It is not vanity—at least, not only vanity, not the simple delight of seeing admiration reflected back at me like candlelight in polished silver—but the quieter satisfaction of knowing where I stand in a room, of feeling a conversation tilt in my direction the way a compass needle tilts north, of understanding that whatever happens next will, in some small way, be shaped around me.
I travel in velvet, in boots that have never known mud for long because mud is vulgar and persistent and I do not enjoy anything that stains. My horns are polished in the mornings until they catch light like an unbroken surface of water, not because I am sentimental about my infernal inheritance but because there is something satisfying about forcing a body the world wants to fear into something undeniably elegant.
I call myself an adventurer.
My guards do not.
Raffey walks three paces ahead, sword already half-drawn out of habit, the scabbard worn smooth where his hand rests too often, his posture that particular angle of readiness that says he expects the world to lunge at him from the trees and he intends to lunge back harder. He has the look of a man whose body has been shaped by a hammer. Scarred knuckles, a nose broken once and never set properly, the faint white line of an old cut near his temple that becomes more noticeable when he frowns, which is often.
Rook flanks the left, quietly. His armor is plain, scuffed, functional, the leather dulled by weather and use, the metal pieces strapped in places that matter instead of places that look impressive, and his blade has been sharpened so many times it has lost any decorative curve it might once have possessed. Rook watches tree lines, shadows, the places where the road dips just enough for trouble to gather, and when he does glance at me it is brief, not deferential so much as confirming I’m still where he left me.
Aerys walks closest to me, because Aerys likes an audience, and because Aerys likes the idea of danger as much as I do, except Aerys also seems to enjoy the sensation of it, which I consider an eccentricity.
“Honestly,” Aerys says, flicking a glance back over their shoulder, “if I’d known adventuring meant escorting nobility through scenic murder locations, I’d have charged more.”
I smile, unbothered, because Aerys’s irreverence is part of why I keep them close, and because it is easier to feel brave when someone else is making jokes. “You are charging more.”
“True,” Aerys admits cheerfully, a grin tugging at the corner of their mouth, “but I could be charging even more.”
Raffey snorts like he’s trying not to laugh and failing in the least charming way possible.
I let the moment settle, pleased, enjoying the rhythm of it: the banter, the implicit hierarchy, the unspoken understanding that whatever danger awaits will be met by hands other than mine. I have always preferred strategy to exertion, direction to execution, and I have always been the kind of person who can talk about courage with enough conviction that people forget to ask whether I’ve ever had to practice it.
It is not cowardice. I simply dislike the mess, and I have never pretended otherwise. Blood is stubborn; it gets under nails, into seams, into the soft leather at the inside of a glove where you can scrub and scrub and scrub and still smell the copper when the air is damp. The scent lingers even after washing, and so does the memory of it, and I have always found that sort of persistence rude. Better to remain clean. Better to remain untouched. Better to let other people earn the bruises that become stories.
And besides, the stories never mention who swung the blade. They mention the name, the title, the silhouette standing in torchlight with their cloak arranged properly and their chin lifted as if they’ve never been afraid of anything in their life.
Cassimir Mascarin.
I have heard it spoken with awe in taverns, with gratitude in village squares, with a kind of reverent disbelief that always makes me feel slightly more real. I have accepted applause for battles I watched from a safe distance, nodding solemnly while my guards cleaned their weapons behind me, their hands slick with other people’s deaths while mine remained inside my gloves. It is a pleasant arrangement. Everyone knows their role, and I have never been ashamed of mine, because my role has always been to be the part people remember.
This particular contract promises something grander, something with the weight of legend, something that would look excellent in the mouth of a storyteller and even better in the eyes of my father, who pretends he does not care about such things while caring very much about what other nobles whisper over wine.
A hag coven.
I laughed when I first read the letter, stretched out in a chair too fine for the inn that housed it, one boot resting on the edge of the table, because I usually did after paying for the privilege. Hags were the sort of thing people exaggerated when fear outpaced reason, old women with teeth just a little too sharp and a flair for theatrics, the kind of monster that lives comfortably in bedtime stories because it never has to be real. Dangerous, perhaps, but manageable with preparation and the right muscle, and I had muscle in abundance as long as I kept paying for it.
The guards had been less amused.
“No,” Raffey had said flatly, not looking up from where he was checking the edge of his sword.
