Chapter 4: The Judge's Indiscretion
The cold dawn park felt a lifetime away, buried under the warm, expensive murmur of the Chancellor Hotel ballroom. Ruby moved through the crowd at the “Heritage Masquerade,” a fundraiser for the city’s historical preservation society—a delicious irony that didn’t escape her. The air was thick with the scent of champagne, expensive cigars, and ambition. Men in tuxedos and women in gowns wore only simple eye masks, their true faces open books of greed and entitlement.
Ruby’s mask was black lace. Her dress was a weapon: a sheath of clinging black satin that ended high on her thighs, the neckline plunging to a daring point just above her navel. It whispered when she walked, a sound that cut through the murmur and drew eyes like a beacon. She held a champagne flute, the bubbles tickling a palate that couldn’t get drunk. Her ice-grey eyes scanned the room, cataloging power.
She found her mark near the grand fireplace, holding court. Judge Marcus Thorne. Late fifties, hair like steel wool, a jaw that looked carved from granite. His reputation was for merciless efficiency in his courtroom and glacial reserve outside of it. But Ruby saw the tell. The way his eyes, behind his simple black mask, lingered a fraction too long on the retreating form of a young waiter. Not with desire, but with a cold hunger for control. A domitor. A man who needed to see things—people—bend.
She let him notice her. She stood alone by a marble column, one hip cocked, sipping her champagne, a faint, knowing smile on her ruby lips. It took three minutes. He extricated himself from a conversation with a city councilman and approached, his stride deliberate.
“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” he said, his voice a low baritone, used to being listened to.
“Ah’m new in town,” Ruby drawled, letting her accent soften the edges of her words. “Just admirin’ the… architecture.”
His eyes traveled down her dress and back up. “The city has many hidden structures. Some are worth exploring.”
“And some are just for show,” she countered, tilting her head. “Ah prefer function over form, myself.”
A faint, dark smile touched his lips. “A practical woman. Refreshing. This noise becomes tiresome. My study is quieter. We could discuss… functionality.”
“Lead the way, Your Honor.”
The title, used so casually, made his eyes gleam. He didn’t offer his arm. He simply turned, expecting her to follow. She did, the whispers of her dress a sibilant promise.
His study was a tomb for ambition. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves laden with untouched legal volumes, a massive mahogany desk polished to a mirror shine, a high-backed leather chair that seemed to swallow the light. It smelled of lemon oil, old paper, and a faint, sour hint of regret. He closed the heavy oak door, and the sounds of the gala vanished, replaced by a profound, watchful silence.
“No mask needed in here,” he said, removing his own and tossing it on the desk.
Ruby slowly untied the lace from behind her head, letting it fall. She shook out her auburn hair, meeting his gaze directly. “Better?”
“Much.” He didn’t move to pour a drink. He simply watched her, a warden assessing a new inmate. “You’re a professional.”
“Ah’m a solution to a problem you’re havin’, sugar. The problem bein’ all that tension in your shoulders. The problem bein’ this dull party. The problem bein’ you need somethin’ real.”
He stepped closer. “And what do you need?”
“A generous benefactor. And a good time.” Her smile was incandescent. “Not necessarily in that order.”
His hand came up, not to caress, but to grip her chin, his fingers strong. He tilted her face, studying it. “You have extraordinary eyes. Like a winter storm. I could lose myself in them.”
“Best not to get lost, Your Honor. Just enjoy the ride.”
He released her chin, his hands going to her shoulders, pushing the thin straps of her dress down her arms. The satin slid, puddling at her waist, leaving her breasts bare. He didn’t touch them. He just looked, his breath coming slightly faster.
“On the desk. Bend over it.”
Ruby turned, the cool, polished wood meeting her palms. She shimmied the rest of the dress down over her hips, let it fall to the floor. She was left in only a pair of sheer black panties and her heels. She arched her back, presenting herself.
She heard the rustle of his clothes, the clink of his belt buckle. He didn’t undress. He merely freed himself. His hands, dry and rough, gripped the swell of her hips. He yanked the fragile lace of her panties to the side, tearing them without ceremony. The sound was sharp in the quiet room.
The blunt, thick head of his cock pressed against her. He was already fully hard. He spat onto his fingers, wiped it over himself, and nudged at her entrance. Ruby was wet—a biological response she could summon on command, part of the toolkit.
He pushed in. Not slowly. A single, deep, claiming thrust that buried him to the hilt inside her. Ruby gasped, a sharp, choked sound that was exactly what he wanted to hear.
“Yes,” he hissed. His hands clamped on her hips like vices.
