The Rose and the Sinbound

Chapter 8: You are Neither

'They want you lovely and silent. You are neither.' 

These words echoed in the back of my mind like a drum beating in the back of my sub conscious. 

The carriage wheels scraped to a halt, shuddering against stone slick with dew. My heart thrummed in my throat, but I didn't let it show—not to Taryn, not to the guards, not to the palace looming like a god's forgotten dream.

The gates to the Immortal Court yawned open not like doors, but like jaws—carved from opalescent glass and bone-white marble, their hinges humming with spells old enough to remember creation. Mist drifted along the steps like a living thing, curling around my ankles, tugging at my skirts with a ghost's hunger.

Taryn stepped out first, his butterfly mask glowing faintly with glamour, wings twitching in the wind as if mocking my restraint.

I followed, slower. Each step down from the carriage felt like a descent—not into festivity, but into another cage lined with glamour and teeth.

The scent hit me first. Not the floral sweetness of the Spring Court. This was different—salt and honeyed wine, roses dipped in blood, smoke from burned offerings. Magic thickened the air like perfume—glamours dripped from every vine-wrapped column, whispers of power caught in the chandeliers of liquid crystal.

And above it all: music.

Wild, wordless, ancient. Strings strung with spider silk. Drums carved from heartwood. Voices that didn't belong to any my ears heard before.

The Immortal Court didn't host parties.

It performed them.

Taryn turned to me at the base of the stairs, voice just loud enough to cut over the music. "Do try not to embarrass us, cousin."

"I'll try not to stab anyone," I said, sweet as rot.

The moment I stepped over the threshold, the world changed.

The ballroom didn't open—it blossomed, a cathedral of glass and madness, opal pillars climbing like twisted vines into a vaulted ceiling enchanted to show a living sky. Stars flickered above us—not painted, not illusion, but real, writhing in constellations that didn't belong to any world I knew.

Fae of every shape drifted through the madness. A kelpie in robes of eel-skin whispered to a centaur noble made of moonlight. A fire-haired banshee laughed into a glass flute of black champagne. Spider-fae hung from crystal beams, weaving banners of venom-thread and poetry. Harpies sang discordant lullabies, while nymphs in nothing but dew trailed behind them.

And me?

I resembled a storm petals. I shook off the feeling of being that girl with tainted blood stitched into a gown that smelled like regret and expectation that ever high lord seems to see me as.

My mask, woven of blue rose petals edged in silver, clung to my face like a secret too precious to speak aloud. My skin prickled beneath it. The magic in this room saw me—not my name, not my title. Me. And it remembered.

Taryn vanished.

Of course.

I moved through the chaos like a shadow in silk, dodging spilled wine and claws, trying to disappear in plain sight. Until a voice, sharp and cruel, cut through the music like a blade.

"The rot spreads."

Lord Adrik of the Night Court stood beneath the floating chandelier of ash-fire. His obsidian mask was etched with constellations in bloodred ink, his robes shifting between night and smoke. His voice slithered through the crowd like oil poured over marble. "The mortals are breeding again. Expanding greater numbers than our own. As if they deserve the dirt they are allowed to crawl in."