𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐃𝐄

.ೃ࿐ᴸᵉᵗ ᵘˢ ᵉˣᵖˡᵒⁱᵗ ᵗʰᵉ ᶠᵒᵒˡ'ˢ ᵖˡᵃʸ.

The catatonic idealisation of one's reflection is no longer beheld as solipsistic but self-respecting. Then what is the disparity between self-reverence and vain when you cannot pardon those around you? —Palace of Ulric labyrinths, Elvira Crest.

࿐SÉRAPH࿐

|Than—July 22, 7425|

THE VESTIBULE of the ballroom was sufficient, to say the least. Faux candles operated with gold electricity, long ceilings glooming a calm peach colour into the air. Old portraits of long-dead men and women hung on every open space of the walls, untouched by the disease of dust.

Juniors and seniors of millennial long bloodlines, all exposed and on display to the private eyes of a hundred guises of capital.

The room was an open space, with no doors in sight as it expanded across what was supposed to be separate rooms. A meeting of bronze and gold design that carried the voices and laughter of the many attending guests, enveloping the fortress with an intoxicating resonance of finely squashed grapes and skewered delights.

'Looks like little Sera's got herself a few spectators,' Scarlet's muffled voice mused through her ear. She found the first set of eyes that belonged to one of the many ambassadors Séraph had memorized. Julian Carraway, the second ambassador of Than leaned sheepishly next to one of the open trays on a table, picking at a snack on one of the platters as he scanned her unrepenting. He was in his late thirties as far as she remembered, auburn hair clattering together as thin strands as it did in his portraits, revealing most of his irritated scalp.

Another voice spoke up. 'Letty always says ignore the eyes, Séra. They’ll make you cursed.'

Cherry. She almost couldn't help but smile at the sound of the young girl's voice.

The dance was centred a the heart of the maturing crowd, stunning suction of melodies rounding to the asphyxiation of dresses made up of rare white silks and light satins that hovered across the marble flooring deathly in sync, diversifying between the steps of expensive leathers worn by men with hands full of jewelled corsets and blushing waists.

Lords, ladies, mistresses, ministers, ambassadors; everyone melted onto one another dual to soft butter left to glide in the heat of a culpable summer— In her own bubble of lull, Séraph Alchemy could read up almost every gust of lechery puffed out by the individuals occupying the sinking cavity of the Than palace. Well, that was until she became a magnet to nails.

She internally groaned at the charlatan clearing of a man's throat from behind her.

His tone was a bored one. "Do you always stare so passively at the fruits of the receptions you attend or are you just craving all the attention you gain from just standing there and looking pretty?"

She didn't turn back at his sudden conversation. Snatching up a full glass of lavender liquid from the dish of a touring waiter who fashioned one of the king's handpicked and comically pitiful party masks, she replied in the very same manner of malignant indifference, "I'd like to think that what you just gave me there was a compliment, sir."

The drill of a new symphony pruned off a comeback as Séraph finally faced the man. He was tall and handsome, but again, most of the men in this room were exactly that. Most. His hair was slicked back and not with one of those cheap gels that worshipped to solidify the strands of your hair, a light mousse that captured the pretty panorama of him lounging with a lit cigarette a few minutes after just having finished a shower—vulnerable and a taboo sort of dishevelled, nonetheless, a custom of collected and dashingly clean. He exposed one crested ear at the ending tip of his mask, matching the cuffs buttons on his blackout tux; they were a precious metal yellow that made his presence drown out the indulgence of all of the other luxurious things that were on display that night.

He held his hand out to her, Garzabel's planetary rings intertwining with the pale fingers of the palm that pointed up to the teasing stars. "I want you to dance with me."

"No."

He clicked his tongue as if he were being burdened by her rapid refusal. "Fine by me, although, I'm not quite sure how Ambassador Carraway would feel about such a humbling shutdown." His sympathetic and questionable hum caught hoarse at the back of his throat as one of his cold fingers found itself on her jaw, navigating her to head towards the ambassador in mention making his way through the parading populace and directly for them. "I hear his entitlement takes the rejection of a masked man better than it does that of an uninterested woman."

'You're supposed to blend in,' she heard Scarlet's grunt in her earpiece. 'Improvise and act like a proper lady.'

Proper lady her ass.