I had raised an eyebrow, surprised by the bluntness. “No?”
“Hags don’t work like bandits,” Raffey replied, like he was explaining something obvious to a child. “They don’t fight fair.”
“We don’t need fair,” I said lightly, because I had never needed fair in my life. “We have experience.”
Raffey’s mouth had tightened. “You have a reputation.”
I had smiled then, a little sharper, letting the room feel the slight chill in it. “And you have a contract.”
That ended the argument. It always does, because there are very few people willing to argue with money when money is determined to have its way, and because my guards may grumble about my choices but they are not fools; they know they can either follow me into danger and get paid, or refuse and watch someone else take their place.
Now, the marsh stretches out before us, heavy with rot and water and the faint sweetness of decay, and I understand immediately why people put monsters in places like this. The air clings to skin. The ground sucks at boots. The reeds whisper to each other in a sound that is not quite wind. Even my patience begins to fray as mud dares to touch the hem of my coat, leaving dark stains like fingerprints. “This place is disgusting,” I mutter, because someone should say it.
Aerys grins without warmth. “Nature doesn’t care about your velvet.”
“It should,” I reply, irritated enough to mean it. “I paid enough for it.”
When dusk begins to bleed into the marsh, the lights appear.
They are soft, floating things, pale as breath on glass, drifting between reeds and hovering just above the black water, and they are beautiful in an understated way, the kind of beauty that makes you lean closer because you think it will be gentle. They bob lazily, as if carried by invisible hands, and the light they cast is thin and cold and wrong.
I stop.
Something about the lights prickles against my pride, because they make the marsh feel as though it has decided to acknowledge me, and I have always responded to acknowledgement like a cat to a hand held out: with curiosity, and the expectation of being pleased.
“Don’t,” Rook says immediately.
“I wasn’t going to,” I snap, irritated by the assumption and irritated by the faint flutter in my own stomach that makes me feel less in control.
The light nearest us pulses, just once, and a voice curls through the air like silk dragged over bone.
Cassimir.
My heart stutters.
Raffey’s hand clamps down on my shoulder, hard, grounding, a pressure that reminds my body it is still in the world. “Eyes down,” he growls.
I swallow, tasting damp air and the faint metallic tang of fear. “I’m fine.”
I am not fine. I am unsettled in a way I do not enjoy, because being unsettled suggests that something else has the power to move me, and I do not like sharing that space. The marsh seems to breathe around us, the lights drift closer with a kind of patient interest that feels indecent.
Then the screaming starts.
A child’s voice, high and panicked, close enough to hurt in the chest, it comes from the reeds to our right, sudden and sharp as if someone has reached inside the night and pinched a nerve.
Aerys reacts instantly. “That way—”
“No,” Raffey snaps, grabbing their arm.
Another scream, louder, wetter, the sound of a throat being pushed too hard, and the air seems to thicken with it.
Aerys tears free.
“Aerys!” I shout, startled more by the sudden lack of control than concern, because Aerys’s obedience has always felt like part of my scenery, and it is disorienting to see scenery move on its own.
Raffey curses and runs after them, swearing under his breath like the words are the only thing keeping his blade steady. Rook hesitates for a fraction of a second—just long enough to look at me, as if weighing whether leaving me alone is worth it—then follows, because Rook understands priorities even when I don’t like being low on the list.
I am left alone.
For a heartbeat, nothing happens, and my irritation flares as if the marsh is trying to embarrass me by making me wait.
Then the ground shifts.
Mud liquefies beneath my feet, turning suddenly from stubborn earth to something eager, pulling me down with obscene intimacy. My boot sinks up to the ankle, then the calf, and I feel the suction grip like a hand closing around me.
“Rook!” I shout, panic breaking through decorum, because my pride has no useful weapon for mud.
Something wraps around my ankle beneath the surface, and the sensation is wrong in a way that makes my stomach turn. Fingers, perhaps, or roots, or something else that should definitely not be underwater. It tightens, and I feel the pull, the suggestion of being dragged downward.
I scream properly this time, a sound that is not dignified and not controlled and therefore deeply offensive.
Rook appears, blade flashing, stabbing down into the mud with brutal precision. The point hits something that resists like flesh, and there is a wet sound, a pop and a shudder, and whatever had grabbed me lets go.
