“Balthazar and I have a history,” he snarled, my mentor’s name dripping from his tongue like venom.“But you… you took my school of darkness.You carry memories from Solaris.That’s a problem.You need to be eliminated.”
His words were meant to unnerve.
Instead, they only fed the fire smoldering within me.
He turned, snapping his fingers toward the guards lurking in the shadows.
“Get him out of this cage so I can begin the torture!”
Six men advanced, their movements mechanical, without hesitation as they wrenched me from my gilded prison.I did not resist.
I let my body slacken, a portrait of a man truly broken, my limbs yielding to their grasp as though spiritless—a ruse woven of necessity.
But beneath the surface—every muscle coiled.
Every fiber of my being braced for the storm.
Mathias’ grip tightened, the dagger trembling ever so slightly in his grasp, its poised edge a viper ready to strike.
But the fangs would never reach me.
Because before steel could taste my flesh—pandemonium erupted.
A collective shudder rippled through the crowd, the gaiety of moments before twisting into something else—something raw and unnatural.
Confusion.Horror.Convulsion.
A murmur of unease became a cry of agony.
Bodies jerked, hands clutching at throats, backs arching grotesquely as realization struck too late.
The venom of betrayal flowed—not from Mathias’ blade?—
But within the very veins of the assembly.
Elizabeth’s masterstroke.
The champagne.
Her silent ally in this masquerade of death.
Mathias’ eyes widened as the first lord collapsed, his noble facade twisting in agony, his lips frothing.
Then another.
And another.
Lords and ladies crumpled where they stood, their limbs contorting in unnatural shapes.
Their wretched symphony rose, screams, gurgles, and bodies collapsing like marionettes with their strings severed.
Mathias turned, his voice tight with panic, fury, and disbelief.
“What the fuck is going on?!”
He stood frozen, dagger still raised, but his power—his moment—had already been stolen.
The great lords of this society—the ones who had called for my torture, who had toasted to my execution?—
