The envelope was simple,black matte paper, my name written in a hand that knew how to curve danger into beauty. Crimson ink,no return address,no stamp. Just the weight of it in my palm, like a heartbeat I hadn’t expected.
I stood in my kitchen with the city breathing faint and indifferent below me and stared at the envelope until the thin skin of paper felt like skin. A single drop of dried blood dotted the lower right corner, a dark punctuation. My thumb edged along the stain before I slit it open with the smallest blade I kept in the bottom drawer,the one Valen hadn’t found and the one I still pretended never existed.
Inside was a single card,heavy stock,no logos,no pretense.
Masquerade at the Bellevère Tonight.
Midnight.
Come alone, or he dies.
The words were precise, clinical,a
