Point of View: Sabrina Valerius
"Mark, please, help me. My heart... it is stopping."
The words felt like thick, wet wool in my mouth. I reached for him, my fingers trembling as they brushed the stiff, expensive silk of his sleeve. The vibrant gold of the ballroom began to bleed into a violent, bruised violet. The music did not fade; it distorted, the violins screaming like dying birds.
Mark did not catch my hand. He looked at my fingers as if they were insects crawling toward his skin. He took a deliberate, measured step back.
"Sabrina, pull yourself together," he said. His voice was not filled with panic or love. It was sharp with the sting of social embarrassment. "Everyone is watching. You are making a scene."
"I cannot... feel my legs," I gasped. The weight of the world increased tenfold, pulling my knees toward the marble floor. "Mark, look at me. Something is wrong."
"I am looking at you," he replied, his eyes scanning the perimeter of the room to gauge the damage to his reputation. "I see a woman who cannot handle her liquor. Or perhaps Julian was right about your little habit."
The betrayal hit me harder than the drug. It was a physical blow to my chest, stealing the last of my air. I collapsed. The fall felt like it lasted a lifetime, a slow motion descent from the heights of a goddess to the filth of the floor. I did not hit the marble. I crashed into the three tier Centenary cake, a mountain of white sugar and silver pearls.
The impact was a dull thud. Frosting smeared across my silver gown, cold and sticky like a shroud. I lay there, a broken doll in a ruin of luxury. The cameras began to click, a frantic, mechanical heartbeat that filled the silence of the room.
"Get up, Sabrina," my father's voice boomed from somewhere above me. It was the voice that had commanded empires, but now it held the cold finality of a judge.
I tried to push myself up, my palms sliding through the white cream. My vision fractured. I saw a hundred versions of my father, all of them wearing the same expression of icy disgust. I saw Mark standing next to him, smoothing his lapels, his face a mask of weary disappointment.
"Father," I croaked. I reached out a hand, matted with cake and dirt. "Julian... the wine..."
"Do not dare blame your cousin for your own lack of character," Lord Alistair Valerius said. He did not move to help me. He did not offer a hand to his only child. He looked at me as if I were a stain on his polished floors. "I raised a Sovereign. I did not raise a common addict."
"I am not... I did not..." The words died in my throat. The Lethe-9 was a silent thief, stealing my ability to speak, to defend, to exist. My tongue felt like a dead weight.
Julian stepped forward then, his face the picture of heartbroken concern. He knelt just out of reach, his eyes brimming with fake tears that sparkled under the chandeliers.
"Sabrina, why didn't you tell us?" he whispered, his voice loud enough for the nearest guests to hear. "The stress... the money you took... was it for the drugs? I would have helped you."
"Liar," I tried to scream, but only a wet, ragged breath escaped.
I looked at Mark. I searched for a flicker of the man who had promised me forever only hours ago. I sought the warmth of the man who had given me the diamond now mockingly bright on my finger.
"Mark," I mouthed.
He looked down at me, his lip curling in a tiny, almost imperceptible flinch of revulsion. "I think it is best if the engagement is considered terminated, Alistair. I cannot have the Sterling name dragged through this gutter."
"Agreed," my father said.
The room began to spin. The violet lights turned to a deep, suffocating black. I felt the vibration of the floor as the security guards approached. They did not lift me with the reverence due to the Valerius heir. They grabbed my arms, hauling me upward with brutal efficiency. My head lolled back, my crown slipping from my matted hair and hitting the marble with a tinny, hollow ring.
"Where are you taking her?" Julian asked, his voice laced with mock pity.
"To the back," my father replied. "She is no longer a guest in this house. She is no longer a Valerius."
I tried to fight, but my muscles were water. I was dragged through the ballroom, my heels scraping against the floor, leaving a trail of ruined cake and silver silk behind me. The guests parted like a sea of crows, their whispers a cacophony of judgment.
As the heavy oak doors of the ballroom approached, I saw Julian one last time. He stood by the cake ruin, picking a silver pearl from the mess and rolling it between his fingers. He caught my eye and smiled. It was a slow, beautiful expression of triumph.
The doors slammed shut.
The heat of the ballroom vanished, replaced by the biting chill of the night air. The guards dragged me toward the service entrance, where a black SUV waited with its engine idling like a growling beast. They threw me inside, my body hitting the leather seat with a sickening thud.
"Wait," I tried to say, my voice a ghost of a sound.
The door clicked shut. The locks engaged.
I pulled myself to the window, my forehead pressing against the cold glass. I saw the lights of the Valerius mansion, the windows glowing with a warmth that was no longer mine. I saw the silhouette of my father standing on the balcony, watching the car move away. He did not wave. He did not weep. He simply turned back toward the party, closing the French doors on the memory of his daughter.
The SUV lurched forward, descending the long, winding driveway. I watched the gates of the estate disappear into the mist. With every mile, the drug pulled a new veil over my mind.
The boardroom. Gone. The garden. Fading. The four hundred million. A blur.
I looked down at my hands. They were stained white and red. I tried to remember the name of the man who had given me the diamond, but the thought slipped away like water through a sieve. I tried to remember my own name, but the letters were jumbled, meaningless shapes in the dark.
I was a ghost in a silver dress, hurtling toward a darkness I could not imagine. The silence in the car was absolute, broken only by the steady, rhythmic breathing of the guards in the front seat. They did not look back. They did not care.
I closed my eyes, the last flicker of the Valerius Diamond dying out. I felt the cold sting of the night air as the driver rolled down his window to spit. We were leaving the world of gold and entering the world of ash.
"Sir," the guard in the passenger seat said into his radio. "The package is in transit. The disposal site is confirmed."
The disposal site.
I was not a daughter. I was not an heir. I was a package to be discarded.
I curled into a ball on the floor of the SUV, the silk of my gown tearing against the metal. The ache in my soul was a physical weight, a crushing pressure that made it hard to breathe. I had been loved. I had been powerful. Now, I was nothing.
The car hit a pothole, jarring my bones. We were no longer on the smooth asphalt of the heights. We were on the broken roads of the Gray Zone.
I drifted into a state of half consciousness, a nightmare of red lights and Julian's smiling face. When the car finally stopped, the doors opened to a world that smelled of rotting garbage and old rain.
"Out," a voice commanded.
I was shoved into the mud. The cold water seeped into my gown, turning the silver to a dull, heavy gray. I lay there, shivering, as the SUV sped away, its taillights two red eyes disappearing into the fog.
I was alone. I was nameless. I was the dirt beneath the world's feet.
The rain began to fall, washing the frosting from my face, but it could not wash away the scales beginning to form on my neck. The Lethe-9 was done with my memory. Now, it was claiming my body.
I looked up at the towering, dark silhouettes of the slums. A shadow moved in the alley. A pair of eyes watched me from the dark.
I tried to scream, but I had forgotten how.