Soren
Light creeps over the wet cobblestone in the inner city. Moonrise is washed in pale gold as the sun sets, the glowing orbs outside each home, each business, light the narrow, ancient streets as the sun's warmth fades beyond the mountains.
My boots squelch in the puddles left behind from an epic rainstorm that nearly flooded Old Moonrise, but this city is raised above the lake, safe from the high water.
In fact, the pebbled beaches that line the long, turquoise waters are completely submerged now, and rain still patters overhead, pinging off awnings and pouring out of gutters, further soaking the street I’m following uptown.
The castle rises into view, its windows shedding light across the more affluent neighborhoods, parks, and shops that surround its massive gates. Impenetrable gates, they say. It’s said that it’s impossible to get into the city-sized palace, and on an average day, I’d believe it.
But it’s not an average day by any means, even with the storm still passing over the capital of all of Eastonia. Litter coats the street. Confetti in shades of crimson and gold hug the curb, piling into a mass of soggy paper as the rain tries to carry it away. Incense and the smell of food fill the street where a night market is raging, music cutting through the downpour.
An entire month of festivities have been ordered in honor of Princess Maeve. A month from now, this entire section of the city will be full of people clambering for a view of the wide balcony currently casting a shadow across my body while I edge across the street, my chin pressed to my chest in an attempt to shield my skin from the slicing rain.
I hope, for the royal family’s sake, the weather is… fairer for the princess’s coronation.
Yeah, a month from now, the people of Eastonia will have a new queen. A full-blooded Firestone queen.
They’ve only been waiting… three-thousand years or so.
My footsteps splash as I weave through the market. I side-step through the crowd, ignoring the vendors shouting about their wares. People try to reach out and grab my arms, the leather of my jacket, but my feet are steady and unwavering. I glide over the cobblestone, skirting the outer ring of the tall, white stone wall surrounding the castle grounds.
Wolves rush past me in warrior garb, bearing the royal crest on fabric over their backs. I keep moving, glancing over my shoulder while they disappear into the crowded market square. I take a single breath before tearing down the street, kicking up muck, my boots crashing through puddles of water littered with confetti.
I slide around a sharp corner, and the main gates to the castle rises above me, open to the public for the first time in… well, I don’t know how long.
But warriors are everywhere, monitoring the crowd as they explore the royal garden. More music drifts through the hedges towering over the top of my head. Fairy lights dance, casting a twinkling, golden gleam over the white stone pavers leading to the impossibly steep staircase that climbs up to the front doors of the palace.
I look up at the massive fortress. I’ve never been this close to it before.
“Hey!” A hiss breaks over the music. “Psst! Soren!”
I blink, tearing my gaze away from the two-story high doors inlaid with spiraling stained glass, and turn to the voice as a hand breaches the darkness, pulling me swiftly into the cover of a small outbuilding, a shed, or something of the like.
“You’re late!” Beckett snarls, his black hair swept back and fixed in place by thick, sticky hair gel that smells like a spicy–yet sweet–artificial vanilla.
I wrinkle my nose. He shuts us into the shed, hastily snatching a duffle bag off the dusty floor.
“Here, change–and quickly. You’re going to be one of the last guests arriving, and that’s a bad look, you’ll have a target on your back already.” He tosses me a jet-black tuxedo.
I shake my head when he tries to shove the white undershirt in my hand, reaching into the inner pocket of my jacket and handing him a sack of coins.
“The shirt I’m wearing is fine,” I grumble, snatching the tux jacket and shrugging out of my wet clothes, changing quickly while he counts the coins. “Is that enough?”
“How’d you get all this?”
“You said you wouldn’t ask questions.”
His dark eyes meet mine, his tongue sweeping over his lower lip, his brow raised as I shrug into the tux jacket. “You sure about this?”
“You’re not involved past this,” I hiss, motioning to the tuxedo. I fish the invitation to the ball out of its pocket with a short sigh of relief. “Remember?”
He grinds his teeth for a moment. “You’re really going to rob the royal family?”
“I am,” I admit, meeting his gaze and smoothing the fabric, then brushing my hair out of my face. “Just not tonight. I need to get a feel of the place, find my ins and outs.”
