The final, heavy chime of midnight hung in the air. Before I could move, Lady Schuyler's hand darted out. Her fingers, sharp and cold, hooked under the edge of my silver fox mask and ripped it away. The delicate chain snapped against my temple. My face was bare.
A wave of exposed vulnerability washed over me, but it was drowned by a louder, collective gasp that had nothing to do with me. I followed the crowd's gaze to the projector screen flickering to life behind the orchestra.
A digital birth certificate for "Isabelle Valois" filled the wall, followed by a death certificate for the same name, dated fifteen years prior. A tenement fire. Then, bank transfers from a shadowy corporate entity to the St. Aurelia scholarship fund, with my student ID number in the notes.
"Isabelle Valois does not exist," Lady Schuyler's voice rang out, sharp with triumph. She turned to address the frozen crowd of donors and elites. "The girl standing before you is a fraud. A common thief who stole a dead child's identity to infiltrate our world. She is an impostor, and the 'Valois' revival is a fiction funded by God knows who."
My blood turned to ice. The documents looked flawless. The seals, the fonts, the damning narrative. Emmeline stepped forward, a viper's smile on her lips. "I always knew there was something off," she crowed. "The way she lurked. The way she watched us like she was studying for a test. She wasn't learning our ways. She was learning how to steal them."
The murmur that rose was no longer just disdain; it was the cold, clinical sound of wealth reassessing an investment turned toxic. I felt the donors' eyes, the billionaires, the ministers scraping over me, seeing a liability, a scandal. Security guards began moving from the walls.
My composure, the steel Dmitri had forged in me, held my body upright. But inside, I was crumbling. This wasn't just an attack; it was an erasure. They weren't calling me a rat; they were saying the fox had never been real at all.
I looked to Dmitri, instinctively. He stood beside me, a statue in black. His expression was unreadable behind his onyx visor, but he didn't look surprised. He looked… prepared.
A sickening realization dawned, colder than the marble under my feet. He knew. He had to have known. The scholarship buyout, the ledgers Julien found… this was the other shoe. The one he'd never warned me would drop. He'd let me walk into this ballroom, onto this scaffold, without telling me the noose was already fashioned. The hurt was a sharp, clean puncture beneath my ribs. I was his weapon, and you don't warn the blade about the blood.
Lady Schuyler savored the moment. "She is a criminal. A parasite. Security, remove her. The authorities are already waiting."
The guards stepped forward, their hands hovering near their belts.
This was the moment I was supposed to shatter. But the hurt hardened into something else, a clear, cold fury. He'd manipulated me, used my desperation, my hope, as a tool. Fine. Then I would use the tools he'd given me.
"Wait."
The word left my lips, calm and flat. It wasn't a plea. It was a command. The guards paused, confused by the authority in a voice that should have been begging.
I took a step, not away, but toward Lady Schuyler. The movement made my sapphire skirts swirl. I ignored Emmeline's smirk. I ignored everyone but the woman who had built this lie and the man who had let me walk into it.
"You've invested in impressive forgeries, Lady Schuyler," I said, my voice carrying in the dead silence. I held up the small silver key Dmitri had pressed into my hand in the garden. Its teeth bit into my palm. "But you made a critical error. You focused on creating a dead girl. You forgot to erase the living one."
I turned from her and walked, each step measured, toward the glass case at the room's edge that held the Ledger of Founding Benefactors, the sacred tome of lineage and legitimacy. The crowd parted, a sea of bewildered masks.
"The real Isabelle Valois," I said, not looking at the screen of lies, but at the ancient book, "is right here." I fit the silver key into a nearly invisible lock on the side of the case Dmitri had shown me during one of our "history lessons." A soft click echoed. The glass panel hissed open.
I didn't touch the ledger. I pointed to the frontispiece, to the ornate, embossed seal of the Valois family. "The serial code in the corner of that seal," I said, raising my voice to address the trustees, "is not just for show. It is a registry marker. The same marker," I turned back to the projected death certificate, "that appears here, on your document. But it's duplicated. It's the registry marker for the Schuyler family's private archival vault, the vault where you keep the real unaltered records."
I let that hang. The implication was a grenade rolling into the center of the room.
"Dmitri's father didn't just secure my scholarship," I continued, the lie coming to me as easily as the truth, fueled by betrayal. "His investigators found what you tried to burn. They found proof that the Schuylers have been siphoning from the Valois trust for thirty years. You didn't call me an impostor because you believed it. You called me an impostor because I am the legal heir. And I have the right to reclaim every penny you stole to build this… this mausoleum of lies."
The silence that followed was seismic. I saw Adrien straighten from his pillar, his analytical eyes wide, a slow nod of profound respect aimed at no one but the chessboard itself.
Lady Schuyler's face was the colour of ashes. Emmeline's triumphant smirk had vanished, replaced by a dawning, horrified comprehension. The predators saw the trap snap shut around their own ankles.
I turned my back on them. The walk to the grand doors felt endless. The eyes on me were different now, not judging a fraud, but assessing a sovereign. A dangerous one.
I didn't make it out. A hand closed around my wrist, not harshly, but with an undeniable claim. Dmitri pulled me into the deep shadow of a stone archway, away from the erupting chaos.
He lifted his own visor. His eyes burned into mine, brilliant with a fierce, terrifying pride. "You used the key," he breathed, his voice thick with something like awe. "You didn't just defend. You annihilated."
The adrenaline was leaching away, leaving the raw hurt beneath. I pulled my wrist from his grasp. "You knew." It wasn't a question. "You knew she had those documents. You knew what she would do."
His expression didn't change. "I knew she would try something. I didn't know the specifics."
"You didn't warn me." The words were a whisper, laced with the sting of his manipulation. "You let me stand there, thinking my whole life was a lie. Was that part of the lesson? To see if I'd break?"
For a fraction of a second, something flickered in his eyes, not guilt, but a sharp frustration, as if my hurt was an inconvenient complication. "Telling you would have made you hesitate. You needed the shock. You needed the fire. Look what it forged."
He saw me not as a partner, but as a blade he was tempering. Even now, in what felt like a victory, I was his creation. His possession.
I looked back at the ballroom. Lady Schuyler was surrounded by furious trustees, her empire of whispers collapsing into loud, public ruin.
A new, colder understanding settled in my gut. I had just destroyed the only power that rivalled his. The Schuylers were finished.
I looked at Dmitri, at the possessive hunger still blazing in his eyes, untempered by apology or shared victory.
I hadn't just won my name back.
I had cleared the board for a king.
And I was standing alone in his shadow, wondering if the most dangerous mask had never been the fox's, but the one of the protector he'd let me believe he wore.