'Letty, can I have some of your chocolate squares?' she heard the little girl ask over the headpiece.

'Are you in my room?'

'Uh...no.'

Scarlet's sigh drove into her ear. 'Fine. Just don't touch my boxes. And turn your mic off, you're disturbing the mission.'

'Thankyouthankyouthankyou!'

'Cherry!'

'Okay! Bye bye!'

The man took Séraph resting her still full glass down on the nearing table as an opening to yank them to the eye of the room. And as much as Séraph wished to stab him then and there, the troubled look on Carraway's plump and exposed face easily stopped her.

"My lady." The metal of his rings stung with a cold bruise as his fingers found the exposed back of her silked-down dress. "I need you to look at me." He amplified the pressure of his fingers, pushing until Séraph had no other choice but to lean back to allow a flow space between them, her testy stare caught on his pleased one from under his pliable mask as he swayed the two of them to match the poised rhythm of the couple next to them.

"There it is," the man announced in a mildly perverse whisper, staring at Séraph with some sort of gleeful revelation. "I finally figured it out."

"Figured what out?"

"Why the prince's eyes seemed to be soldered to you." He keep his inquisitive stare on her covered face as Séraph's eyes fell to the far left of the room where Levion sat a fidgeting horror, his feeble watch hopping to Séraph every second like a child waiting for the permission of his guardian to play. "You're his favourite toy."

"What?"

Over the rage of her debacle heart, Séraph swore she heard the sound of a miserably stifled giggle through her earpiece.

"You are, aren't you?"

Maybe she should've just tossed out this whole quandary and stabbed him to begin with.

'It's time, Sèra,' She could just hear Scarlet's grinning voice over her thinking. The picture of her friend, albeit the smug essence of him, made her almost twitch with relief at the realisation of what she was to do next.

His fingers shaped with her waist as she built further space between them. "If you don't mind, good sir," Séraph began grudgingly, proceeding to pull herself out of his cold grasp with a durable sneer. "I'll be excusing myself now."

"But we haven't reached the main course of our conversation," the man mumbled, only slightly losing his grip on her. "Don't you want to know what else I've figured out about you?"

"If I was being entirely honest?" Sèraph replied, trying to twist out of his frigid clasp without giving into the temptation of breaking his arm. "No, not really."

"Suite yourself." He released her, fixing the cuffs of his jacket as he began to make his way past her. "But don't say I didn't give you a warning." And he was finally gone at that, finely gelled head of hair waning from the crowd as if his existence were a delicate article from Séraph's ingenuity.

"Pretentious piece of shit."

"Such vulgar words for a woman of such dignified class, Séra." Scarlet wore his magnificent crimson tuxedo, white and noble shirt engraved with miniature crystals that twinkled reflected poor light into his messy mop of tousled hair. His gaze jumped over her head, scarred hands finding her sides in tune with the unusual melody that mirrored across the estate, casually exploring their surroundings for the misplaced phantom of Séraph's insalubrious bitterness. "Where did the pretty fanboy go?" Scarlet let out a snort, " He was sniffing you like a celibate in heat." His delicate lips fell to a teasing pout, "And by the looks of him, I might've needed him. My wallet has been a little famished lately."

They swayed to the left, twirling conventionally with the other pairs. "Keep talking and a heeled foot up your ass might just guide you straight to him." Then they shifted to the right, slowly detaching as they drifted into a walk, making their way around the masquerading folk who pranced their youth in haloes and towards the doors shielded by watching vigils at the closet of the room.

Séraph took the nearest turning hall which was to her right as Scarlet went for the left, heels echoing as she treaded about the hall of the palace, eyes touring the portraits and chandeliers that enveloped the walls and ceilings above.

"Ma'am?" A timid voice raised the question, turning her attention to the uniformed waiter who looked up at her with large eyes as if the mere idea of addressing a member of his king's party was grating a punishment at the base of his throat. "This area is not open to guests, I'm afraid."

"I apologize," Séraph spoke with a smile, waving a hand at the art around them. "It seems the king's portraits have distracted me completely."

"I can't say you'd be the first," the man replied with a shy chuckle. "If I didn't find wondering people who were lost as a result of how distracting the portraits were, I would have said they weren't doing a good enough job at being beautiful."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

She hummed back in agreement, turning her eyes to the tray in the man's hand. "May I have one?"

