Page 144 of Villainous Rise

Valor steered me through the crowd. I glanced at the glass dome, momentarily escaping into the view beyond.

The fog had rolled in thick and heavy, shrouding the bay in a ghostly blanket. City lights struggled to penetrate the haze, appearing as nothing more than diffuse glowing smudges in the distance. Even the Phoenix Bridge had disappeared, its iconic span swallowed whole by the mist.

We could be anywhere right now. We could be nowhere.

Despite the hundreds of people packed into the Pavilion, the laughter, the clinking glasses, an eerie sense of isolation crept over me. The fog had cut us off from the rest of the world, suspended us in this bubble of pretentiousness and performance.

Fitting, really. My entire life had become a performance.

The glass above shifted to a deep midnight blue, casting everyone in cool light. Beyond it, nothing but impenetrable gray. No stars. No city. No escape.

A man in a tuxedo approached, his smile as polished as his Italian leather shoes. A hospital board pin gleamed on his lapel like the tiny badge of authority it was.

“Valor!” he called, extending his hand. “Charles Winthrop, Memorial Hospital Board.”

Valor’s smile cranked up several watts. “Charles! How’s that new pediatric wing coming along?”

I stood awkwardly as they shook hands. Valor hadn’t bothered to introduce me, his supposed fiancée, because I was invisible until I was needed for a photo op.

“We’re on schedule, thank you for asking.” Charles finally acknowledged my existence with a curious glance. “And this must be the lucky lady I’ve read about.”

Valor pulled me closer, his fingers digging deeper. “My fiancée, Annie Bishop. Havoc’s Keeper.”

“Ah! Keeping two powerful men in line. Impressive.” Charles winked, and something sour crawled up my throat.

I smiled mechanically while my brain screamed.

“She’s quite the catch,” Valor said, patting my hip like I was a prized show horse.

That’s all I was now, a prop for Valor’s ratings. Not a Keeper with years of training. Not someone who’d nearly died protecting the Alliance. Just an accessory to boost a narcissist’s public image.

The Alliance had reduced my job to a joke.

A ripple moved through the crowd, that subtle shift when someone magnetic enters a room. I felt him before I saw him, like static electricity raising the hairs on my arms.

Then the sea of people parted, and there he was.

Cipher.

My breath caught in my throat. It shouldn’t still happen, that physical jolt whenever I saw him without his mask on, when he was playing Thomas Smith. But it did. Every. Single. Time.

He moved through the crowd, his tuxedo fitting him like a second skin. The jacket stretched across his broad shoulders. His dark hair was styled in that deliberately tousled way that made my fingers itch to run through it.

God, he was beautiful. The kind of beautiful that made you forget how to breathe.

A woman nearby actually stopped mid-sentence, her champagne flute frozen halfway to her lips as Cipher passed. I couldn’t blame her. The sharp line of his jaw, the fullness of his mouth that I knew could curve into the most devastating smile or whisper the filthiest promises.

His eyes scanned the room until they locked with mine. Even from across the room, I could feel the heat in that gaze, the same heat that had burned against my skin last night, that had made me arch and beg.

Valor was still talking beside me, his arm a dead weight around my waist, but all I could see was Cipher. All I could feel was the invisible tether between us, pulling taut.

Valor’s grip on my waist tightened when he finally noticed that every head had turned from watching him to watch the new addition stalking across the space.

My panic rose. Cipher despised playing Thomas Smith and avoided his civilian identity whenever he could. Yet, he had willingly put on a tuxedo and stepped into a crowded ballroom and now his trajectory toward us was unmistakable.

No, no, no. Please don’t make a scene. Please.

The Syndicate’s warning echoed in my head. If Cipher interfered with this engagement charade, everything he’d worked for would be gone.