Black Storm - Red Queen Fan Fiction

Chapter 16 - The Mirror part VI

The next chapters will jump back and forth in time a little. I'll try include dates whenever it's possible.

I'm trying something out here: alternating POVs. Please tell me if this doesn't work.

Mare POV

Maven had demanded my company several times now. Those events had been a lot like that birthday dinner, an apparently civilised setup pierced by veiled threats from every direction.

An afternoon tea featuring the executions of criminals who might have been guitly or not. A party of the Silver court with me sitting on the floor next to the dais. And on the 3rd of December, two days hence, the winter gala was to take place. How fitting for a boy with a frozen heart. It would be a grand occasion, the counterpart to the summer feast I had endured as Mareena Titanos. Maven seemed to enjoy this connection, and so I was to wear a special gown for that evening, a dress I hadn't seen yet, but which would be certainly humiliating.

I couldn't care less. I was done being afraid of Maven and his games. Shall he torture me, shall he kill me. Though one time, I had tried to attack him, with a shard of broken glass I had managed to hide and keep, but Griffey had pushed it out of my hand before I had been able to do anything, as always. Maven had only given me lazy side-eyes.

It was her fault. I could do nothing while she was there. With her physical presence along with her ability, she was even more imposing than Elara, as if she had an extra sense for my movements. But Griffey only stared straight on when Maven was around, like the perfectly stoic watchwomen. If something had changed between us after my birthday, after her confessions about her brother, she hadn't endeared herself to me. Even though Griffey's temper had become softer and she smiled even more often at me, while she gossiped to fill my day - I would not forget. Not after I'd learned what her brother had done and which Maven had gleefully told me.

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The Reaper

She shook him awake, but he prefered to groan into the pillows. Unlike him, Cassandra had the discipline to get up early in the morning. Like now: Only 5:30 am and she was already half-dressed, sitting on the edge of his bed with her back to him, as Sorata Ives saw her when he finally managed to blink.

"Dearest," he uttered as he stroked her back. She swung her head around, her long hair brushing his hand.

"Get up, baby," she said with the smile reserved for him alone. The smile she had locked away for five years and as Sorata took it in, shame descended upon him again.

She loves me so much and all I do is lie to her.

He moaned and rolled in the bed while she continued to dress, bending over to put on her boots. She sighed. "Just one more time, Sorata. One more night of carnage before I say to hell with all of them."

A better man would tell her to leave and be done now, not after she would have killed another handful of people for the little demon king. But Sorata wasn't a "good" man and he knew why Maven Calore wanted those people dead. He and my lady Haven - Cassandra's mother and his boss, the new CEO of the secret service - had even pointed them out to the king.

And Cassie will be our knife.

Not that they had known Cassandra would be commanded to deal the blows. My lady Haven had done her best to get her daughter out of the role of the royal assassin, fearing the revenge of the High Houses would fall on her sooner or later. She had been supposed to be part the shadow legion before, though it had never moved to the Choke in the end.