The smile on the man's face fell a little as he looked at the glasses on his tray, lips thinning as he turned back towards her. "I'm afraid these have been reserved by the king and his close guests, madam." Her strained cheeks did not falter as she nodded understandingly at him, hum catching at the base of her lips. "But I can fetch you a glass the second I deliver these, if that's alright with you?"

"No," Séraph muttered broodingly, turning away and walking in the direction she was originally making her way through.

"Ma'am!" The waiter called out again, tray clattering subtly as he turned to her moving figure. His gloved hand caught her exposed forearm, halting her as he told her with an urgent tone, "You can't go that way!"

CRASH!

The tray in his hold clattered to the ground, some shattering and the beverages within staining the white floor underneath them. A rasped inhale broke from the waiter who latched onto Séraph, veins protruding from his oiled temples as the pressure of her dagger invaded his insides. She took a tug backwards, releasing the reddened blade of her dagger as he collapsed to the ground, mouth opening and closing for words or perhaps the air his shaken body no long could relinquish in.

Séraph bent down, crouching above his crumbled body as she lifted one of the glasses, half filled and not entirely shattered like its brothers and sisters. She took a delicate sip, muttering pleasingly under her breath with a content sigh, "You're right. This does taste like something worthy of a king."

The waiter wheezed something useless at her, face pink with pain as he watched her stand back into her full height, pouring out the contents of her glass on the window curtains that sprayed out of its size. She paused for a second, looking down at her work before she took some steps around the collapsed waiter, fumbling with something out of his sight. He didn't realise what until the shadows around them shifted oddly in offence, the lit candles in her grip sweating hot with wax as she made her way around him again and let it fall into the drenched mess, sparking instant blazes that demolished the fabric of the curtains.

A shocked curse pulled her eyes to a certain blond prince, lips starting for the right words as he took in the fire, his eyes soon collapsing to the bleeding man on the floor. He pulled the bag in his hold closer to his chest. "Is...is he dead?"

"I didn't hit anything important," Séraph told him with an unconcerned furrow of her dark brows, dropping her gaze to the subtly withering waiter who was doing his best to wriggle away from her. "Nothing a little bit of glue can't fix it. Right?" She jabbed at his clothed ankle with the toe of her heel. "But that's beside the point," she complained, striding off as Levion stumbled after her, taking glimpses over his shoulders at the growing flames and then the bowed man who crawled above a trail of his red, away from the ravenous orange. "We're behind on time, Than."

"Is that bad?"

"Inconvenient," she simply stated, latching on the bag in Levion's grip. He didn't resist the theft as he let go, watching as she clawed her way through it, pulling out several articles of clothing. She threw some to him before she closed the bag and began changing. Levion turned away to inspect the carpeting below them as Séraph swapped out her outfit, discarding the red dress that, in his myopic opinion, suited the incurable woman a little too well. Blood red, his mind humoured in dismay, stabbing for the attention of eyes.

Palpably and metaphorically.

"Are you going to kill him?" Levion's query carried little depth against the gaudy halls of his home. Séraph only lent him a ruffled look, zipping up her jacket with a metallic bay that demoralized the startling tranquillity shrouding them. Clearing the discomfort in his throat, Levion elaborated. "My father, I mean. Are you going to kill him?"

"Did you pay me to kill him?" Séraph asked back, with none of her previous conflicts or offence being left behind. His lips slightly fell, marvelling at his uncertain verdict. "No?" Séraph answered for him, cheeks raised in faux entertainment as she waited for the response of the wordless, defected prince. "Then please refrain from asking me any more ridiculous questions, Levion, before the idea of killing you starts to become too appealing of a concept for me."

"Always so pleasant," Levion muttered back to himself, following as the assassin began her strides again. He stuffed himself into a lighter jacket matching hers, zipping it up until the zip tickled uncomfortable at the ring of his chin. The prince had to break into a half-sprint to just catch up the woman, creeping through the map of his home in her thoughts. "Now what?"

"Now," intruded an entirely different voice of frost. Séraph was first to halt her movements, head unmoving as her eyes cut to the right of her periphery, only stumbling once as Levion bumped into her unmoving figure. Aired amusement fell from the lips a few paces from them, spiking all the hairs on Levion's body the menace of the woman before him had not already abused. "Now, you get to wonder about the magnitude of the punishment your father will bestow on you, prince."

