Tomorrow. It must be tomorrow that I—

I paused, sensing the presence of another mask in the room. Whirling, I drew my sword and, in the same motion, extended the blade toward the open pocket doors where I had expected to find Wrath.

But it was not Wrath who stood within the doorframe. Instead, a female figure watched me through the almond-shaped eyes of an all-white mask.

Not all of my masks were male. A few were and, in the instance of Hope, had been female in outward appearance. Unlike their male counterparts, my female masks had—until now—always taken on the guises of people Erik had known while alive.

This mask, though, I could not now recall having ever encountered either in life or death.

Her dress, a deep burgundy, complemented her raven hair, loosely wound into an elegant chignon.

“Who are you?” I demanded of her, forbidding myself to ascribe to her the likeness of another young woman. Not when there wasn’t any. Not when there couldn’t be.

The mask did not answer. Only lifted one lace-gloved finger, which she pressed to her lips before her figure began to unfurl to mist.

I could not fathom which part of me she represented, and I should have been glad to see her go. But her unraveling, just like her appearance, instead triggered within me a terror I was sure I had not entertained since that horrible night when the Egyptian priest had left me with all I had stolen from him and could not give back, passing once more into the hereafter to leave me . . . with me.

Powerful as my fear surrounding this new mask was, it still could not trump the deeper feelings of shame held over the harm I had caused the priest, whom I had ripped from eternal rest by dabbling witlessly in matters I did not understand.

His resulting fear and pain upon reawakening had since become all too understandable to me.

And in removing his heart, had I left him with any other choice but to extract mine?

Though my remorse surrounding my egregious actions had always remained one of my keenest emotions throughout the decades, the knowledge that my heart had granted my victim passage home had always counted for me as a small measure of balm.

But . . . the appearance of this newest mask obliterated even that modicum of sustaining solace. For what else could she be but evidence that it was all happening again? That, due to the same enduring distortion in my soul, I was rushing headlong into even deeper spiritual debt—if that was possible.

Whatever the mask was, she served as an ominous reminder of how the greater and more terrifying mystery had always revolved around the question of which part of me had been debased enough to desecrate the priest’s consecrated form and disrupt his sacred slumber in pursuit of my own gain.

It spoke volumes that I still did not know myself well enough to say—not even after all this time. Yet the answer I suspected was the one I feared and loathed the most: that this particular corruption—the smear of hubris and the stain of entitled arrogance—lurked in every mask.