The Masquerade
A tale of the nocturne · in which the boldest disguise is none at all.
Once a year, on the longest night, the Velvet Manor opens its doors to anyone with a mask and no questions. It is the Vale's oldest tradition and Lucien's favorite evening: three hundred strangers, all mysteries, none of them his responsibility.
He hosts it the way he does everything — perfectly. The grand hall (which you can read about here) blazes with a thousand candles. The musicians play from the gallery. The masks that year were exceptional: a fox in silver, a whole flock of owls, one memorable turnip.
And then, at the third candle, the Ravenkeeper touched his sleeve and nodded toward the staircase.
She stood at the top of the stairs wearing evening dress and no mask at all. Bare-faced in a sea of disguises — the only honest thing in the room. The crowd parted for her without knowing why. Lucien, who had greeted three hundred mysteries without a tremor, found he had forgotten the host's first duty, which is to speak.
"You're not wearing a mask," he said. Profoundly original.
"I know," she said. "I spent a year making everyone else's. I thought I'd earned an evening off." She was the mask-maker, it turned out — the artisan half the Vale had commissioned in secret. She had come to see her work worn, and to be, for one night, the one person in the room nobody could place.
They talked until the candles burned low. He told her about the Vesper Hour stillness, which he had never told anyone. She told him the turnip was her brother, which explained a great deal. When the musicians packed their instruments and the last masks drifted home, she paused at the door.
"Same time next year?" she asked.
"I will hold the date," Lucien said, "in ink."
She comes every year now. She still doesn't wear a mask. The Vale has decided this is the most romantic thing anyone has ever done, and the Vale is right, and Lucien — who is never embarrassed — is embarrassed every time someone mentions it, which is constantly.