"Oh, it's you," Séraph noted bitterly, tilting her head to better take in the man standing behind Levion. "What do you want? Did the King's concubine fail to properly finish you in her mouth?"

The unusual man smiled. "Only a two-minute chat and you already think so loosely of me?"

"You didn't disagree." Séraph swatted away Levion who stood jittery before her, taking his position as she stared down the man from the ball earlier in the palace, hair scarcely disordered with an interaction that Séraph was disinclined to question. "Is that why you're here? Because I'm afraid to tell you that the prince is not attracted to men."

Séraph ignored the sharply offended turn of Levion's head from her side as she eyed the man inch closer to the pair. Not liking the closing space, Séraph took a step back, the tousled man dashing for her right as she did, fingers combing against the floors like he were one of the creatures that roomed in Alec's ruins, shooting closer and closer. Fingers which— What? Séraph disregarded the shout of cautioning from Levion as she attempted to dodge the man which seemed to materialise before her, faster than striking lightening as her stained dagger tightened in her grip, anticipating his—

What was this? How was he moving so quick?

Séraph's high-pitched scream had Levion wide-eye, mouth open with his own caught yell as he took in the movements of the man before him, mouth clamped down onto her wrist, jagged teeth drawing blood like a crazed beast. The clean-tuxedo man from a few moments ago was no longer in sight, only the unfamiliar man who gnawed away the flesh on the Tempest's wrist, face dirty with ash that was not all present in Than's Palace, eyes wide like they were loose and hair spilling away from him like a canine whose own mane did not want to associate with.

Grace, Levion felt like he was choking on an overabundance of trepidation, that was definitely grace.

Séraph thrashed in the hold of his teeth with a bestial craze, dagger in her grip cutting into her hand as she plummeted it into the man below her, again and again, and again; as if every stab she dove into him would dull the pain, would actualize her rage. The man finally let go with a stab to his shoulder, a coat of Séraph's crimson clinging to his lips as he retreated, seeming unfazed by all the holes displayed on his body, oozing dark through his tattered shirt. Levion scrambled to Séraph, latching onto her and pulling her to a stand next to him as he skidded them away from the gruelling man, his heart hammering from his chest as he did.

"Your blood is foul, girly," the man's bitter call ricocheted off of the palace walls, gaze persisting on Séraph who now had a grip on her ripped wrist, red seeping through her fingers, unable to retain all that dripped through the predatory teeth imprint on her skin. Fucking Animal. He took a wipe of his lips with his thumb, scowling as if her blood denigrated him."But so was my own at one point, a system of indisposition that I had to mend from nothing. I can do it for you just as I did it for myself."

"Help me by what? Taking another chunk out of my skin?" Séraph snarled, shrugging off Levion's hold on her. The man's eyes dilated piggish at her mockery as if he didn't quite get the fact that she was being mordant rather than formally requesting.

"Not really what I had in mind but I wouldn't be entirely opposed to such, the sight of your innards would be quite enthralling," he spoke a baleful low, pausing with a rise of his head, gazing to the ceiling with clenched eyes as he took a toilsome sniff of the air. "Oh, but you're not much of a confectionary compared to your little friend there," he said, dropping his head to stare at Levion. "I'm sure all that grace would do me such wonders."

Grace...no, Levion didn't have grace. This man was going to devour him all because...because he thought Levion had grace?

No. No, no…

Oh, yes, a besmirching whisper taunted, What? Didn't you know, Levion? Such comes with the family name.

No.

The man took a step forward, and Levion inverted it, but just as the young man prepared to take another step back, Séraph stopped him with a yank to his wrist, tugging him back to stand right next to her, warmed blood smudging onto his skin just as she did.

"Tempest," Levion whispered, teeth hesitantly clenched as he stared down the tall woman who only watched, all the pain that slivered at her base surging below all that Levion could not see. She did not answer him, merely standing with a tight clasp on his wrist, sweat-doused face juxtaposing the crystallised wafts that beat toxic at the enormous windows to their side.

Levion let out a squeak, the ground before him malevolently whacking the air out of him as he was thrown back first to the ground with a careless slam, the Tempest hovering above him, knee digging into the centre of his stomach as her dagger remained hugged between gory palms before she rose it high above her head, not wasting time as she quickly brought it down to strike.

