Kaelith had decided that if she was going to turn twenty-six with no plan for her future, then at the very least she was going to do it drunk, overdressed, and surrounded by beautiful people.
It felt like a respectable life choice.
Her birthday party had taken over one of the private reception halls inside Demon Queen Malvoria’s castle, though she had very firmly declared it a no parents anniversary.
No mothers.
No royal advisers.
No older relatives pretending not to judge her while very clearly judging her.
Tonight belonged to the younger generation, to music loud enough to irritate the ancestors in their portraits, to expensive liquor stolen from one of the royal cellars with complete confidence, and to the kind of bad decisions that still looked glamorous under candlelight.
Kaelith approved of all of it.
She stood near the center of the room with a glass of dark red liquor in one hand and one boot crossed lazily over the other, looking exactly like the kind of woman who caused scandals by accident and on purpose.
At twenty-six, she had grown into the sort of beauty that made people stare too long and regret it later.
Her white hair, streaked with vivid red, brushed a little past her jaw tonight, slightly longer than usual and falling just messy enough to look deliberate.
Her small red horns curved from her forehead like a threat dressed in elegance.
She wore black, naturally.
Tailored black trousers, a fitted black shirt opened just enough to suggest trouble, rings on her fingers, chains at her throat, and a jacket she had already abandoned somewhere because it was a party, not a funeral.
Her grey eyes moved over the room, warm with amusement.
This, she thought, was much better than responsibility.
A few days from now, graduation would finally arrive.
Years of classes, noble expectations, magic training, ceremonial speeches, and professors with faces like overworked gargoyles would come to an end.
And then what?
That was the inconvenient part.
Kaelith had no fucking idea.
Some of her classmates had plans.
Real ones.
Annoying ones.
Neris, for example, had enough plans for three lifetimes and probably kept them sorted alphabetically.
Aliyah at least looked like a woman who could walk into a future and make it behave.
Even Ruby and Violet, her little twin sisters, had opinions, ambitions, and the terrifying confidence of twenty-year-olds who still believed the world might make sense.
Kaelith, on the other hand, wanted to drink something expensive, dance with someone beautiful, and maybe end the night with a woman in her bed.
As far as she was concerned, that was an honest answer.
A hand slapped her shoulder from behind.
“Stop standing there like a decorative sin,” Aliyah said.
Kaelith turned and grinned.
Aliyah looked infuriatingly gorgeous, which was simply who she was as a person.
Brown skin glowing under the candlelight, long black hair falling in soft waves down her back, red eyes sharp with amusement, and a dress so good it should have required a permit.
At twenty-five, Aliyah had perfected the art of looking like a princess and a problem at the same time.
“Decorative sin is still better than ceremonial disappointment,” Kaelith said.
Aliyah snorted.
“You only say that because you know Mother would hate this party.”
“Exactly,” Kaelith replied.
“That makes it art.”
Beside her stood Neris, looking as elegant and severely handsome as if he had wandered into the wrong social event by mistake and stayed only to judge everyone.
At twenty-four, he had already mastered the deeply offensive skill of wearing formal clothes like he had been born inside a tailored suit.
Warm brown skin, short black hair with red streaks, red eyes as calm as a blade laid flat on a table, and that expression of permanent superiority that made Kaelith want to throw olives at him.
“You stole wine from the west cellar,” Neris said.
Kaelith blinked.
“What makes you say that?”
He stared at her.
Aliyah laughed.
Neris sighed like a man carrying a terrible burden.
“The label is from the west cellar.”
Kaelith raised her glass.
“Then I would like to thank the west cellar for its service to my birthday.”
“You’re going to get caught one day,” he said.
Kaelith smiled.
“Then it won’t be today.”
Before Neris could respond, two figures came sweeping through the crowd with the full confidence of women who knew they were both beautiful and related to the host, which unfortunately made them even louder.
Ruby and Violet.
Her little sisters were twenty now, though neither of them behaved like creatures who feared consequences.
They looked almost like mirror-born nobility and a dare to the universe at once.
Both had one grey eye and one purple, a family trait twisted into something sharper on them.
Ruby wore her red hair loose tonight, rich as flame over bare shoulders, while Violet’s silver hair shimmered like moonlight braided into silk.
They had inherited different pieces of the family beauty, and both had decided to weaponize them.