“This is probably the riskiest thing you’ve done so far.”
“You don’t know the half of the of,” I murmur, bending to fetch the dress shoes out of the duffle bag. “Where’s the mask?”
Beckett looks around in the dark before reaching for a black mask lying in the dust. He beats it against his thigh before handing it to me. I slip it on, sighing as my eyesight adjusts. It’s simple–black silken fabric with eyeholes. It covers about a third of my face, but that’s all. I pull my black gloves out of the pocket of my leather jacket before hanging it on a rake, which promptly falls to the ground with a clang under the rain-soaked weight of it.
“Get going,” Beckett rushes out.
“We’ll talk again soon,” I assure him with a nod, but it’s a lie.
I think he knows it, too, because he watches me slip on the gloves with a heavy sigh, his gaze locked on the silver bracelet clamped around my forearm, my skin scarred around it from years of wear.
I smooth my sleeve over the bracelet, giving him a quick nod before pulling open the door to the shed and scanning my surroundings.
The garden is still full of public onlookers and explorers getting a taste of the castle grounds for the first time, but I’m not here for the garden party. I’m not here for the masked ball taking place within the castle, either, but it’s my in.
I jog up the steps, the invitation clamped in my left hand, and stop at the threshold of the doors where several guards are lingering in watch, checking a group's invitations before letting them pass.
A hand flies over my chest hard enough for my lungs to contract. “Invite only, wolf,” the guard sneers. I thrust the invitation against his chest, arching a brow he can’t see behind my mask.
He scans my face. “Identification?”
I reach into the tuxedo pocket with a silent prayer that’s answered in the form of an identification booklet–a booklet full of lies.
According to its pages, I’m a merchant out of Tarsian with ties to the royals there, and in the Deadlands, where I do most of my trade… legally. Which couldn’t be further from the truth.
The man who put this together for me did a fine job because the guard steps aside, handing me back my things, which I tuck away as I stride past him with a smirk.
The doors open wide, revealing a sweeping grand foyer and a twin staircase made of the purest white marble that spirals five stories above my head. Two more stories overlook the foyer, their balconies shadowed against the domed, crystal ceiling. Murals are brushed down every wall as I follow the crowd into the ballroom, which is teeming with people in their finest gowns, jewels, and masks.
Soft, ethereal music wafts through the air, carrying the scent of wine and whiskey. I side-step, moving into the depths of the crowd, until I see it.
See her, more like it.
Her gown of crimson illuminates her fair, milky skin. Her face is flawless, like she’s been airbrushed after being sculpted by the gods of old–or the Goddess Herself.
Long, thick, dark brown hair falls in loose curls down her back, pinned half-up, half-down with clips glimmering with rubies and diamonds–also flawless.
Her neck is slender, like her shoulders. She’s tall but appears dainty, especially as she mingles, occasionally stepping to the side to allow another person to join her conversation. She moves like every step is a rehearsed dance. But I know she’s not weak. Her daintiness is a front, a cover for the beast that writhes beneath.
She’s wearing a mask, but I’d know those eyes anywhere. I’ve seen them before–twice now–in person. The first time, she spilled boiling hot tea all over my stomach. The second, she’d been trying to hide herself in that grimy booth in that even grimier diner in Veiled Valley. Each time, those eyes gave her away. They’re the purest blue-green, like polished sea-glass plucked from crystalline, sparkling sand on a far off beach.
Princess Maeve–soon to be Queen Maeve of Eastonia–turns her head ever so slightly, revealing the diadem resting on the top of her head, her hair woven through it to keep it place.
That’s what I’m here for. I’m here for the diadem, the jewels on her fingers, on her wrists, and her neck.
Diamond earrings the size of one of my knuckles glisten on her earlobes. I want those, too.
And I’ll take them, once I know how to get in, and out, of this Goddess forsaken castle without getting caught.
She’s an interesting creature. I wouldn’t consider her a person, by any means. I doubt any of the people in the room do, either. Most give her a wide berth, but some are… braver. Even those that flank her, leaning in cautiously to speak to their future queen, are careful not to get too close, careful not to touch her, lest she burst into flames.
