Arabella's POV:
Arabella had always despised firelight. It exposed everything, too harshly—the fatigue lines beneath her eyes, the trembling of her hands when she wasn't holding still. But tonight she must face it. The room in which she found herself was cramped, the air dense with resin smoke, and the masked man seemed to fill not only the small space between them but the very walls themselves.
“You promised me clarity,” Arabella said, holding her voice steady.
The figure c****d their head, the mask reflecting the light and spitting out a distorted image of her own face. “Clarity,” they whispered, “is rarely a gift. More often it is a blade.”
The words stabbed at her more than they should have, because a part of her already knew the truth behind them. She had seen too much, been asked
