The Court of Mirrors loved two things: its own reflection and other people's ruin.
Behind the golden latticed doors, music turned to whispers, and somewhere beyond the chandeliers two shadows writhed like a secret learning to talk.
Seren moved first.
Pressed to a velvet-draped column, she swallowed a laugh and bit it down into a gasp. The man with her, gloved, faceless in the dark, caught that sound like a prize and covered her mouth with his hand, the other dragging her close by the waist.
She arched, shameless and breathless, skirts bunched, pins loosening one by one like a string of little betrayals.
"Quiet," he murmured. The word skimmed her ear, silk over steel.
"What if I don't want to be?" she whispered back, reckless joy thrumming in her pulse, facilitated by wine.
"Then don't." He obliged her with ruinous patience, and for a few stolen moments the world was only heat, muffled laughter, and the bright, terrible relief of being wanted without dignity or shame to rein her in.
When it ended, he did not kiss her mouth. He bit her bare shoulder, slow, deliberate, as if testing how she took a mark. Then he smoothed her skirts with unhurried hands, tapped her backside with a gloved palm, playful, proprietary and stepped back into shadow.
She fixed her mask, trying for a smirk and failing into a grin. "Will I see you…"
"Soon," he said hurriedly.
A guard's lantern swept the corridor, her lover turned his face just enough that the light caught the edge of a smile and the gleam of rank at his throat. Seren's breath stilled.
Captain Delan inclined his head, as if taking a bow only she could see.
"Run along, my little bird," he whispered and vanished the way predators always did, utterly certain they owned the dark.
Seren pressed her fingers to the sting on her shoulder and did as she was told.
***
Lyra did not look back as she left the Court of Mirrors, reflections had a way of interpreting reality.
Her carriage rattled through streets glazed with frost and lamp-glow, Kaelen sitting opposite with that dangerous stillness he wore like a second cloak. The poison had bled out, what remained was focus. Even in the dim, he looked too regal for a sellsword, long dark hair unbound, temple scar catching stray light.
They did not speak until the gates of the House Vale closed behind them. Her townhouse rose like a dark alternate version against the night, tall, narrow, every window trimmed with restraint rather than wealth.
Lyra disliked opulence, it made people lazy. She preferred practicality and good locks.
Inside, the entry hall smelled of beeswax and citrus. The old steward, Hemsley, bowed them through with his usual quiet terror of her displeasure.
Lyra stripped off her gloves. "Seren should have returned before us."
"I have not seen her since dusk, my lady," Hemsley said. "Shall I send…"
"No." Lyra's fan was nowhere to hand, she made do with a slice of voice instead. "She's not lost, merely late. Tea in the green salon and fetch Ori."
Hemsley hesitated. "Mr. Ori is not at home either."
Something in Lyra flattened. "Both?"
"I'm certain they will be along directly," Hemsley offered, the sort of lie servants tell only the very brave or the very terrifying.
"Mm." Lyra turned to Kaelen. "Come."
They moved down the corridor together. A Persian runner had curled at one corner. Hemsley's one flaw and Lyra's slipper caught the lip. Her balance tilted and she winced from the pain of her injury, which had not fully healed.
Kaelen's arm closed around her before gravity could take its prize, hard, steady, enclosing.. His palm found her waist with infuriating accuracy, heat cutting through silk and sense.
"Careful," he said, voice low and intimate, command disguised as concern.
For one fractured second their eyes locked. The room narrowed to his grip, the scent of leather and steel, the thud of her own unruly pulse. Sparks leapt, dangerous, forbidden, too much.
Lyra inhaled, slid out of his hold as if it were nothing. Stop mistaking reflex for desire, she told herself. She brought him for a bigger game not to satisfy lust.
"Dont you you dare get any funny ideas." she said as she shot him a cold look.
A corner of his mouth edged toward trouble. "Then I'll try not to be a man."
"Do," she said, and kept walking, though her heartbeat argued otherwise.
