The city of Khyronia shimmered beneath the dusk like a dream carved in starlight.
The winding marble roads had been swept until they glowed with a soft sheen, and lanterns—glassed in stained sapphire and garnet—hung from ancient iron arches like captive moons. Nobles moved in clusters, silk and brocade rustling like whispers, their laughter bright and brittle in the cooling air. The masquerade had already begun.
Everin's carriage, lacquered in obsidian and burnished gold, rolled to a smooth stop before the great gates of the Moonlight Palais—Khyronia's ancestral estate turned ballroom for the night. Its towering facade, veiled in cascading vines and crystalline banners, glowed with spell-lit grace. The gates themselves stood open, watched by sentinels in royal blue livery and guests who gleamed like storybook royalty.
The door was opened for him.
Everin stepped out.
Gasps didn't follow—but attention did. The rosewood silk of his coat caught fire in the lantern-glow, his black-etched crimson mask a smoldering contrast to the pale shimmer of those around him. He didn't strut, but something about his presence—poised, searching, unspoken—drew quiet regard.
He didn't see them yet.
Not the beauty his thoughts had wandered toward since the invitation was sealed.
Not the slender figure with hair like fallen snow and eyes like storm clouds over still water.
But he felt it.
He's here.
Everin ascended the steps slowly, each footfall measured, the cloak trailing behind like dusk chasing a heartbeat. Inside, the ballroom unfurled before him: gold chandeliers suspended like constellations, music swelling from a small orchestra hidden behind a velvet curtain, and hundreds of masked nobles cloaked in opulence and rumor.
A kaleidoscope of colors moved before him—gilded masks, gem-studded gowns, laughter that did not always reach the eyes. Servers wove through the crowd like shadows, offering silver trays of spiced wine, fig-glazed pastries, and chilled rosewater in fluted glass.
And then—
Across the floor.
Near the carved obsidian pillars, where moonlight laced the windows and cast glassy shadows upon the polished floor—Everin saw him.
August.
No need for confirmation. No one else could've worn light like that—like he'd been carved from starlight and veiled in mystery.
The ashen ivory velvet clung to his slender frame with spectral grace, layered in silver netting that shimmered like breath made visible. Thorns and crescent moons curled down his sleeves in white-gold thread, quiet sigils of sharp beauty. His mask—soft snowy velvet—rested against his face like a whispered truth, sculpted to frame his unreadable expression.
He was not dancing. He was standing near a balcony arch, sipping something pale from a crystal goblet, his eyes far away—as if already lost in a memory, or resisting one.
And beside him, as if tethered by some magnetic gravity, was Elias.
The contrast between them—sun and moon, dark and light—was nothing short of breathtaking.
Elias, robed in midnight blue silk fitted with brutal precision, shimmered with tailored sharpness. Gold thread ran along his lapels like veins of power, and his black velvet mask, edged in silver, gleamed with stars—wings in mid-flight. His arm was loose around August's waist, not possessive, but close. Anchoring.
Everin did not move. His fingers curled slightly at his sides.
He hadn't planned this part.
He had dreamt of seeing August again. But never with someone standing so close to him—like a guardian of the night, eyes made of emerald storms.
The music shifted.
A waltz, slow and filled with long pauses meant for stolen glances and whispered sins.
Everin exhaled, grounding himself.
This is not the end.
The night had just begun.
And somewhere within the chandelier-lit haze of Khyronia's most decadent ballroom, fate was holding its breath.
A hush moved through the ballroom—not loud or sudden, but like the sound of snow falling through silk.
At the top of the marble staircase, just beneath the chandelier shaped like a frozen sun, Caldris Rheyne appeared.
He did not descend quickly. Power never hurried.
His frame, tall and sinuous, draped in charcoal velvet that drank the light, moved like liquid precision. A fine silver sash was cinched at his waist, fastened by a black opal brooch shaped like a serpent devouring its own tail. His mask—simple, sharp, unadorned—was obsidian brushed with matte silver, cut in an angular arc over one eye like the crescent of a dying moon.
Behind him followed his most trusted servant—a silent shadow in layered onyx and navy, bearing a carved staff crowned with a tiny burning lantern. Rumors said the flame never went out, not even in death.
In Caldris's hand: a crystal goblet of blood-red wine, raised with elegant disinterest, as if the drink was an extension of his fingers and not something meant to be sipped.
