Page 1 of What Lies Within Masks & Shadows

What could be worse than Death?

It was simple, wasn’t it?

She rubbed her chest as the answers to that tiny question gathered like storm clouds in hermind. The pulse of her racing heart mirrored the rolling beat of thunderous cloud cover.

Releasing the ground-rattling power of branches of lightning dancing in the distance—outside the southernmost walls—a terrible storm was dawning. And she wasn’t sure which would be worse—the sky or the betrayal behind mahogany eyes waiting in the west.

Worse than death?Nothing was worse than death.

And she had spent her entire life hiding from it. She’d been lucky—if you could call the constant bruises and broken boneslucky.

Not so lucky were the two decaying carcasses that were once breathing, worthless heaps of males, now stenching up the alley. Although no one in this part of Telldaira cared. Just another deal gone wrong. A fight over something as simple as a slice of bread. A mistress who had caught her husband with another female. Someone who needed to be disposed of.

It didn’t matter.

She bit back the nausea rising in her throat. No stranger to corpses, the putrid stench of rotting decay was still never easy to inhale no matter how long they had lain there. And these two smelled like a sea of rodents that had boiled in the sun for a week and looked like they were tossed in a stale swamp before being dumped in a city’s worth of defecation.

Blinking back the burning tears filling her eyes, she covered her mouth with her cloak. Looking past the bodies out onto the street.

It wouldn’t smell much better out there.

Faeries didn’t come to these markets for reputable reasons. In fact, there was reallynogood reason to be there at all, unless they were actively seeking something dark and depraved. And the Telldairan guard long since gave up on policing them. It was an easy way to rid the city of the untouchables. The unwanted.The screw-ups and lesser-thans. The ones who sucked society dry and mucked up the city’s pristine streets that were too perfect for the underclass degenerates to tread on. It offered the perfect solution to ensure they never did.

So why in Firekeeper-filled-hell was she—a lord’s betrothed—there?

Perhaps it was because no matter what gaudy fabrics of silk and lace she wore or how often they schooled her sharp tongue to please nobility, she still belonged there. The only place she knew to turn to. Outcastle Alley accepted anyone. Death didn’t discriminate.

In the end, no matter who you were, everyone ended up either buried in Elysian dirt or their ashes spread across it all the same. She would be no different.

Every time she found herself standing in that very spot, the experience was always the same.

Her breathing grew shallow. Heart filled with a deep ache as her hands gripped the dark cloak around her long, wavy white hair and kept the wind from biting her quaking shoulders. And then her boots would beg to remain motionless. Or perhaps that was the comforting darkness choking around her every step, inviting her to turn back. Each time knowing how incredibly foolish it was to be there.

The cover of the alley offered safety. Then again, how safe could an alley with two dead bodies be?

What was behind her was safer.

She almost laughed at that thought, rolling her eyes at the irony and pulling her cloak tighter.

Safe.Would there ever be anywhere trulysafe?

When she was young, she’d often hear whispers of a ruthless king whose claws were etched into the entire realm of Elysian. Bloodthirsty. Power-hungry. Merciless beyond all measure. Those rumors were a bedtime story, a tale spun by olderyounglings to scare siblings. A threat given by parents to force compliance. But for others …

They were real.

A testament to their past. A folk tale passed through the generations. Or a scar left on the bloodline.

She’d never believed them.

Not until it was her bloodline.

Not until she was left with a gaping wound. Bruised and bleeding, unending agony coursing through her veins like that surrendered by the rip of a blade through flesh and bone. The vibrations tearing through her body long after it relinquished the last drop of misery. And when the pain subsided, the only comfort left resided in darkness.

Until that darkness surrendered to something anew, shattering the world beneath her feet. Only then did she realize that what once was would never be again.

That was long ago. Too long ago.

And this was now.

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