Enchantra

Genevieve explores Rowin’s room while he fetches her trunks. His bed is enormous and his closet is impeccably organized. Rowin returns and chides Genevieve for how much stuff she brought to Enchantra. She refuses to take criticism about her overpacking from him, as she refused to take it from Ophelia. Rowin tells her to turn around so he can unlace her corset. Genevieve feels strange undressing in front of him and refuses to have sex with him, and Rowin promises not to touch her until she wants him to. He tells her that they must trust each other in order to win the Hunt. He gives her a wedding band that turns hot when people who want to harm her are near. He helps loosen her corset, then Genevieve changes into a nightgown in the bathroom. She returns to the bedroom and finds Rowin changed into a tank top. She finds him attractive but refuses to admit it. She and Rowin go to bed.

Genevieve has a nightmare in which she dances with Rowin in her wedding attire atop a frozen lake. Rowin transforms into Farrow, who tells her that no one would ever want to be with her forever, then rips out her heart and leaves her to die in the thawing lake. Genevieve wakes up, but Rowin is still sleeping. She tries to calm herself down and prepare herself to win the Hunt.

Genevieve wakes to a snow leopard on her bed, causing her to fall out of bed. She realizes her magic is back when she turns incorporeal before she hits the floor. Ellin arrives and explains that the snow leopard is her familiar, as Umbra is Rowin’s. They discuss the upcoming masquerade ball, and Ellin hopes that Genevieve survives round one of the Hunt, hinting at Ellin’s growing fondness for Genevieve. Ellin also reveals that she’s a Light Wraith, while Wells, Rowin, and Remi are Shadow Wraiths. Ellin helps Genevieve dress for the masquerade ball and reminds her about the importance of the Hunt to the Silver family, being clear to delineate Genevieve as not part of the family. Genevieve’s gown is a glittering gold, accompanied by a golden hare mask from Knox. This upsets Genevieve, who sees that Knox views her as gilded prey.

Genevieve leaves Rowin’s room to find a crowd of people wearing masks and holding small mirrors. They proclaim that she must be the bride, and when one reveler asks their mirror to show them the bride, Genevieve appears. She tries to push through the people, whom she realizes are residents of Hell and spectators for the Hunt. The ring Rowin gave her grows hot as a man named Cedric tries to stop her and harm her, hoping to see what kind of fight she’ll put up in the Hunt, but Genevieve bites him and gets away after he tries to put his hand over her mouth.

Genevieve finds Barrington’s study an hour before the masquerade begins. There is a strange portal in the room, but before Genevieve can investigate it, Barrington asks her to sit. He asks how Tessie died, and Genevieve explains that her father Gabriel reentered Phantasma to win Tessie back but lost the Fraud level, leading to Tessie’s death. Genevieve and Ophelia have not sought out Gabriel afterward. Barrington is angry at Gabriel, but he stops short of threatening to harm him. Genevieve explains that she sought out the Silver family in hopes that they were Necromancers and could help her understand herself and her place in her own family, as Tessie told her nothing about their magic and paid little attention to her.

Barrington explains that he met Tessie when he was doing a job for Knox that required the blood of a necromancer. Back then, Tessie hadn’t yet inherited the Grimm family magic and was still wild and impulsive enough to agree to help him. Barrington says they had many adventures together and became close friends, but when Tessie wanted to enter Phantasma, Barrington counseled her against it, and they grew apart. Genevieve asks him about the photo and the matching lockets. Barrington explains that the lockets are Soul Locks—powerful artifacts that can contain souls. Barrington had one on loan from Knox for one of his missions, and Tessie’s was the family heirloom that was passed down to Ophelia and significant to the events of Phantasma and the release of Salem, the Prince of Devils. Barrington promises Genevieve that Tessie loved her but affirms her right to be angry at Tessie for neglecting her. Genevieve asks if Barrington ever thought about coming after Tessie, and he admits that he did consider it but ultimately decided that he needed to let Tessie go and hope that she would come back on her own.

The chapter ends with a copy of the invitation to Knox’s masquerade that explains the rules of the Hunt. The Hunting Blade chooses the Hunter at the beginning of each round, and the Hunter selects which game to play, with the safe hours beginning 12 hours after the start of each round. The invitation introduces the players, all seven Silver siblings with the new addition of Genevieve.

