The next door proved far more painful—it was always painful to look at Lourdes Alfero, especially in New Reynes. Whether or not the visions of the hallway could be believed, this was the side of her mother Enne had never known, that Lourdes had purposefully concealed from her.
It was daytime. Lourdes perched on a couch in a parlor that, judging from the lavish decorations, was located in the South Side.
Sitting across from her was Josephine Fenice. Unlike Malcolm Semper, who’d started his career as a famous revolutionary, Fenice had a law degree from one of the most esteemed universities in the world. Amid all the articles and radio shows Enne followed about the new talent registrations and curfews, the senator-turned-chancellor made few statements and no appearances. But it was she who’d initiated the street war, she who’d signed the order for the lockdown of the North Side, she—Enne suspected—who pulled the strings of the First Party.
She was also a member of the Phoenix Club.
“When will it be?” Lourdes asked.
“Tonight,” Fenice answered. Her voice had an eerie flatness. “But it wouldn’t have to be, if you gave it up.”
Lourdes crossed her arms with an expression of indifference. “He’ll have to kill me.”
“You really are that cold.”
“I just know the truth of it. More of it than you do, even. Because you think that the story is over.”
Fenice frowned. “All these years, you dug up these secrets. But even if you know the story, you’ve done nothing to change it. You are inconsequential. And come midnight, you will be dead.”
It’d been several months since her mother’s death, but still the words dug into Enne. She recalled the scene of Lourdes at the Shadow Game, another vision from the hallway. She’d worn these same clothes.
This was the day she died.
The scene changed around her. The walls of the parlor fell away, revealing a crowded public square and a wooden platform raised at its center. A woman walked upon it. She wore tattered clothes, so torn they barely covered her, and her body looked bruised and scarred even from a distance. Her eyes burned violet.
Enne stood on her tiptoes to peer over the crowd. It was too far, and she could hear nothing over the disjointed chatter and chanting. Until she heard the slam of the axe.
The scene changed. It was another face, another set of violet eyes.
Another axe.
Enne pushed her way to the front of the crowd, so close to the platform that the cobblestones had flooded red. It was a gruesome display. Of nakedness. Of bodies that had already suffered enough. Of the young and the old, made a spectacle for an increasingly boisterous audience.
Soon the executioner was replaced with a noose. Enne winced at the sound of every snapped neck. Even though she understood the tyranny of these kings, she also knew that not every person was a king. Some were guilty by association. Guilty by birth. And when Enne looked into their eyes, she saw her own staring back.
Years flew by as she stood witness to death after death. A man approached the gallows, this one with a mask covering his face. It wasn’t until he reached the platform that Enne realized it was actually layers of black gauze wrapped tightly around his head, exposing not even a stray hair. He was hauntingly faceless, as though he could’ve been anyone.
But Enne knew who he was. He was Veil, the most notorious street lord of New Reynes history. And he was about to die.
At the snap of the rope, she was transported once more. Her own weight creaked on the wooden platform, and her wrists were bound behind her back, blistered and raw. She winced as the whiteboot pushed her forward, but she didn’t stumble.
Not even when he slipped a noose around her neck.
* * *
Later that evening, Enne awoke gasping and clawing at sweat-soaked sheets. She could still hear her mother in her head, discussing secrets that Enne would never understand. She could still feel the roughness of the noose around her throat.
She held back a sob and instead took the glass of water on her nightstand and smashed it on the floor. It shattered like the Shadow Game’s timer. The water seeped across the carpet like Semper’s blood.
Before the lockdown, the Spirits had made Enne one of the richest people in the North Side. For months, she’d claimed she wanted power, and she’dhadit.
But now it was gone, and she’d spent so many weeks kissing Levi and dreaming of destiny that she hadn’t noticed. Not until she woke with her rage rekindled and burning inside her, a reminder that—like before—everything in her life could be taken away.
Fallen or not, she was done waiting.
Enne stormed out of her bedroom and down the hallway, then threw open Grace’s door. Both Grace and Roy jolted awake—Grace in her bed, a knife jutting out from beneath her pillow, and Roy on the floor handcuffed to the radiator.
Enne pressed her gun to his head and clicked off the safety.