Rook hauls me free, none too gently, and I collapse onto solid ground, gasping, humiliated, my coat ruined beyond recovery. Mud smears my gloves, slick and gritty, and the smell is thick enough to taste.
Rook glares down at me, his eyes flat with annoyance. “Stay where I can see you.”
I open my mouth to retort, because being spoken to like that is unacceptable, because there are ways to address a person and that was not one of them, because even now—kneeling in mud with my coat ruined and my dignity clinging by its fingernails—I can still feel the reflex of rank rising in me like a shield. I am already forming the words, the sharp little reprimand I have used on servants and tutors and anyone else who has forgotten themselves for half a second, and I can taste the satisfaction of watching his expression tighten as he remembers who pays him.
“I—”
The sound that cuts through my voice is not Rook’s, not Raffey’s. It’s Aerys’s, it is raw and wrong, a scream dragged out of a throat until it frays, and it comes from ahead of us with the suddenness of a blade appearing in torchlight. The noise slices straight through the marsh’s damp hush and makes my stomach drop so hard it feels like my insides shift.
Rook moves immediately. “Up,” he snaps, and his hand closes around my forearm hauling me out of my kneel as if I am another piece of equipment that needs to be moved before it sinks. Mud suctions at my boots with a rude little kiss, resisting, and when I stumble forward the ground tries to take me again, greedy and familiar, as if it has decided I belong to it now that I’ve touched it.
“I can walk,” I hiss, because my pride needs to say something, anything, to prove it’s still alive.
“Then do it,” Rook replies, and he is already going, already angling his body toward the direction Raffey and Aerys ran, blade in hand, shoulders set.
I follow, because there is nothing else to do, because being left behind is suddenly worse than mud, and because the scream echoes once more—higher now, strangled—and it has the ugly cadence of something being made to happen. My coat drags at my legs, heavy with mud, the silk inside it clinging to my skin, and every step feels like the marsh is reaching for me with cold fingers. Reeds slap my sleeves and leave slick trails; insects swarm in the damp heat; the air tastes of rot and the faint sweetness of decay, and beneath it all there is something sharper now, a metallic tang that makes my tongue press instinctively against my teeth.
My thoughts attempt, automatically, to reorder the situation into something comprehensible, something that fits the shape of the stories I’ve paid for; a trap, perhaps, a bandit’s trick, something my guards can solve with steel. I tell myself, even as my heart hammers, that this is why I hired them, that this is what they are good at, that in a moment I will arrive and the danger will already be managed and I will be able to regain my composure and decide how best to look heroic about it afterward.
And then the scream cuts off.
Not fading, not receding into the marsh, but ending abruptly, as if someone has put a hand over a mouth and squeezed until the sound simply cannot exist anymore.
I stop short, breath catching, and for one humiliating moment my mind offers the childish, furious thought that Aerys is being dramatic on purpose, that this is some poor attempt at proving a point about hags and danger and my ‘reputation.’
Then I hear Raffey make a sound that is half a shout and half a sob, and any remaining insult I had planned dies in my throat like a candle snuffed.
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Rook’s head turns sharply toward the noise, and he breaks into a run.
I run after him, or at least I attempt to, my boots sliding in muck, my breathing already ragged, my ruined coat tugging at my knees, and the marsh becomes a tunnel of reeds and black water and floating lights that seem to tilt and watch as we pass. I am aware, in bright, sour detail, of how loud I am compared to Rook. How my steps splash, how my breath hitches, how my body moves like someone unaccustomed to being hunted.
Ahead, the reeds thin.
A clearing opens.
We reach it too late.
The hut is there, half-sunk into mud like an animal trying to crawl into the earth, its roof sagging, its doorway a crooked mouth, and lights float around it in lazy circles that feel like wolfs circling their prey. The air is thick with the smell of rot and herbs and something sweet underneath, like fruit left too long in the sun.
Raffey is screaming now.
Not shouting. Not roaring. Screaming—the sound of something being taken apart piece by piece—and the moment I see him I understand with a nauseating clarity that this is not a fight I can buy my way out of. His arms jerk, held in place by something invisible. His face is turned toward me, and I see the horror in his eyes just before his skin begins to peel away in slow, neat strips, as if an unseen hand has hooked a nail under his cheek and decided it would like to see what’s beneath.
