Flashback
Earlier that night, Helena sat alone beneath the dim balcony lights, her fingers curled around a crystal tumbler like it was the last thread tethering her to reality. The ice clinked against the glass—a soft, innocent sound that betrayed none of the war brewing in her veins. Her dress shimmered faintly with the city glow, but her eyes were darker. Calculating. Unblinking.
Above her, Hyunjae leaned against the balcony railing with the ease of someone who knew he owned every shadow that dared creep close. He didn't blink. Didn't smile. His silhouette was all silk and sin, carved from quiet danger. A single, effortless flick of his fingers was all it took—the bartender obeyed instantly, like a spell had been cast.
The sedative vanished into her drink like it was made for it.
Hyunjae arched a brow as he watched her sip.
"Queens shouldn't drink in the enemy's den," he murmured under his breath—more to the night than to anyone in particular.
"They tend to vanish."
~•~
Present
At the far end of the bar, Taeyang finally exhaled the smoke from a cigarette he hadn't lit. He gave the bartender a pointed look that said don't even bother with flair. The man placed his drink—neat, clear, and menacing—before him like an offering to a god who couldn't care less.
Taeyang chuckled.
It was a lazy, papery sound that fell somewhere between a sigh and a threat.
"The great Helena," he mused, taking a sip, "carried off like some delicate bride. Quite memorable. At least after all those checkmates and traumas she's given us, those gowns and bras."
His voice wasn't mocking.
It was worse—tinged with something like reverence, or perhaps regret. He sounded tired. Not in the way mortals were, but like a ghost who'd seen the same war play out across too many lifetimes.
Hyunjae didn't respond. Just traced the rim of his glass with a single finger, his eyes never leaving Helena.
He'd seen her fight. They all had.
Not as the Queen of Black Panther, no. That would've been manageable.
She fought like something wild.
Something ancient.
Like war ran in her blood, and the crown was just ornamental.
Even drugged, she had broken skin and spirits.
Junseo's, for one.
He'd carried her down the hallway—not out of concern, not even necessity—but for efficiency.
She was light, but not weightless.
Her presence was heavy.
It hung on his arms, settled in the corners of his thoughts like a curse whispered too close to the ear.
He had looked down at her face.
The mask.
Cracked now at the cheekbone. A spiderweb of ruin.
Too familiar.
And it bothered him.
He glanced down at the cable ties cutting into her wrists.
"Seriously, HJ?"
Taeyang's voice was low, tight.
Like the calm before something awful. He continued,
"Cable ties, like given everything we have in our weaponry? You are the dealer JM"
Hyunjae didn't even flinch.
"What did you expect? Silk ribbons?"
His tone was pure venom wrapped in velvet.
"I don't carry lace and scented candles, Kook. You want that aesthetic, join a bridal magazine. She didn't call me saying she is coming to visit us"
"She nearly bit off my goddamn finger," Junseo muttered, half to himself checking his long fingers out of which out looked like it was almost dug out with sharp teeth or maybe nails.
"I didn't know she had fangs."
"She doesn't," Taeyang said blandly from behind them, pushing Helena into the backseat of the sleek car with all the enthusiasm of someone filing paperwork.
"She has claws. Can't those doe eyes catch that much at least?"
The car didn't gleam—it absorbed light.
A rolling void wrapped in bulletproof steel and wealth.
Custom Genesis G90. No logos. No brand loyalty. Just a blood-red dragon coiled around the initials RD—Red Dragon. A car that didn't announce itself.
It declared war.
Taeyang's voice was so bored it looped back into menace.
"JS drives."
The keys hit Jungkook's chest with the finality of a bullet.
Technically, none of them should've been driving given their ages. Junseo was 17 and Taeyang and Hyunjae were both 18. And they certainly shouldn't be driving as the underage heirs of the Kim Conglomerate.
But when your organization owned half the underworld and the other half owed you favors, traffic laws were… suggestions.
Their masks covered their identity.
Each of their mask was matte black.
