“Now, though, what?” I asked through a growl, daring him to say what he ought to know not to.

“I’m not sure,” said Rastin, glancing toward the door through which Charlotte had left. “But . . . if Charlotte makes a point, so do you. Stephanie and Erik. They have no one else.”

Stephanie and Erik. With those words, I shifted my deadened stare to Wes. I found his gaze already there, waiting for mine.

I sent him a question with my eyes only, one I needed an answer to tonight.

Wes pressed his lips together.

Hands going to his hips, he dropped his head.

And just when I thought I had my answer to whether he, too, would abandon me to side with Charlotte, Wes—my biggest critic, the biggest pain in my ass—looked up . . . and made his stance clear.

“For those of us still on Team Lucas, we get T-shirts, right?”

SIXTY-FIVE

Stephanie

I awoke with a start, sitting up in Myriam’s bed, to which Erik must have returned me after the incident with his mask, Wrath’s mask. Which miraculously still lay under my hand.

He hadn’t taken it back.

My fear didn’t subside, though. Instead, it grew, magnified by the sight of Myriam’s room tinted in tones of red.

A fiery glow emanated from the window, casting everything in an eerie luminescence.

Leaving the silver skull mask amid the covers, I pushed myself to sit on the edge of the bed. All around, black shadows clogged the corners of my room as though hiding from the glow.

Confused, I stood, bare feet hitting the frozen floorboards that I’d half expected to find burning—like everything else seemed to be. But the cold did little to ground me.

I grabbed the long white dressing gown that draped the vanity’s chair and drew it on, tying its satin ribbon at the waist. Next, I rounded the bed, heading toward the garnet window, folding my arms against the freezing air as I went.

A blizzard raged outside, reams of tattered clouds shooting across the sky.

Beyond the bluster, the normally silver moon blazed blood red, its glow casting the snow-covered grounds a gory pink.

But . . . something wasn’t right with the way the snow currents fell. That’s when I realized the snow wasn’t falling. It was rising—the innumerable flecks of white flying upward into the sky that, sometime during the last few hours, had transformed itself into a bloody maw.

I left the window and hurried to the nightstand, fumbling for the oil lantern that always doused itself when I relit it. Lighting it again, I grabbed it and made for the door. My hand halted just shy of the knob, though—stalled by the soft sound of sobbing in the hall.

A woman.

The sound . . . It had to be coming from a mask. But, as far as female masks went, I’d only encountered the three.