The Puppet Master's Strings

The champagne flute trembled in your hand, a fine tremor you couldn't still. The penthouse's floor-to-ceiling windows painted the city in liquid gold, but your reflection in the glass was a stranger's — cheekbones too sharp, eyes too green. You'd traced that scar behind your ear a hundred times, always inventing a story for it. A childhood fall. A skiing accident. Lies you'd told yourself so often they'd worn smooth as river stones.

Julian's voice drifted from the study, velvet and amused. "Darling, you're brooding. Come here."

You didn't move. In your other hand, crumpled and damp, was the message that had arrived in a book you'd never ordered: You are not who you think you are. Meet me at the Clocktower, midnight. —The Director.

Your fingers tightened. The flute cracked. A hairline fracture spiderwebbed through the crystal, and you watched the wine bead along it, dark as old blood.

"Julian," you called back, voice steady despite the roar in your ears. "Who was I before we met?"

The silence that followed was a held breath. Then his footsteps, unhurried, crossing marble.