This was not how it was supposed to go.

"Tempest!" Levion's petrified wail slogged the halls of the palace with impeccable speed, subverting the sirens of the edacious blazes in the span, circling his frightened face as he watched her plunge her dagger towards his chest.

He couldn't die; he couldn't die, not without seeing Esme. Not without his wife.

Oh, Esme...please forgive me, Esme.

But then it was all over as quickly as it had begun, the glittering, white and overly large sword which came into existence in between the prince and the assassin effortlessly pulled the Tempest away from him in an instant, her back hitting the cold bricks of the palace walls like a spooked cat as she eyed the floating weapon that Levion also watched with tear-engorged eyes.

Rosary...

"I told you she was not to be trusted, Levion," Rosary's elegant spark took laps around them, his cousin's cerulean gown ran away from her figure as she strode into the scene, heels shunning all else as they clicked with a deriding echo. "But when do you ever listen to me?"

"Rosary," Levion gasped in surprise and with alleviation, holding himself up by his soon-to-bruise elbows, tears still inundating his panicked face. "Oh, my dear cousin Rosary."

"Yes, yes," his cousin bit back, rolling her sapphire eyes at him. "It seems I might've ruined your evening, Levion. But again, it wouldn't have been much of an evening if you were skewered to death in your own home."

The sword that hovered some inches from Levion evaporated to nothing, no longer blocking out the view of the lowered assassin whose lips fashioned a mad smile despite her predicament. A hiss dropped Levion's attention to the necklace that corded cosy around his neck, its shell cracked and abused, no doubt by the sharp tip of the Tempest's insatiable dagger. Levion let free an undersized sigh.

So that was her plan all along.

"Now this," a grotesque and almost unruly laugh ripped them back to the shaggy man before them, hands clawing at his own face as if he were trying to pry out all that he had taken in as he engulfed the air with hysterical inhales. "Is unquestionably delectable, unbearably luscious," he sizzled out, pupils running to the unseen as the white of his eyes reserved his sight with a roll of his eyes. "I haven't even grown back my sweet tooth, yet my mouth is drenching like a vertebrate."

Rosary inclined her head, blonde bob grazing her collarbone as she tilted her head at the man.

"Rosary," Levion whispered softly, his eyes skidding towards the bleeding woman on the opposing side of him the second Rosary's eyes found him, prompting her to follow. "He's delirious, Rosary," Levion griped intimidated, wriggling closer to the Tempest and away from the threat, producing a clear path between his cousin and the man. Séraph thought she saw the sergeant's shoulders stiffen at the sight of the harsh tear, her eyes zipping back to the man whose lips were stained with partly licked-away blood.

"Delirious, you say, Levion?" Rosary repeated with a bare chuckle, veering to the unusual man with a pretentious expression. "Your kind are not welcome on my planet," she told him, tossing her wrist and eliciting a verve of light that promptly morphed into a dozen rays of white swords. "Time and again you have come into my home and ravished it for all my people had and yet, time and again I have managed to decimate the likes of you."

"The likes of me?" He grinned grand, teeth distorting into blades, "How could such be when there is no other like me?"

Rosary scoffed with a wrinkle of her nose, "There are always others like you." Then, without changing the excess flurry of swords, Rosary let go, her grace hissing viciously as it zipped quickly through the air, determined to bleed its target.

"Levion," the Tempest called calmly, standing up and watching the dust of debris weft unnatural as Rosary’s onslaught settled with a deafening collision. Levion's blond head shot up to her standing figure, eyes large as he watched her nod her head towards the empty path behind Rosary.

"I can't leave my cou—"

"Go Levion," Rosary shut her cousin's retaliation down, space around her shifting bright as another mass of swords came into existence, daring the figure under the smoke. A burster of deranged shouts drifted through the air, partly quelled down with rising groans of pain. Rosary turned her head to look at her cousin, crunching her brows at him as she yelled, "Get out of here, Levion, or I swear to the heavens that I will obliterate you myself!"

And with that, Levion finally obeyed with a fumbled rise, stuming after the sprinting figure of the Tempest as he threw his head over his shoulder to take in Rosary who was letting loose the second barrage of her grace, his stomach lurching wrong with the maddened scream of the man now unseen to him the more corners he cut.

Rosary…