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Summary
Hawke sends two of his most trusted companions into a slaver’s masquerade— an opulent den in Hightown where velvet hides cruelty, and every masked noble watches with a predator’s patience. Their task is simple in theory: retrieve a ledger that could topple a criminal network, and walk out undetected.
To survive the night, one must play the master, and the other must kneel.
It is a role neither should be able to stomach, a performance made harder by old wounds and unspoken desire. But the masquerade is precarious, and the deeper they slip into their parts, the more the line between act and truth begins to blur.
Under candlelight and called bids, power masks intimacy, vulnerability becomes weaponised, and touch becomes a language of its own. The crowd sees a pair bound by ownership and obedience—
but the truth that exists between them is far more nuanced: loyalty freely given, longing carefully buried, trust teetering on the edge of something neither dare name.
When the ledger finally comes within reach, the hardest part isn’t the theft.
It’s stepping back from the roles that let them ache for each other in plain sight—
and deciding what, if anything, is left once the masks come off. -
Bookmark Notes:
Chapter 2