Skin sloughs away like wet cloth. Blood spills thick and hot into the mud. Under the torn flesh, muscle gleams dark and obscene, and Raffey’s scream becomes a ragged, bubbling sound as his throat struggles to work through the damage.
Aerys is on the ground, immobilized, eyes wide with terror, their body locked as if the air has wrapped itself around them like a coil.
Rook lunges, because of course he does, because Rook is the kind of person who believes you can solve most problems by putting steel through them.
A hag turns toward him and smiles.
She looks like a woman at first glance, which is the cruelest part, because my mind tries to fit her into a shape it recognizes. Her hair hangs in wet ropes. Her dress is old and stained at the hem, dragging through mud without seeming to soak it up. Her skin is pale, stretched too smooth over her face, as if it doesn’t belong to her and she is wearing it anyway. Her eyes gleam with an ancient amusement that makes me feel like an insect pinned to velvet.
Black water pours from Rook’s mouth as if his lungs have become a swamp. He chokes, collapses, retches writhing things that should not exist—pale larvae, slick as fat, tumbling out with the water and twitching in the mud where the earth is eager to accept them.
Rook’s hands scrabble for his blade. His fingers shake. He tries to breathe and brings up more black water instead.
I do nothing.
I stand there, heart hammering, mind empty except for one appalled, furious thought: This is wrong. Not morally, because morality is a luxury I have rarely needed, not tactically, because tactics assume you’re dealing with something that plays by rules you can learn, but wrong in the simple way that reality feels wrong when it refuses to match the story you were promised.
This is not how it is supposed to go.
The hags finally look at me.
There are three of them, and now that they are close enough, the details become more obvious: skin too smooth in places, too loose in others, like it has been rearranged; eyes gleaming with ancient amusement; mouths that stretch just a little too wide when they smile, exposing teeth that look too clean to belong in a marsh.
One of them speaks softly, and her voice is warm enough to sound kind if you ignore the sharpness beneath it. “Well,” she says, “if it isn’t the pretty one.”
My spine stiffens automatically, because pride has always been my first defense. “You will address me properly.”
They laugh. The sound crawls under my skin, not loud but intimate, like someone whispering close to your ear when you don’t want them near you.
“You hired blades and thought that made you dangerous,” another murmurs, circling me with slow steps that do not sink into the mud the way mine does. She moves like she’s savoring the moment, like she has all the time in the world and intends to use it. “You let others bleed so you could shine.”
My mouth opens. A thousand responses line up—threats, bribes, indignation, the usual weapons of a person who has never had to use anything else—and then Raffey’s body collapses into the mud, skinless and ruined, and the wet slap follows.
Aerys makes a strangled sound, a small, helpless noise that does not belong to them, and it shakes something loose inside my chest that I do not want to examine.
My thoughts scatter.
“What do you want?” I manage, and my voice shakes despite myself, which makes my stomach twist with fury because I can hear the weakness and I cannot stop it.
The hags do not answer immediately. They drift closer, forming a loose circle around me, and the lights float higher as if to give them better illumination, as if the marsh itself is leaning in to watch.
One hag, the one with the warm voice, tilts her head, studying me as though she is deciding how to carve me. “Look at you,” she says. “Polished horns. Fine gloves. A coat that thinks it’s immune to filth.”
“Touch it and I’ll have you flayed,” I snap, because threats are reflex even when they are ridiculous.
“Oh,” another hag croons, delighted, “listen to it pretend.”
The third steps closer, her eyes fixed on my face with a hunger that makes my skin crawl. “You smell like clean sheets and lies,” she murmurs. “You smell like a house that never hears screams.”
My throat tightens. “I am not here to be insulted,” I say, as if I can enforce that.
They laugh again, and the circle tightens by inches.
“You’re not here,” one says, voice turning almost tender, “to do anything at all, are you? You never were.”
My fingers curl inside my gloves. I can feel my pulse in my wrists. I glance behind them, toward my guards, toward the familiar shape of safety—Raffey dead in the mud, Rook on his knees choking black water, Aerys frozen in terror—and something in me tries to retreat into denial because denial is easier than acknowledging the simple truth that my money has finally stopped working.
The hags follow my gaze with amusement.
“Raffey peeled so nicely,” one remarks, as if commenting on a roast. “All those layers, all that stubbornness, and underneath he was just meat.”
Aerys’s eyes flick to me, pleading, furious, terrified, and I feel a hot prickle under my ribs that might be shame, except I do not like that word and I do not like what it implies.
