Knowing what part of my soul this mask represented, I had never questioned his absence when he’d first vanished. Contrariwise, I had never had the need to confirm nor seek out his presence.

Until now.

He turned to face me, revealing his mask.

Time-crackled gold affixed his nose and lips in calm, straight lines. Matching gilt-leave filigree accented this lower diamond-shaped portion of the mask by chasing the borders between it and the upper midnight-blue segment that surrounded the almond-shaped eyeholes. At his forehead, on a patch of parchment-colored paint, a few black notes dotted the lines of a music staff.

Valor.

If there was a Horatio to my Hamlet, was it not him?

As if in answer to this second and internal question, Valor removed his mask.

Perfect darkness waited within his hood.

Observing me through that void, the figure extended to me his mask in the same fashion Wrath had.

This time, though, as I made my way to him, I laid a hand with eagerness over my own gray mask—a mask I had stolen from Languor at some point in time that I could not now recall.

Valor watched unflinchingly on as I removed Languor’s mask, which I laid upon a plant stand beside a pair of Myriam’s discarded gardening gloves.

Accepting Valor’s from him, I placed it—both his countenance and identity—over my own.

Instantly, his figure unraveled, his cloak unfurling—vanishing—before reappearing to settle upon my own shoulders. Turning, I found my prior mask, Languor, reformed. He stood now beside the plant stand, Myriam’s gloves clenched tightly in his fist. Lost to his reverie, he paid me no mind as my free hand fell to wrap the hilt of Valor’s sheathed saber, different in ornamentation from Languor’s rapier, though no less lethal.

And so I found myself looking out through those almond-shaped eyeholes that I had, the instant before, gazed into.

Regarding the outer world, I saw and heard everything in the same manner I had in the moments before. Nothing external had changed.

Within, though—fully present now in Valor’s awareness—I was able to sense and conceive of a new course of action. One that hitherto had not occurred to me. One that would never have without Valor’s influence.

Valor and I. We would speak to Stephanie again.

And, of course, what else would Valor have me do . . . besides tell her the truth?

All of it.

TWENTY-FIVE

Stephanie

I’d never cut a class before in my life. Before today, I’d never had a reason to.

After I’d finished telling Lucas what had happened in the house yesterday, starting from the smoke detectors and ending with the sheet, the final morning bell had rung shrill through the hall, causing us both to start that time. Neither of us had laughed then.

Classroom doors had shut all around us, one teacher poking her head out into the hall to narrow her eyes on us, which prompted Lucas to gather my fallen books from the floor. He’d then taken my hand and led me wordlessly in a direction opposite my first class. I hadn’t even protested. Because, in that moment, the only thing that had mattered was that Lucas believed me.