Ruby threw an arm around Kaelith’s neck from one side.
Violet took her glass from the other without asking.
“Happy birthday, old woman,” Ruby said cheerfully.
Kaelith turned her head very slowly.
“Say that again and I’ll have you exiled.”
“You’re only twenty-six,” Violet said after stealing a sip of her drink.
“No one is exiling anyone over that.”
“Yet,” Kaelith said.
“Give me political power and time.”
Ruby grinned.
“You don’t want political power.”
“Correct.”
“You barely want a schedule,” Aliyah added.
Kaelith pointed at her.
“That sounds judgmental from a woman who color-codes her notes.”
“My notes deserve structure.”
“My life rejects structure on principle.”
Neris, traitor to joy, muttered, “Your life rejects intelligence on principle.”
Kaelith gasped.
“Why are you even here?”
“Because Ruby and Violet dragged me.”
“That is true,” Ruby said proudly.
Violet leaned against the side of the banquet table and looked around the room with obvious approval.
“This is a good party.
No adults, no speeches, and three people have already started flirting badly near the balcony.”
Kaelith followed her gaze and smiled faintly.
“Only three?
The night is young.”
Music spilled through the hall, rich and rhythmic, enough to shake the gold chains hanging from the chandeliers.
Young nobles, heirs, and dangerously unsupervised magic users drifted through the room in clusters, laughing too loudly, dancing too closely, and drinking as if tomorrow had signed a non-aggression pact.
It was perfect.
For a while, Kaelith let herself sink into it.
She drank.
She laughed.
She got dragged into a dance she had not agreed to and improved it by making it indecent.
She accepted birthday kisses on the cheek from women who smelled like perfume and disaster.
She let Ruby convince her to do a drinking challenge, then won it out of sheer stubbornness while Violet provided cruel commentary from the side.
Aliyah at one point threatened to confiscate her glass.
Kaelith responded by kissing her forehead and escaping.
It was the kind of night that made the future feel far away.
That was the danger of it, really.
Because every now and then, even between laughs, something quieter would catch at her.
A thought.
A pressure behind the ribs.
Graduation in a few days.
The end of one thing.
The beginning of… what, exactly?
Kaelith had spent years moving with the easy confidence of a woman who trusted life to sort itself out around her.
She had magic, charm, a famous family name, and enough bad habits to keep herself entertained for a decade.
Usually that felt like plenty.
Tonight, though, as she stood near the long windows with another drink in hand and the noise of the party behind her, it felt different.
Everyone expected something eventually.
Not immediately.
No one was going to chain her to a desk tomorrow morning and demand a five-year plan with official signatures.
Her mothers, for all their terrifying power, were not particularly interested in ruining her birthday with duty.
Still.
She was Malvoria and Elysia’s daughter.
The eldest.
A woman with demon blood, royal blood, and more people watching her than she liked to remember.
There would come a day when the question of what Kaelith wanted to be would stop sounding amusing and start sounding dangerous.
She stared into her glass.
The answer remained profoundly unhelpful.
Rich.
Beautiful.
Left alone.
Maybe with a hot woman currently unbuttoning her shirt.
That, at least, felt honest.
“Why are you making that face?”
Kaelith looked up to find Violet beside her again, silver hair falling over one shoulder, one brow raised.
“What face?”
“The one that says you’ve had a thought and it offended you.”
Kaelith smiled despite herself.
“I was thinking about the future.”
Violet recoiled dramatically.
“Disgusting.”
“Exactly.”
Ruby appeared on her other side as if summoned by shared nonsense.
“Don’t do that tonight.
Think about tomorrow when you’re hungover and miserable.”
“That,” Kaelith said, lifting her glass, “is the best advice anyone has given me all year.”
Aliyah joined them a moment later, with Neris behind her looking resigned to the fact that he had become part of a family he was far too elegant for.
Together they stood near the window, her people, loud and impossible and deeply beloved.
Ruby stole fruit off a passing tray.
Violet stole Ruby’s fruit.
Aliyah immediately began mediating a conflict no one had asked her to mediate.
Neris looked at all of them like a man composing a thesis on chaos.
And Kaelith, standing there in the middle of laughter and candlelight and music, thought that maybe she did not know what came next.
But tonight, at least, she knew exactly what she wanted.