TRIGGER WARNING: This chapter lightly references to a nonconsensual sexual situation (that happened in the past and not on-screen). I apologise deeply. If such things are triggering for you, please PM me and I will give you a recap of the events of the chapter.

Chapter 22: A Sisterhood of Revenge

A Masquerade was hosted every two to four years in a different state of the north. There was a Masca village in every state, a palace made of dozens of houses, each one claimed by a different family.

The Masca Delen was nestled in Oren valley north of the city of Affydot, capitol of Delen. A first snow had already fallen a few of days before our arrival. The mountains that rose up around us to touch the celeste sky were silver and viridescent, snow still frosting the branches of the evergreen trees.

The air was colder than I was used to, but also dry. Afali and I moistened our lips with a thick balm to save them from chaffing and walked wrapped in fur coats and scarves.

There were seventeen houses of the Masca, built from blue-grey sanorila bricks and arranged like a flower around the central hall. Glassed in winter gardens created walkways that connected the houses to the hall.

Afali and I did not stay at the Cervi house where we would have to share it with several other Cervi lords and ladies from lesser branches. Waryn, being of the Fel, had the run of the Eloroan house which was newer than the other buildings. He wanted me near at hand, and since I was forced to go where Afali went, he invited her to a room that was joined with his.

Bold, but not bold enough for Afali.

I didn't know what to do with my new knowledge over Afali. I could overpower her now and get a few more inches on the leash that tied me down.

During the journey, we had to share a carriage with two other Cervi ladies, Sima and Ela, who chatted with Afali and mostly treated me like a servant.

There, in the Eloroan house, if I planned to do anything, I needed to find the right opportunity and approach it in the correct way. On the surface, I didn't have Afali's servants watching and reporting my every move. But since this was Waryn's house, I had no doubt that the very walls had eyes.

Like the secret passage from my bedroom that Nava showed me during my first night.

The walls of my room didn't have tapestries like in Kamiir Garden. They were panelled cherry wood underneath a mother-of-pearl ceiling. The wood itself was carved with lions, of course, and Nava pushed the chin of the third lion from the left by the bed, casing the panels to swing aside, revealing a dark, narrow passage.

We walked in single-file down a dusty corridor. I could just about walk straight, but Nava, who led the way, had to hunch down as not to knock her head on the low ceiling. The passage forked, and Nava led me to the right fork first. We stopped at another wooden panel. "This is Waryn's room," she whispered. "If you ever need to meet with him..."

I couldn't see in the dark, but Nava made me feel the wooden panel until I found a stone fitted into the wood. She pushed a diamond shaped stone into my hand. "Exchange the one there with the one you have and Waryn will come to you."

"What if he isn't in his room?"

"Someone will let him know."

Next, Nava showed me where the other fork led to. It was a small dusty room with a desk and a few chairs. She lit a candle. "This is where you and Waryn will meet to discuss... matters."

"Servants don't come here, I suppose," I said.

"No one knows about this place."

I noted the locked cabinets all along the walls. Was this where Waryn held his secrets? Not all his secrets. Just the ones he took with him on his travels, if at all he did.

"They just contain weapons," Nava said. "Weapons are not allowed during Masquerade, but every noble family has such a room."

I wasn't really listening to Nava, I was looking at the floor. I could see in the dust a third set of footprints—not mine or Nava's—leading from Waryn's corridor, and down to a different one on the other end of the room, but not before it stopped by one of the cabinets.

"I really did mean it when I said I like you," Nava said. She noticed where my attention was directed. "You remind me of someone I like a lot."

"Who?"

Nava fluttered her thick, long eyelashes and placed the tips of her fingers against her own chest. "Leah."

"Of course..." I wasn't sure if she was mocking me right then.

"You pay attention to everything. You know there's always a catch, so you find it. You're no a dimwit, Abetha," she said and added, "Waryn said that's your name."

How...considerate of him.

"Just call me Dylana," I said drily. "Too many names on one person can get crowded."

"I know."

"Talking from experience?" I didn't mean to ask her a question. I was not going to make friends with her. Even if I was curious to know why the Somaer sentenced her to death and yet she came to Delen without a problem. I would not ask since it was irrelevant to what I came here to accomplish.

"Oh yes. I know what it's like to pretend to be someone else."

"Were you..." I stopped myself, turning away.

"Yes, I was. Everyone assumed I was a man when I was born because I was shaped like a boy. I lived with the knowledge of who I am for many years until I was strong enough to speak up. The truth is a frightening thing, especially when you're the only one who knows it."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because..."