“You paid them to die,” a hag says, as if she can taste the thought in my head. “You paid them to make you look brave.”
“I paid them to do their jobs,” I say, and I hate how defensive it sounds, how small.
“Your job,” another hag says, leaning close enough that I can smell her breath, damp and sweet and rotten, “was to stand there and let people clap.”
I swallow. My tongue feels thick. “I can pay you,” I say, because money is still the first language my fear knows how to speak. “Whatever you want.”
The hags pause, and for a heartbeat I feel a foolish, desperate surge of hope, because they have paused for money before, surely, everything pauses for money if you have enough of it.
Then the warm-voiced hag laughs, and it is not mocking so much as delighted. “Oh,” she says, “it thinks it has something we want.”
They circle again, slow steps, boots never sinking, skirts never dragging, their movement like a dance, and I feel the air tightening around me, not physically yet, but with intent, the way a room feels before a verdict is delivered.
They begin to speak, not all at once, but in turns, like performers taking lines from each other.
“You’re a hollow hero,” one says, eyes bright.
“You’re a pretty parasite,” another adds, smiling wide.
“You’re a noble brat playing at blood,” the third murmurs, and her voice is so calm that it makes the words sharper.
I flinch. I hate that I flinch. I hold my chin up higher to compensate, because posture has always been my armor and I refuse to let it fail me in front of these creatures.
They laugh softly, as if they can hear the effort.
“Oh, sweetling,” the warm-voiced one says, like I am a pet. “Do you know what they said about you in the village? Do you know what your guards said when you weren’t listening?”
“I don’t care,” I lie.
“Oh, you care,” she says, and her smile is a thin thing. “You care more than you’ve ever cared about anything.”
The circle tightens again. Light catches on their teeth.
“You think you’re above dirt,” one hag says, and she bends to scoop a handful of mud. She lets it drip slowly through her fingers, black and slick, and then she flings it at me.
It splatters across my coat, my chest, my gloves.
I gasp, not because it hurts but because it is disrespectful, because it is vile, because I can feel the cold seep through expensive fabric, and the instinctive horror that rises in me is so petty it is humiliating.
The hags laugh at the sound I make.
“Look,” one coos, “the noble squeals when touched.”
Heat floods my face. “Enough,” I snap, voice cracking, and I hate that it cracks.
They circle again, slower now, savoring the way my fear has begun to show around the edges no matter how tightly I try to hold it down.
“You hired hands to keep yours clean,” the third hag says, stepping close enough that her shadow falls across my boots. “You watched them fight. You watched them bleed. You watched them die.”
“I didn’t—” I begin, and the lie catches in my throat because I did. I watched. I stood at a safe distance and let their blood buy my legend.
The warm-voiced hag leans in. Her eyes are bright as wet stones. “What do you think your father would say if he saw you now?” she whispers.
The question hits harder than any insult, and my stomach twists because the answer is immediate, sharp, and familiar.
He would say you’ve embarrassed him.
I bite down hard enough to taste blood, and the act is so visceral it startles me, because I have never needed to bite down on anything before; words usually suffice.
The hags notice. Ofcourse they do.
“Oh,” one says softly, pleased, “there it is.”
“What?” I snap, because I cannot stand their satisfaction.
“Fear,” she says, almost reverent. “Not the little fear of mud and mosquitoes. The real fear. The fear of being seen as you are.”
My chest tightens. I inhale, trying to steady myself, trying to remember that I am Cassimir Mascarin, that I do not beg, that I do not cower, that I do not—
“You’re not brave,” another hag says, voice sweet as poison. “You’re just expensive.”
Aerys makes a choking sound behind them, and I hear the wet click of their throat working against whatever binds it. Rook coughs up more black water. The sounds are too real, too close, and my mind keeps trying to shove them away because acknowledging them means acknowledging consequences, and consequences have always belonged to other people.
The warm-voiced hag steps closer, closer, until she is directly in front of me, and the light makes her face look almost beautiful if you ignore the wrongness in her eyes and the too-smooth stretch of her skin.
“Tell me,” she says softly, “what do you call yourself?”
I blink, thrown by the simplicity. “Cassimir Mascarin,” I say, because names are power, and mine has always opened doors.
She smiles wider. “No,” she says, shaking her head slowly. “Not your family name. Not the little crest you carry like a charm. What do you call yourself when you want people to applaud?”
