The bird-masked figure ripped me away, tossing me back, into another figure whose mask I could not see. Those who had occupied the stairs and the second-floor landing came pouring down toward me. The whispering menagerie of masks then blurred into a kaleidoscope of crackled ivory, tarnished silver, and antique gold. Countless empty eyeholes whirred by, the repetition of my name creating a low but deafening hiss.

“Erik!” I shrieked, twisting amid the collage of false faces, searching in vain for his mask among the others. He’d vanished, though, and I couldn’t get to him. Yanking myself from the grasp of one figure only resulted in my being snatched by the next.

That mask passed me to another, and then that one to another as they maneuvered me down the back hall.

As I went, an ominous tinkling drew my attention upward, to the chandelier that swayed above me. How had I been carried this far so quickly? And who were these figures? Where were they taking me?

Only when the chandelier passed out of sight did it dawn on me where we must be headed. When we entered the kitchen, I knew for sure.

Wrenching my body, I managed to swing myself around in the whispering mob, which fell suddenly silent as the cellar door opened itself wide to a vat of blackness.

“No!” I yelled, but then my instinct to fight dissolved into dumbfounded wonder as a stark white mask, that of another woman, bled through the darkness.

The girl, adorned in an elegant drop-shoulder gown of burgundy, her raven hair piled atop her head and studded with tiny roses, extended one white-gloved hand to me, as if expecting me to take it. As if she thought I’d want to descend with her into whatever horror waited below.

Captivated by her undeniable resemblance to me, I stopped struggling against the other masked figures so intent on bringing the two of us together.

And though I didn’t dare take this figure’s waiting hand, I did not try to pull away, either, when she reached to take mine.

FORTY

Zedok

I fought my way through the figures, sword-to-sword and blade-to-dagger. In each instance, I won the fray by ripping my assailant’s mask free.

Despite many of them reassembling to block me a second time, I progressed in the direction Stephanie had been taken. Though I anticipated the moment Wrath himself would reappear, he never did. Why bother when he had so many masks willing to bring her to him?

If that were to happen, I was sure he would present me with a choice. Give in to him willingly, or have my mask again stripped away in front of her. Either scenario would doom me to become Wrath, and Stephanie’s liberty would be forfeit.

Always, Wrath played to win, and now it all became clear. My resolve as Valor to see Stephanie free of this place, free of me, did outweigh his—my—desire to possess her forcibly. And so Wrath’s aim had not been to challenge Valor outright, as I had feared. Not so much as it had been to undermine that resolve by decimating me.