I looked at Nava's face in the candlelight. She was frowning in such a way that made my chest contract. While I considered seducing Waryn to be my lover and have power over him, Nava, whether she did it intentionally or not, was seducing me into friendship. It was easier to resist lust than it was to resist a connection of hearts, especially when loneliness and paranoia were poisoning my mind.

"I like how you look at me and see only me and not the person that I was," Nava said eventually, and I had to bite my lip and go to war inside myself. Nava's vulnerability should have been an act. I could not allow myself to believe otherwise.

"Is that why they sentenced you to death?" I suddenly asked. "Because of...who you are?"

"Yes and no..." Nava looked up, pulling her shoulder-blades back. "I know where you came from such a thing would never be allowed. But nobles literally have the legal right to... manifest themselves. It's in the constitution, did you know that?"

"What's in the constitution?"

"The matter of gender. It's called "the right to individually acknowledge one's own gender". It is only for the privilege of the nobles. In fact, that last king of Vynam was said to have been born as a girl and manifested himself into a man. I don't know if that's the truth."

"Then why were you sentenced to death?"

"Because of inheritance laws. I was born two minutes earlier than Tamir. I was the Somaer heir, before my brother, but I could only inherit as Amos. I could establish my own gender, but not my identity. And I didn't have the interest of ruling a Vynam state. I couldn't bear it. But it's not so simple to change inheritance. If it were, it would happen more often. The only way to do it was for Amos to die. My mother, bless her, agreed to legally sentence Amos to death, file an official apology to Nava for misinterpreting her gender. But under the law, I had to have a protector, for security reasons. A death sentence is still a death sentence unless a protector nominates himself. Our enemies could've used this to legally assassinate me. That's where Waryn stepped in. He was always a friend..."

"And Lady Liora, your mother, she accepted this?"

"My mother is an extraordinary person. She knows I walk a different path."

The head of the Somaer, leader of the Fel. Even among the people, the name Liora Somaer invoked respect.

"The way I see it, your path is the same one all the lords walk, especially when you hang out with Waryn."

"Waryn's different."

"You're too smart to honestly believe that."

"I don't need to convince you," Nava placed her hand on her hip. "You'll see soon enough. If you'll ever chance to meet one of the big spiders—which we all hope you don't—you'll be begging for the warmth of Waryn's web."

"More likely, Waryn will be begging for the warmth of my bed," I mumbled.

Nava laughed. "You're a danger to him, that's for sure. If he survives Afali..."

I frowned. Yes, Waryn would send Nava to find out what I knew. He would do that.

"Where do the other passages lead?" I asked.

"Don't use them," Nava said. She knew that I knew what she had just tried to do.

I turned to the passage from which I came. "Tomorrow is the Initiation ball. I need to get ready."

"If Waryn needs you, he'll leave a similar signal in your room. Always look to see if the third lion's eyes have changed colour."

"I will," I said drily, retracing my steps. Nava didn't come with me.

The signals were clever, well concealed, but Waryn overlooked one detail.

I now had means with which to spy on his directly.

***

"When will you stop wearing that ridiculous maiden mask?" Afali asked me as, huffing and puffing, she climbed the stairs of the path. The Masca Delen was built on an uphill ascent. Inside the compound, that couldn't be felt, but when walking the stone paths of the village itself, one had to climb hundreds—maybe thousands—of stairs.

"Tonight," I said. "I'll show you tonight." I was unable to put on the mask Shana had made for me. I looked at it once, and tears stung my eyes. I hadn't felt strong enough to wear it like she meant for me to wear it.

It was the most magnificent piece she had ever made.

"I told you that mask-maker was good. You didn't believe me."

"Good? Afali, good is what you'd call the mask that Leah wears. With the mask that you've had made for me, I'm going to win the Masquerade"

"It's not a competition."

A smile found its way to my face. "Are you sure?"

"If it were, you couldn't win, because I already have."

"Really? Did Waryn...?"

Afali's head hung down. She was trying to be comical to hide how real her disappointment was. "No..."

"Oh, Afali. He's a virgin boy, I'm sure he'll...What...is....that?" I was looking at a great expanse of ice walled in by a low fence. Lords and ladies danced like hovering fairies over the white plane. "Are they wearing knives on their shoes?" I asked.

Even before Afali responded, I realised my mistake, and luck. South Tal, where I was supposed to be from, had one of the mildest climates in Vynam, but there would be a chance that Dylana would know about any strange activity that lords partook in, even in colder countries.