The music quieted, the musicians pausing with delicate obedience. Nobles turned, heads tilted like petals toward sun, all watching the man who held the night in the palm of his hand.
Caldris smiled. It was not warm, nor cold—it was knowing. The kind of smile carved from someone who'd seen truths unspoken and buried them beneath chandeliers like this one.
"Tonight," he said, voice smooth as old velvet and scented with the memory of firewood and frost, "is not merely music and dance."
He walked slowly across the landing, steps echoing like punctuation marks.
"It is a stage upon which secrets will drift—unveiled not in screams or spectacle, but in rhythm."
He took a sip of wine. Crimson clung to the rim of the glass like silk to a throat.
"Let them unravel… like a lover's gown. Slowly. One knot at a time."
A ripple of murmurs stirred through the ballroom, part awe, part confusion.
Caldris's gaze swept the floor—not to see who was there, but to remind them he already knew.
"Go," he said at last, voice falling an octave like a door swinging shut. "Dance. Lose yourself in the music. Pretend."
Another sip. Another pause.
"And if the truth touches your shoulder before the waltz ends—do not flinch."
Then, with a quiet turn, he descended the final steps and vanished into the silk-clad throng, leaving only the echo of his words and the gentle clink of his crystal goblet behind.
The orchestra began again—but slower. Lower. As if the ballroom itself had begun to listen.
And so the masquerade truly began.
The murmurs of velvet skirts and the clink of glass folded into the dim golden hum of the masquerade. Beneath the lattice of chandeliers and moonlight-struck drapery, August stood near one of the tall windows of Khyronia's grand hall, eyes distant, searching past the glinting masks and wine-stained laughter.
He wasn't looking for a person.
He was looking for a thread. A fracture in the glamour. A glimpse behind the curtain.
"They're watching," he murmured, almost to himself, fingers tightening around the stem of his glass.
Elias, standing beside him, shifted with quiet alertness. "Who?"
August's voice was low. "Someone knows something. Maybe even someone from the Eclipse Elite. Their eyes are here. I can feel it." He didn't sound paranoid—just painfully, precisely aware. "Like a string tugging beneath my ribs."
Elias arched a brow, trying to temper the weight of August's suspicion with a crooked half-smile. "August… chill. We've only just arrived. No blades have danced, no blood's been spilled, and no cloaked figures have crept behind curtains—yet."
August shot him a glare sharp enough to strip lacquer from gold.
Elias held up both hands in surrender. "Alright, alright. I'll behave. But maybe a bite of something will help you gather your thoughts. You're practically vibrating."
"I'm not hungry." August's voice was clipped, regal—like frost hardening over a silver petal.
Elias leaned in, eyes gleaming with shameless mischief. "But I am. And you know how worse I'll became when I'm hungry—prone to wild ideas. Like maybe twirling a certain someone under the chandelier."
August turned, fixing him with a look that was meant to be disdainful, but there was a flush just under the skin of his cheekbones.
"I'll stab you with the dessert fork."
"I'll take that as a maybe," Elias said with a grin, just as the orchestra shifted tune.
The strings began their sigh—low and soft at first, like a kiss pressed behind an ear. Then the swell, the rise. A dance rhythm bloomed into the hall like warm honey spilled across silk.
All around them, noble boys turned to noble girls, arms offered with a bow. Slippers whispered over marble, and the masquerade began to unfurl into its first waltz.
Elias opened his mouth—ready, maybe, to offer his hand in jest or in sincerity—but he didn't get the chance.
Because someone else had stepped between them.
"May I?" came the voice—silken, flushed with a kind of breathless, boyish hope.
Everin.
There he stood, dressed in rosewood silk that shimmered like dusk, the crimson-and-lace mask covering just enough to leave the eyes dangerous. But not dangerous in the way Killian Vesper was—this was a different burn. This was devotion.
He was not looking at Elias.
He was looking only at August.
His hand was outstretched, gloved in deep umber, the fingers trembling ever so slightly. And on his face—a smile that carried a thousand sonnets, none yet spoken.
Elias blinked once. Then twice. His smirk faltered, flickered, and dropped somewhere behind his collarbone.
August looked… not annoyed. Not flattered. Just—confused. And beneath it, something else. The kind of expression one wears when a page turns in a book they thought they knew by heart.
The music rose.
Elias stepped back, just a half-step, with a shrug that was more shadow than movement.
The waltz had begun.
And August had a decision to make.