The morning after the masquerade, the city was still wrapped in ice, but inside the Knight's mansion, something had thawed.
Emily stood at the window, watching the pale sun melt frost from the glass panes. She was still in her robe, hair unpinned from last night's elaborate twist. A part of her wished she'd kept the mask.
Because wearing it had made things easier.
She'd been bold. Unbothered. Powerful.
Now, stripped of costume and illusion, the vulnerability returned—quiet, but real.
Alexander entered without knocking, a habit he'd resumed in recent days. He didn't speak right away. Just stood beside her, hands in his pockets, gaze locked on the same window.
"You were brilliant last night," he said eventually.
She glanced at him. "You expected me to fail?"
"No," he replied. "But I didn't expect you to command the room."
She turned fully to him. "I didn't do it for the room. I did it so they'd know I won't be erased."
Alexander's mouth twitched slightly. Not quite a smile. "They know that now."
There was a pause.
Then Emily asked, "Who else was watching?"
He met her eyes. "Everyone."
---
Later that day, Miranda intercepted her in the library.
"You've shaken the balance, Emily," she said, flipping through a thick leather-bound book as though the subject were casual.
"Good," Emily replied. "It needed shaking."
Miranda's eyes flicked up. "Do you think this is a fairytale? That you can just outwit men like Benedict Ashthorne, outpace women like me, and rewrite your ending?"
Emily stepped closer. "Not a fairytale. A war story."
She held Miranda's gaze. "And I don't need to win every battle. I just need to survive long enough to choose how it ends."
Miranda's expression faltered for just a moment.
Then she smiled tightly. "I hope you're as good as you think you are."
---
That evening, Alexander called Emily into the study. She expected another briefing, another warning.
Instead, he handed her a small black box.
Inside was a phone—encrypted, custom-made.
"You'll need this," he said. "For what's coming."
Emily raised an eyebrow. "You're giving me tools now?"
"I'm giving you a choice," he replied. "You don't have to stay in the dark."
She stared at the device, then up at him.
"Why the sudden honesty?"
Alexander leaned on the edge of the desk. "Because whether I admit it or not, this isn't just about strategy anymore."
Emily's breath caught.
"And what is it about?"
He didn't answer with words.
Instead, he stepped closer, carefully, as though approaching something fragile.
But before he could touch her, Emily lifted the phone and said, "Then tell me everything. No more shadows."
Alexander nodded.
The mask, finally, was beginning to fall.
The encrypted phone lay dormant on Emily's bedside table like a coiled secret, silent but pulsing with potential.
She hadn't touched it again—not yet. Some part of her knew that the moment she did, there would be no going back. Knowledge was a point of no return, and she'd lived too long in a world where knowing too much could kill faster than a bullet.
But when the past came knocking, the present didn't wait.
A letter arrived that morning. Hand-delivered. No return address.
The envelope was heavy cream, the handwriting elegant but sharp. Emily's name was written with deliberate flair. She slit it open, heart thudding. Inside was a single sheet.
He burned everything you were meant to inherit. But some embers never die.
Meet me at the Serpent's Tail. Midnight.
No signature.
She read it twice. Then again.
The Serpent's Tail was a forgotten jazz bar in the industrial district, abandoned since a fire gutted it years ago. Her father had once taken her there as a child, telling her that legends lived in smoke and shadows.
Now, ao did secrets.
—
Emily dressed phat night—dark jeans, a heavy coat, and no trace of the woman who had dazzled at the masquerade. She didn't tell Alexander. Not because she didn't trust him, but because this felt older than whatever they were building. This felt like blood.
The Serpent's Tail stood like a burnt carcass at the edge of the city. Charred wood. Shattered windows. Ash still clung to the corners of the ruined doorframe. She stepped inside.
The air was thick with silence.
Then someone spoke.
"I didn't think you'd come alone."
She turned sharply. A man emerged from the shadows, face obscured by a scarf and cap.
"Depends on what you're offering," she replied.
He stepped forward, cautious.
"I knew your mother."
Emily stiffened. "That's not a name I hear often."
"She died protecting something she shouldn't have had."
Emily's fists clenched. "What was it?"
The man looked around, then pulled a flash drive from his coat and placed it on the ledge between them.
"Answers. But the kind that makes enemies. Especially in the Ashthorne camp."
Emily reached for it. "Why now?"
"Because someone's stirring the ashes," he said. "And when that happens, things long buried tend to crawl back up."
Then he vanished into the darkness, leaving only the faint scent of smoke behind.
—
Back at the mansion, Emily locked the door, slid the flash drive into her laptop, and clicked.
Files opened.
Photos. Reports. Financial records. Maps.
And a name at the top of every page.
Everett Langston.
Her mother's brother.
Her uncle.
Long presumed dead.
But very much alive in these documents—and once linked to the Ashthorne syndicate.
Emily's mind raced. If Everett had been part of them once… what had he discovered that made him disappear?
And more importantly—why did they want her to forget him?
She glanced at the encrypted phone.
Then picked it up.
"I'm ready," she whispered into the silence.
And for the first time, the screen lit up.
The encrypted phone's interface was sleek, devoid of branding—just a single app glowing in the centre: a vault icon, pulsing gently as though it recognized her readiness.
Emily tapped it.
Immediately, a secure message appeared.
"Welcome. This is your threshold."
Below it, a prompt: Enter codeword.
She hesitated. Then typed a word only her mother used, whispered in lullabies and warnings alike.
"Wolfsbane."
The screen blinked. Then unlocked.
Files appeared—layered, coded, some marked with red flags.
Alexander had given her a key. What she found beyond it was darker than she expected.
The documents unravelled a network of assets, blackmail files, and debt markers—names of powerful individuals tethered to the Ashthorne family not through loyalty, but through leverage. Politicians, CEOs, judges.
But in a locked section labelled Project VESTA, she found something worse.
Her name.
Next to it, her mother's. Her father's. And Everett Langston's—crossed out in red.
Each name is linked to a separate ledger. Blood debts. Buried secrets. And beneath them, coordinates.
One set matched the Serpent's Tail.
Another… the Knight estate.
—
Emily barely had time to process it when her door opened without warning.
Alexander.
He froze when he saw the laptop open, her face pale, the phone in her hand.
"You looked," he said quietly.
"I had to."
He closed the door behind him. "And now you know."
"Know what?" she demanded, rising. "That my family was part of a ledger? A project? That my uncle isn't dead but erased?"
Alexander moved slowly, like someone approaching a storm.
"That ledger was created long before either of us had a choice. Your mother tried to destroy it. Your father tried to hide it."
"And you?" she asked bitterly.
"I inherited it," he said.
Silence expanded like thunder.
Emily's voice trembled. "So all of this—the marriage, the alliance, the masquerade—it's part of some… generational chess game?"
Alexander looked pained. "It started that way. But it changed."
She stepped back. "When?"
"When you stopped being a pawn."
—
Later, in the underground archives of the Knight estate—where marble met steel and history was stored beneath floorboards—Emily followed coordinates to a sealed vault.
Inside was an old leather book. Its pages are brittle. Ink faded.
But one entry stood clear:
Everett Langston: defected. Presumed threat. Locate and neutralize.
And beneath it:
Daughter of Rhea Langston: unknowingly carries the key.
Emily's hands shook.
She carried something they wanted. Something her mother died to protect.
Not just knowledge. A key.
To what?
To undo them? Or to finish what was started?
She didn't know.
But she knew she couldn't turn back.
Outside the archive, Alexander waited.
"No more lies," she said.
He nodded. "Then no more masks."
And for the first time, he opened the vault further—to show her where the real war began.