My throat tightens. I can feel the circle around me, the intent like pressure. “An adventurer,” I say, and it sounds weak even to me, because the word has always been borrowed.
The hag’s smile turns sharp. “You’re a spectator,” she says, and the word lands like a slap. “A parasite on other people’s suffering. A pretty mouth that tells stories about blood it never spilled.”
Something hot surges up in me, pure fury, and for a moment it is almost relief to have something besides fear. “Shut up,” I hiss, stepping forward without thinking, and it is the first aggressive motion I have made in the entire encounter.
The hags laugh, delighted. “Oh,” one says, “it hisses.”
The warm-voiced hag does not move away. She simply lifts a hand.
Her fingers are long. Her nails are dark and curved, too sharp to be natural. She holds her hand near my face, not touching yet, and I feel my breath catch as if my skin has already been sliced.
“You have such a lovely face,” she murmurs. “Such careful expressions. Such practiced charm.”
I glare at her, trying to summon the kind of contempt that has always protected me, and it almost works until she smiles again, and the smile is too knowing.
“Do you know what happens to pretty faces in the dark?” she asks softly.
My mouth opens. No sound comes out. My lungs refuse to cooperate for a moment, as if my body has decided it would like to remember what it feels like to be prey.
Behind her, one of the hags says, almost conversationally, “We could peel the rest of him too.”
“Not him,” the warm-voiced one replies, correcting gently, and I flinch at the casual certainty with which she takes my pronouns and rearranges them. “Them. We have manners.”
The other hag laughs. “Do we?”
“Sometimes,” the warm-voiced one says, and then she looks back at me. “You should thank us,” she adds, as if that is a reasonable statement.
“For what?” I manage, voice thin.
“For making you honest,” she says.
My heart is pounding so hard it feels like it might bruise my ribs. I want to step back, but the circle is close now, their bodies forming a boundary, the lights hovering like pale eyes above us. I can smell them—wet earth, herbs, something sweet and spoiled. I can smell blood too, thick and coppery, and it makes my stomach lurch.
The warm-voiced hag’s hand moves closer. Her fingertips brush my cheek.
The contact is light, almost affectionate, and it is worse than violence because it is intimate. It feels like permission being taken. My skin prickles. I hold still, not because I am brave, but because I do not know what else to do.
Her thumb slides along my cheekbone, slow, as if she is tracing the bone underneath with appreciation. “Mm,” she hums. “So much effort.”
My mouth goes dry. “Stop,” I say, and the word comes out like a plea despite my intentions.
She smiles. “There it is again,” she whispers. “That little crack. That little fear.”
Her nails press in.
At first it is only pressure, the sharp points dimpling skin. Then she digs, and I feel the sting, the small puncture as the nail breaks through, and a hot bead of blood rolls down my cheek.
Pain sparks, bright and immediate. I gasp.
The hag’s eyes widen slightly, pleased, as if I have given her a gift.
“Did you think,” she murmurs, leaning closer so her breath brushes the corner of my mouth, “that you could buy your way through every story?”
My jaw trembles. I try to pull away, but the other hags shift, their presence closing in, and I realize that even if I ran, the marsh would catch me, and even if the marsh did not, my guards are dead behind me and I am alone in a way I have never been alone.
“I can—” I start, automatically reaching for money again, for the familiar lever.
The hag’s nails dig deeper.
She hooks them under the edge of my cheek as if she has found the seam of a garment.
Panic hits, cold and total.
I try to scream.
I try, and my mouth opens, and for a moment sound exists, and then—
She pulls.
Pain arrives like a wave swallowing me. Not sharp, not clean, but tearing, peeling, as if my face is being removed from my skull like wet paper. I feel skin stretch, feel the delicate connection around my lips rip, feel the terrible, intimate snap as something gives way near my eye.
My vision whites out, as if my eyes are being flooded with light.
My scream becomes a strangled, garbled sound, because my mouth is part of what is being taken, and I can feel the sensation of my own expression being dismantled, my carefully practiced smile turned into nothing but nerve and raw, exposed flesh.
It is obscene.
It is personal.
It is final.
Then—
Nothing. No light. No dark. No sensation at all.
It is not blindness. It is absence, like the concept of sight has been removed from me along with whatever made me visible.
