."

"I walked through fire," she said. "A door is nothing."

He stared at her, quiet. "What if he begs for forgiveness?"

"Then I'll bury him with it."

The Palace of Mirrors glittered like a dream built on corpses.

Nobles in feathered masks danced across marble floors. Wine flowed like rivers. Music swelled through chambers laced with gold.

And Cassia-cloaked in crimson and shadow-walked among them.

She saw him immediately.

Marcus.

No mask. No armor. Just the same storm-gray eyes she had once memorized under moonlight.

He was waiting for her.

She approached him as a stranger. "Would you like to dance?"

He offered his hand.

They stepped into the ballroom. Slow. Silent.

A thousand eyes watched, unaware of the ghost in red dancing with the man who buried her.

Marcus spoke first.

"I knew you weren't dead."

"I was," she replied. "You killed me."

He flinched. Just barely. But it was enough.

"I had no choice."

Cassia spun away, blade slipping into her palm.

"There's always a choice," she said. "And you chose power."

The blade kissed his throat in the shadows of the garden.

"I should end you," she whispered.

He looked at her-not with fear, but sorrow. "Then do it."

She didn't.

Because beneath the ruin, he still looked at her like she was his world.

And that... that was more dangerous than any dagger.

Back in the hideout, Selene waited.

Cassia returned, silent.

"Well?" she asked. "Did you kill him?"

Cassia sat down, eyes hollow. "Not yet."

Titus lit a torch. "Then what now?"

Cassia's voice was cold.

"Now we make the whole empire bleed."