Genevieve enters the ballroom and finds revelers holding mirrors and drinks everywhere, as well as Covin, Sevin, and Ellin arguing. Covin is wearing a serpent mask, Sevin is wearing a wolf mask, and Ellin is wearing a mask that Genevieve can’t identify. Sevin and Covin ask Genevieve what she thinks Ellin’s mask is. Ellin is offended that no one can tell that her handmade mask is meant to resemble Sapphire, her snow leopard. She wants to ask Wells, her twin, but the siblings refuse to let her, and Sevin interrupts Genevieve before she can question aloud whether Ellin is a twin, which would seem suspicious to the onlookers who assume she knows the Silvers well, having joined their family. Sevin goes to look for more lollipops from the vampires, as he’s constantly sucking on a blood-red lollipop and seems to have run out. Ellin leaves Genevieve alone with Covin, who briefly talks with her before abruptly leaving to talk to someone else.

Alone, Genevieve drinks champagne and looks for Rowin. Instead, she finds Remi, who asks her to dance. As they dance, Remi expresses pity for Genevieve, as he thinks she’ll die quickly in the Hunt. Genevieve doesn’t want his pity and tells him as much before Rowin cuts in. Rowin asks her what Remi said to upset her, but Genevieve refuses to tell him. She grabs another champagne as Rowin follows her. She’s surprised the masquerade isn’t more full of debauchery, but Rowin assures her that it will become so when Knox arrives. The room goes dark, with beds appearing, as Knox enters the ballroom. He gives Genevieve a sparkling drink that he says is passion fruit and insists she drink it as he introduces her officially to the revelers. Genevieve drinks it as Rowin looks enraged, before Knox forces him to drink a passion fruit drink, too. Knox offers a toast to the Hunt and Vira’s continued health, prompting Grave to become so angry that he shatters the glass in his hand. When Knox finishes speaking, Rowin pulls Genevieve to the perimeter of the room. Genevieve begins to feel a strong, lustful pull toward Rowin as a consequence of the drink, and Rowin clearly feels the same. He tells her that they must fight the feeling, but neither wants to.

Rowin pulls Genevieve into a nook beneath the ballroom’s staircase. Rowin touches Genevieve over her clothes, running his hands over her arms and chest and using his shadow magic to tangle his shadows in her hair. Genevieve wants more, but Rowin pulls away and insists they not play Knox’s game. He drugged them with passion fruit, and he refuses to touch her while she’s drugged. He leaves and tells her to stay away from him until the passion fruit wears off.

Genevieve returns to the party and finds most of the revelers engaging in sex, including all the Silver siblings except Sevin, who tells her that he’s too busy pining for his ex. Genevieve goes upstairs and finds Rowin in a bedroom being tied to a bed by a queen of Hell named Gwen. She’s immediately jealous of Gwen’s beauty and the implication that she was going to be intimate with Rowin. Gwen leaves, and Rowin explains that she was helping him stay away from Genevieve while he was helping her avoid Sevin; they are not sexually involved. Genevieve tells Rowin she still wants him, and Rowin tells her that emotional attachments are too dangerous during the Hunt, so if they move forward physically, it has to be purely physical. Genevieve doesn’t want to open herself up to the hurt she felt from Farrow again, so she agrees. Rowin tells her to strip off her dress, and she does. He talks her through touching herself intimately, and when she finishes, he refuses to touch her himself while she still has passion fruit in her system. Genevieve is frustrated but agrees to leave.

She dances the rest of the party away, trying to sweat out the passion fruit, until she becomes exhausted. She attempts to go to the powder room but is followed in by Cedric, the partier who threatened her earlier. He attempts to harm her, but she utilizes her Specter powers to escape. Rowin appears and tells Genevieve to leave and find one of his siblings while he deals with Cedric, as the Hunt is about to begin. Genevieve runs into Knox, who taunts her about the passion fruit. She tells him about Ophelia’s relationship with Salem, which seems to frighten Knox, leading him to offer her another boon if she wins. She tells him that she doesn’t make deals with Devils before going downstairs to find Ellin and Wells. The rest of the Silvers appear one by one before the bell signifying the start of the Hunt rings out.