The green salon waited, book-lined, fire banked low, a writing desk bristling with ledgers. The room had always belonged to her alone. Tonight it felt suddenly occupied by two.
Kaelen took in the space with that unsettling, careful gaze, as if committing the angles of her life to memory. He did not sit until she did. Manners born of… what, exactly?
"I'll post a man outside the back alley and one at the mews," he said.
Lyra's brow flicked. "You don't have men."
"I have loyalties," he said simply. "They arrive when I ask."
"And when you don't?" she asked, dry.
"Then they arrive faster."
Her mouth nearly smiled. Nearly. "Hemsley will take offense if soldiers scuff his flagstones."
"Then they'll hover," he said, as if solving a war map. He moved to the fire, added a log like it was the most natural thing to do, then poured the tea when Hemsley delivered it, holding the pot precisely to avoid a splash. His hands were all scar and steadiness, a sharp contrast with his pour.
Lyra watched that pour too closely.
"You noticed Seren's absence at court," she said, an accusation disguised as a remark.
"I notice yours more and who the hell is Serena? Put a lid on it." he replied, deliberately trying to rattle her.
Heat uncurled in places she pretended not to own. She set her cup down, unamused by her pulse. "Seren is not a liability."
"For your sake, I hope that's true," he said, not unkind.
Silence took a chair. It sat between them like a patient third.
Lyra rose and crossed to her writing desk, " I will show your quarters now, you may retire after dinner, if you choose"
"Where do you want me?" he asked then, and ruined the supposed innocence of the question by meaning it in more ways than one.
"Down the hall, second door" she said crisply, as she sat down again. Suddenly changing her mind about taking him. without looking up. " You'll be there for now and Hemsley will bring you dinner and find you plain livery. Nothing that screams."
"No one enters my room without my leave. You'll stand outside when I'm in my room. At night you'll sleep in your designated room." The last words came out with a sexual innuendo she didn't intend. She pretended she didn't notice.
Kaelen did. "You trust me with your household and threshold."
"I trust you to murder anyone who crosses it."
"And if it's me who crosses?" he asked, voice all velvet and hazard.
Lyra set the seal down very carefully. "Then you will remember the rules. In public you obey. In private you argue. You do not touch unless I say so."
A muscle in his jaw shifted, his eyes lit from within like a lantern lit late. He stepped closer, not close enough to scandalize propriety, just enough to test the weight of breath.
"Say it," she prompted, not because she needed it, but because she liked the way his consent sounded shaped to her.
"Yes," he said, a storm reduced to a vow. "My lady."
The words landed lower than her heart had any business allowing. She turned to the window before he could read it in her face. The street beyond lay silvered and quiet. Somewhere in that quiet, Seren was not where she should be.
"Find her," Lyra said into the glass. "Not tonight. Not with the Queen's eyes still on us. But tomorrow I want to know where she goes when she stops serving me."
"You want me to hunt your shadow," he said.
"I want to keep my house from burning."
He bade her good night and walked away from the room, carrying with him his aura and presence.
Inside, Lyra unpinned her hair, wrote a swift note to Ori and another (sharper) to the palace archivist, then hesitated over a third. She was about to blow out the candle on those unsent words then something whispered.
Not wind. Not the creak of old wood. A very particular whisper. Paper kissing stone. A slip, then the soft hesitation of a hand withdrawn.
Lyra stilled. The candle flames did not waver. The hairs along her arms did.
She set the quill down, reached for the fan she kept beside her blotter, a habit few understood until it mattered and crossed to the window. The shutter slats were closed, hooked from within. Something white peered beneath the sill, thin as a tongue.
She knelt and slid the slip free with the fan's edge, careful to touch as little as possible.
No seal. Elegant hand. Two lines.
The wolf is not yours to keep.
He belongs to the Queen.
The calm in her chest cracked, paper-thin. She turned the note over, nothing. She held it close to the candle, the ink did not bloom into invisible scripts.
Expensive paper. Confident hand. The sort of arrogance that assumed its words were law.
A knock sounded at her door. Firm. Once.