I haven’t seen her in…three years, at least. The diner was the last time, and even then, it had just been a glimpse, a familiar shadow out of the corner of my eye. Since then, she’s removed herself from the public eye completely, holed away here in the castle. Only over the past few months leading up to the festival season in Moonrise has she been spotted again–a woman now–no longer the spindly, irresponsible, and hot-tempered teenage girl I remember.
I lift a glass of whiskey from the tray held out by a passing servant, pressing the chilled crystal rim to my lower lip, and inhale, watching her.
I should be… moving through the castle by now, internally mapping the maze of hallways and wings that space the length of what I’m sure is several miles, but I watch her instead, awe-struck and entirely uneasy as her gems catch the light of the grand chandelier hanging precariously over her head.
She turns to me abruptly, her hair swinging gracefully over her shoulder, sliding down her bare arm. Her eyes meet mine, and she tilts her chin ever-so-slightly in hello, like we know each other.
I raise my glass in greeting, a silent toast in her honor, and sip, keeping my eyes locked on hers.
She wants to remember who I am, I believe. That’s why she’s still staring at me, a look of slight confusion passing behind those beautiful eyes. She turns away, hesitating for a single second before dropping back into conversation with her group, and if she turned again, I wouldn’t know it because my feet move, carrying me through the crowd, past the servants so busy keeping everyone’s drinks full that they don’t notice me slipping through a backdoor into the maze of servants’ hallways that run parallel to the main thoroughfares used by the royals and their guests.
I have it on good authority that her personal quarters are on the fifth floor, where two towers split the sky into halves. I also know that the royal vault is a myth, and they’re so secure in their powers and highly trained guards that they keep their riches in jewelry boxes and dresser drawers.
At least, the princess does. I hope she does. I’ll find out for sure in a few days' time.
I slip through another door before I’m spotted by a rush of servants carrying trays of appetizers. The hallway is narrow and dark, but I exit into a main hallway cloaked in shadow, the thick, velvet curtains drawn against the market and festival just beyond the gardens.
Mirrors line the walls. I pass them like a shadow, catching a glimpse of my all black tux, my chestnut brown hair starting to dry in curls around my ears, and a flash of my eyes when I pass a single lit sconce.
I pull my mask down, trying to shadow the colors that are my dead giveaway for anyone who thinks I’m even remotely familiar. My left eye is… so icy blue it’s nearly white. The other, well, it’s like the Goddess couldn’t make up Her mind and made it half brown, half steel gray.
I’m nearly to the far doors on the very end of the long hallway where I know a staircase leads to the private apartments and rooms used by the royal family when a sharp sting erupts through my arm, flaring out from the bracelet fixed against my skin.
I brace a fist against the wall and double over as my skin burns, bubbling and blistering.
I can’t take it anymore. This pain. This debt I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to pay.
The pain rings out again, loud and sharp, until I’m forced against the wall, sliding down, breathless.
It’s a summons. The same summons I’ve been ignoring for a year. The summons that come with a promise of death I can’t continue to outrun.
I suck in a shuddering breath, covering the heated silver band with my gloved hand, waiting for the pain to subside.
A flash of white steals my attention. I turn my head as a small, fluffy white cat pads into view, a pink collar fixed around its neck with a shimmering moonstone hanging from it.
“Go away,” I hiss. “I’m allergic.”
The cat sits down several feet away and begins licking its paw, its snubbed face cast in the shadow of the amber light spilling from the single sconce. It eyes me wearily, purring softly as I rise on unsteady legs.
Blood trickles down my arm and into the glove.
I turn to the doors–the doors granting me an escape from a life of servitude, and sigh, which turns to a violent sneeze everyone in the near vicinity will hear, completely blowing my cover. I glare at the cat, stepping past it, making my way back to the party, then out into the night.
I’ll have to do this job blind.
I’ve had to do worse, I suppose.
Hopefully, Princess Maeve is still that oblivious royal she used to be when I first set my eyes on her all those years ago because she’s my ticket out of the grave I’ve been trying to dig myself out of since childhood.
“I’ll be back,” I whisper into the night as the festival swallows me whole.