For a moment I am not Cassimir Mascarin, not noble, not tiefling, not anything that can be named. I am a void where a person should be.
Time does not exist properly there. There is no up, no down, no breath, no body. I cannot feel my horns, cannot feel my hands, cannot feel the mud under my knees. I am nowhere and nothing, and it is the most terrifying thing I have ever experienced because it is the one thing I cannot perform my way out of.
Then something presses against where I was.
Cool porcelain. Smooth. A hard edge settling into place like a lid closing.
Sight slams back into me violently, distorted and wrong, and I stagger as if struck. I throw my hands to my face.
A smiling theater mask, frozen in exaggerated joy, its grin wide and permanent and utterly obscene against what has just been done to me. The world looks too sharp around the edges, as if I am seeing it through glass. Colors feel thinner, less honest. The lights hover above, pale and bobbing like mocking stars.
I try to frown. I cannot.
I try to pull my lips down, to force my brows into anger, to express anything other than the idiotic cheer carved into this mask, and nothing changes. The grin remains. My hands scrape over smooth ceramic, and the sound is a high, useless squeal.
Panic surges, thick and animal, but the mask smiles through it.
The hags laugh, pleased, their laughter now doubled by the absurdity of my expression.
“You’ll always look happy now,” one croons, voice like a lullaby, “no matter how much it hurts.”
Behind them, Aerys dies.
I hear the sound of it, a wet crush and then a brief, strangled gasp. I turn my head, mask still grinning, and see Aerys’s body jerk as their throat collapses inward like something has squeezed it too hard. Blood seeps from their mouth and nose in dark streams, and their eyes stare wide for a moment before the light drains out.
Rook’s head turns sharply as if he is trying to look up one last time, and then a hand—one of the hag’s hands, gentle as a lover—twists, and his neck snaps with a sound like a branch breaking.
I watch it all, smiling.
My stomach churns. My chest convulses as if trying to vomit, but the mask does not allow it, and the laughter that escapes me instead is thin and wrong, a sound that would be comic if it weren’t horrifying.
The hags lean in, admiring their work, as if they’ve dressed me for a performance.
“Perfect,” one murmurs.
“Look at them,” another says. “So pretty.”
The warm-voiced hag reaches out again and taps the porcelain cheek with a fingernail, and the sound rings in my head like a bell. “Go on,” she whispers. “Go back to your house. Show them what you bought.”
I shake, hands clenched, and I want to say something vicious, something noble and cutting, something that would make them regret speaking to me like this.
But the only expression I have is joy.
And then the world blinks.
One moment I am standing in the clearing surrounded by lights and corpses and laughter, my boots sinking into mud that smells like blood and rot, and the next I am lying in the dirt at the edge of the marsh, dawn light seeping into the sky in pale, indifferent bands. The air is quiet. The reeds are still. The world pretends nothing happened.
My guards are gone.
The silence is unbearable. I sit up slowly, trembling, my body aching in strange places as if it is trying to remember how to exist with a hole where a face should be. My hands rise to my mask again, fingers shaking as they press against porcelain. It is real. It is cold. It is attached.
I pull and it does not come off.
A laugh bubbles up out of me, because the mask insists on it, because the universe has decided my suffering should look amusing, and the sound makes my stomach twist with bile.
I rip at it again, harder, nails scraping, and for a moment it resists like it is part of me, and then it comes away with a sound like suction, like pulling a lid off something that should remain sealed.
And everything disappears.
No sight. No light. No dark.
Just absence.
I gasp, the sound swallowed by nothingness, and panic roars, total and animal, because I cannot see and I cannot even feel seeing as a concept, and the void where my face used to be feels like a wound made of air.
I fumble, hands shaking, fingers scrabbling through dirt until they hit something hard.
Porcelain.
Another mask.
I press it to my face without thinking, desperate enough to accept anything.
Sight returns in a violent rush. The world snaps into place again, and in the reflection of a shallow pool nearby I see a different expression staring back at me—sad this time, exaggerated grief carved into porcelain, the mouth downturned, the brows lifted in theatrical misery, the whole thing too large and too obvious, like a mockery of real feeling.
I stare at myself. At the mask.
At the empty space behind it that I cannot see but can somehow sense, like the shape of a missing tooth.
At the realization settling in my gut like a stone.
I have no face.
And for the first time in my life, there is no one else left to handle it for me.