The grand hall was a beautiful ruin. The air, thick with the scent of wilting roses and panic, vibrated with the silent scream of a dynasty's collapse. I moved through the chaos, a ghost in sapphire and silver, the broken chain of my silver fox mask dangling from my fingers. The victory felt hollow, a cavity in my chest where triumph should have been.
I needed air that didn't smell of betrayal. But the arched corridor leading to the gardens was blocked.
Emmeline stood before me, a statue of shattered pride. Her peacock-feathered mask was a crushed, glittering fist at her side. The meticulous art of her makeup was ruined, black streaks cutting through the pallor of her face like cracks in porcelain. She didn't look angry. She looked emptied.
"You smug little witch," she whispered. The sound was brittle, on the verge of shattering. "You stand there in your stolen finery and think you've climbed the mountain." She took a step closer, her breath coming in short, sharp puffs. "You haven't climbed anything. You've just triggered an avalanche. And you'll be buried in it with the rest of us."
I stopped, forcing my spine straight, my chin level. The posture Dmitri had drilled into me. "The avalanche was already coming, Emmeline. Your family built their house on a fault line. I didn't cause the quake. I just refused to be buried quietly."
"Quietly?" A broken laugh escaped her. "You've made us a spectacle! Do you have any idea what you've done? It's not just money. It's everything. The invitations, the alliances, the legacy… it's dust." Her voice rose, fraying at the edges. "My mother is in the trustees' room right now, and they won't even look at her. We're lepers because of you."
I watched her, this girl who had orchestrated my torment with such casual cruelty. I searched for vindication, for the hot glow of payback. All I found was a cold, clear understanding. We were both orphans now. She'd just lost her kingdom, and I'd never truly had one.
"Then learn to live in the dust," I said, my voice unnervingly calm. "It's not as hard as you think. You get used to the taste."
I moved to step around her. Her hand shot out, not to strike, but to clutch my wrist. Her fingers were icy. "You ruined me," she hissed, her eyes wide, desperate, finally seeing me not as a pest but as the executioner. "We could have… you could have just left. Why did you have to burn it all down?"
I looked down at her hand, then slowly, deliberately, pried her fingers loose. "Because it was my family's wood in your fireplace, Emmeline. And I was tired of being cold."
I left her standing there, a solitary, crumbling column in the echoing hall. The cold pity I felt was more isolating than any hatred.
I followed the pull of a darker gravity, the instinct that always led me to him. I found Dmitri at the end of the Long Gallery, a stark silhouette against the moonlit windows. And opposite him, a man who was both his origin and his antithesis.
Viktor Volkov.
I melted behind a marble pillar, the cold stone biting through my gown. The urge to flee warred with a deeper, more terrible need to hear.
Dmitri's POV
My father's presence was a vacuum, sucking the warmth from the room. He stood observing the scattered remnants of the Masquerade through the archway, as if reviewing a disappointing military campaign.
"Sentiment is a luxury, Dmitri," Viktor said, without turning. His voice was the dry rustle of ledgers being closed. "One you appear to believe you can afford. You accelerated the timeline. The Schuyler collapse is now a public feeding frenzy. Their assets will be picked apart by vultures before we can secure the key parcels."
"The parcels were never the objective," I replied, the words leaving my mouth before I could temper them. A fatal honesty.
He turned then. In the weak light, his face was all severe angles and polished ice. "The objective is what I define it to be. The girl was a means to a legal end, a lever to pry loose what was owed. You have turned her into a torch. And now she is lighting fires you cannot control."
"She is under my control."
A faint, disdainful breath escaped him. "Is she? She stood in a room of her enemies and declared war using our ammunition. That is not a pawn. That is a rival queen. And you left her on the board." He took a slow, measured step closer. "You will retrieve the documents you took from my study. You will sign the guardianship transfer. The Valois girl becomes a ward of the Volkov estate. Her 'reclamation' will be managed, her influence neutered. She will be quiet, comfortable, and most importantly, silent."
The image he painted, Isabelle in a gilded cage, her fire banked to embers, her voice reduced to a whisper approved by his lawyers, coated my tongue with bile. "No."
The single syllable hung in the air, a declaration of mutiny.
Viktor's expression did not change. It never did. "Explain your refusal."
"She stays with me. Not as a ward. As a partner."
"Partner." He repeated the word as if it were in a foreign, vulgar tongue. "You are my heir. Your partnerships are mergers. Your alliances are contracts. This… infatuation… with a damaged, volatile creature is a profound failure of judgment. It ends now."
The cold fury I had spent a lifetime freezing into obedience began to thaw, boiling up from a dark, untouched place. "My judgment is the only thing that has secured your prize tonight. Without her, the Schuylers would still be smothering us with their mediocrity. She is not a liability. She is the key to everything after the land, after the money. She is legitimacy. She is a story people will believe."
"And you believe your own story," Viktor observed, his eyes chillingly perceptive. "You see a dynasty. I see a boy playing with a lit match in a room full of kerosene. This is your final instruction: relinquish the girl and the documents. Return to your duty. Or you will be relieved of it."
The ultimatum was a blade against my throat. I felt the weight of it all. the wealth, the name, the crushing, empty power that had been my birthright. Then I saw, in my mind's eye, Isabelle's face in the foundry, smudged with dust and blazing with a light nothing in my gilded world had ever produced.
I met his gaze. "If the price of my duty is her, then my duty is worthless. Keep it."
For the first time in my life, I saw a flicker in the permafrost of my father's eyes. Not hurt, not anger. The pure, clean shock of an unforeseen variable. A calculation that did not compute.
"Then you are discharged," he said, his voice dropping to a deathly quiet. "The Volkov resources, protections, and name are withdrawn. As of this moment, you are a tenant in your own life. And I will ensure the lease is very, very short." He paused, letting the sentence hang. "The boy she sent away, the Saint, he will watch you fall. And the girl? She will learn that without my shadow to hide in, she is just a rabbit in an open field. See how long she stays with a prince of ashes."
He didn't wait for a response. He turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing with finality down the stone corridor, leaving me standing in the sudden, vast silence of my own defiance.
The gravity of it threatened to buckle my knees. I had traded a throne for a war with no army. I was exiled, impoverished, and utterly exposed.
And yet, a terrible, exhilarating freedom surged through my veins. I turned toward the pillar where I knew she listened. My asset. My liability. My only remaining kingdom.
I had chosen the fire. Now we would see if it warmed us or consumed us whole.