A silver half-crown beneath the left eye—a cursed birthmark of lineage.
The masks weren't for anonymity.
They were for war.
Junseo slid into the driver's seat like it was made for him.
The engine roared awake—not a car, but a beast.
Something old.
Something hungry.
Behind him, Taeyang sprawled across the backseat like a painting of death in vacation mode, one hand lazily tracing fog across the tinted window.
If there was a God, Taeyang had killed Him and gotten bored halfway through.
Beside him, Hyunjae had gone statue-still.
His eyes—usually warm with deceit—were cool now.
Calculating.
Like he was already ten moves ahead and two bodies deep.
Helena didn't move.
But her presence did.
It clawed at the walls, coiled under their skin.
"She's out," Hyunjae said, thumb brushing the edge of his comm device.
"No witnesses.... We're heading to the base...."
A car with loud bass passed them briefly—its thump-thump-thump filling the silence just long enough to make it worse when it was gone.
Even unconscious, Helena looked regal. Like a panther with their fangs temporarily. Her posture, straight. Her chin, high. The cracked mask with BP initials, on her face didn't make her look broken. It made her look like the breathing menace she was. Like she'd survived a hundred falls and still didn't know how to bow.
Her silence wasn't defeat.
It was planning.
And that scared them more than her scream ever could have.
Junseo's hands strangled the steering wheel as if it had personally insulted his ancestors.
He blamed the scent. That scent—one he now couldn't forget. Vanilla and soot.
She smelled like violence wrapped in allure.
Taeyang finally stirred. A yawn that might have been a sigh of death escaped his chiseled lips.
His voice dropped like a guillotine as he spoke, "Still think she's just a woman in a mask, queen?"
Then he looked down at her, eyes unreadable. She laid like a lifeless body in between him and Hyunjae. He continued,
"Because I think she's the storm that made the mask her throne."
Hyunjae didn't respond. But his jaw had gone tight and eyes were locked on the way her fingers twitched. Almost imperceptible.
But he noticed.
Every twitch. Every breath.
She didn't seem like she had been knocked out, drugged.
She appeared as though she waiting.
She was clocking rhythm, testing distance and tracking movement. They could feel it.
Muscle memory hadn't left her. Not even when she was drugged.
They'd drugged monsters—assassins, traitors, killers, spies—before.
But this one?
She had the audacity to calculate while sedated. Why did all three still feel the electricity in the air conditioner filled air, despite her being unconscious? As though she hadn't passed out at all
Helena had fought with all three of them at once. A brutal dance of fists, knifes, kicks, drags. And yet she hadn't flinched nor knelt.
Not to Taeyang's blade. Not to Hyunjae's poison. Not to Junseo's raw, brute violence.
She didn't fall, she remembered.
And that's what made her lethal.
"Does he know?" Junseo asked, voice rough and sudden, as if the words had been boiling for miles. He wasn't asking the two men behind him, he spoke into the comm in his left ear.
He didn't look behind, his focus was on the road ahead but he still turned to stare at her, just stared at her through the mirror above.
Taeyang raised an eyebrow at the question, his lazy demeanor flattered fir a bit as his eyes sharpened to know the answer.
Hyunjae's fingers froze, and his punishment for drinking didn't trouble him at the moment. As much the answer did.
Did Jaehyun knew about the secret abrupt mission the seven dared operate?
As the mess was way greater, and the consequences even more messier.
A second passed.
Then all of their comms crackled to life.
Haejoon's voice came through, low and sharp, the kind of voice that had ended wars without needing guns.
"No."
Nothing else.
Not yet.
But the silence that followed wasn't comfortable.
It was the kind that doesn't bleed until it's far too late.
Because everyone knew—once he found out, it wouldn't be a confrontation.
It would be a reckoning.
For the first time, they'd dared to make a move without their Ringmaster's approval.
Jaehyun.
But what they didn't know and didn't even catch a hint of—
What no one could guess out of all the seven, was—
Helena was always three moves ahead...
...still.
~To Be Continued~