"It's a rink," Afali said. "A Genalia tradition. They have proper lakes for these things. I don't know how to ice-dance."

I had a short moment of relief when the danger passed, and then I was immersed in the beauty and grace of the ice-dancers, gliding like birds in flight, dark shapes over a blank white surface. I stepped forward and hung on the rail when I saw a familiar face. "Lord Mica," I called.

He slid over towards me, as smoothly as a swimming swan. "Hello, Dylana." He smiled wanly at me. He didn't smile wanly specifically at me, Mica merely smiled wanly at everything. With hair the colour of bread-crust and creamy skin, he was handsome in that lordly, serum-induced fashion, but his expressions were always weak, as if there wasn't enough personality inside him to wholeheartedly back any kind of facial statement.

I preferred a man with a deeper complexion and crazier thoughts. If he had unruly curly hair and intensely blue eyes, then all the better.

But if need be, I would seduce Lord Mica, regardless.

"Can you... teach me how to do that?" I asked.

***

I hung on Afali for dear life and yelped with every stair we took.

"You idiot. What about the dancing? What about tonight?"

"It was worth it," I hissed, sweat breaking across my forehead. The wine I drank with Mica helped to make me feel like I was floating over the pain in my muscles. It had not been easy to hold myself over the ice, but once I started, I couldn't stop.

Joy was such a fleeting thing, but so precious. It deserved to be grabbed.

And Afali laughed, like a girl who was still somewhat a child.

And not a girl who was with child.

"Afali..." I said, because this was the moment. The silence, the solitude. I can overpower her. I can have control over my situation. This was when either she would trust me, or hate me forever. "I'll kill him. I promise you, I will kill him myself, with my own hands. Just tell me who."

"What are you talking about?" she said, still with laughter in her voice. She didn't realise that I was serious, she didn't detect the danger.

"I've killed before, you know. It was an accident. I hadn't meant to. But I can kill again. I can kill a man who deserves to die."

And Afali stopped to stare at me, because now she heard it. She pulled away as far as she could with my arm still tangled around her. "Dylana... what are you talking about?"

"I will kill the man who... did this to you," I whispered.

She threw off my arm, and pulled away, nearly slipping off the path, and off the side of the mountain. "How do you know? Who told you? Was it her? Did she tell you?"

"No one told me," I said. "Do you think I wouldn't notice? You faked it when you had your blood, and your belly keeps swelling. Whenever there was a public bath with the other ladies, you would never come. But all this issue with Waryn, that was what finally gave you away."

Afali hugged her arms around herself, with her back to me. "And what will you do with the knowledge, Dylana?"

"How did it happen?" I asked.

"How? With that... that conniving witch living in my home? And her poor, weak son who might not live long enough to have his first dose of serum? The real reason you were brought to Velemia, Dylana, was so that you'll be that boy's heir after she drugged my maids and sent her brother into my room to destroy me."

It would have happened over the course of the summer, while Lord Aspertin was away. With an illegitimate child, she would not be able to legally marry. Even if Lord Aspertin wouldn't wish it, the law stated that by carrying a child she forfeited her inheritance and would be disowned.

Afali whirled around toward me, with unshed tears twinkling like stars in her burning grey eyes. "But no one can destroy me, not even you."

I held her gaze, unmoving. We both looked at the drop down the winding stairs we stood upon. Accidents could happen on a chill winter morning, with Dylana drunk on wine and weak from ice-dancing.

She lunged towards me, I saw her coming. She thought I'd move away, that she could push me into stumbling. But I, instead, held her fast, and we both fell. The hard stone jarred my bones. I felt every sharp step as we slid down, finally coming to a halt several feet down from where we stood.

"I will not be taken down," she yelled into my ear. "I will not bow, or beg. I will not be shamed."

I held her. For once, there was a truth I could face. Afali was real, and I had all of her.

"I won't allow you to be taken down," I said. "Lady Golia will pay, Afali. Her brother will pay. They will all pay."

Her body rocked as sobs from the deepest reaches of her soul shook their way out and onto my shoulder. I embraced her like I hadn't hugged Marin. Like I should've hugged Marin "I promise you, I won't allow any sister of mine to be harmed."

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Hop, hop, hop! Today I'm a bunny. What's up, doc?

What did you think about this chapter? While it's purposefully unclear what Yael plans to do, are her motivations for doing it clear? *munches some lettuce* And again, what are your thoughts about Nava?

I hope you had a lovely weekend. I certainly did. Please share your comments. They're beautiful and my precious and I love them. And now... I'm craving a carrot.

*hops away*
❤️
Einaty