He set a punishing rhythm from the first stroke, each drive a controlled, powerful slam that rocked her body against the hard desk. The slap of his thighs against her ass was a loud, rhythmic punctuation in the dignified room. It was fucking as correction, as demonstration. He grunted with each thrust, a hard, breathy “uh… uh… uh.”
“You like that, you cheap little cunt?” he growled, his judicial composure gone, stripped away by the raw act.
“God, yes, Your Honor,” Ruby moaned, pushing back against him, taking him deeper. “Fuckin’ use me. Punish this filthy whore. Ain’t that what Ah’m for?”
He shifted one hand, brought it down in a sharp, open-palmed crack across her right buttock. The pain was bright, hot. A perfect red handprint bloomed on her skin. She cried out, and her inner muscles fluttered around him, pulling a ragged groan from his throat.
“Again,” she begged, her voice dripping with obscene want. “Mark me up, daddy. Show me who owns this pussy tonight.”
He spanked the other cheek, harder. The twin stings fueled her performance. She writhed under him, mewling, chanting a filth-laced litany. “Yeah! Fuck! Your cock is so good, so fuckin’ deep! You must know how to get everything you want, bein’ so powerful.”
He was hammering into her now, his control fraying at the edges, lost in the wet, tight heat and her degrading praise. “I know… what people are,” he grunted, his pace becoming erratic. “I know… what they hide.”
“Bet you know all the city’s secrets,” she panted, clenching around him deliberately, milking his shaft. “Where the bodies are buried.”
He slammed into her, his body trembling on the edge. “I know… the names,” he gasped, his voice thick. “Latham in Planning… Vance in the DA’s office… They’re her creatures… they make the problems… go away…”
He choked off as his orgasm ripped through him. He drove in one last, brutal time, his fingers digging bruises into her hips, and she felt the hot, pulsing flood fill her. He shuddered violently against her back, his breath hot and ragged on her neck.
He stayed there, buried inside her, for a long moment. Then he pulled out, the wet sound obscene. He tucked himself away, his breathing gradually slowing back to its measured rhythm.
Ruby slowly straightened up. The handprints on her ass were already fading, the slight soreness vanishing like smoke. She turned, not bothering to cover herself. She was a finished canvas. He was already back behind his desk, pouring two fingers of amber whiskey from a crystal decanter. He didn’t offer her one.
He opened a drawer, pulled out a thick, cream-colored envelope, and tossed it on the desk beside her torn panties. “Your benefaction.”
Ruby picked it up, the weight substantial. She gathered her dress, slipped it back on with effortless grace. “A pleasure, Your Honor. Truly.”
He sipped his whiskey, looking at her with renewed, clinical distance. “You ask interesting questions for a whore.”
“Ah’m a curious girl.” She smiled, the legendary, joyful Ruby smile, now a mask over something cold and sharp. “Just makin’ conversation.”
She left the study, closing the door softly on the scent of sex and secrets. In the grand hallway, the noise of the gala felt distant, hollow. She touched the envelope in her clutch.
Latham. Vance.
Names. Links in a chain. Each client, each fuck, was a step deeper into the labyrinth of the city’s sickness, a sickness that had created Captain Valiant’ silent hell and her own gilded cage.
She didn’t return to the party. She walked out into the night, the names repeating in her mind like a mantra. She wasn’t just gathering money anymore. She was gathering weapons. And Judge Marcus Thorne had just handed her the first two bullets.
The city’s neon glow reflected in her ice-grey eyes, which held no joy now, only a focused, glacial purpose. The ghost was learning to load a gun.
The ghost was learning to load a gun. The envelope in her clutch was heavy, a tangible weight that anchored her to this new, sharper purpose. She moved through the hotel’s grand foyer, her heels clicking a rapid staccato on the marble, the joyful mask of Ruby Thompson set aside for now. Her mind was a map, plotting connections between Thorne’s gasped names and the weeping hero in the park.
She pushed through the brass and glass doors into the damp night air, the city’s hum a welcome reprieve from the gala’s stifling murmur. A valet whistled for a town car. She ignored him, intending to walk, to let the cold air clarify the furious energy buzzing beneath her skin.
“That’s a walk of shame that don’t look very ashamed.”
The voice came from her left, a low rumble that sounded like gravel shifting in a velvet bag. She turned. He stood under the portico, apart from the others, a solid monument of a man in a perfectly tailored charcoal overcoat. Gio Mancari. She didn’t need an introduction; his face was a known currency, even in Jade Cove. Late sixties, with a strong, lived-in face, hair like iron, and eyes that watched the world without blinking. He held a cigar, the ember a tiny, burning planet in the gloom.
Ruby didn’t startle. She met his gaze, her ice-grey eyes catching the hotel’s light. “Sugar, if you think this is a walk of shame, you’ve never seen the real thing. This is a victory lap.”
A faint, approving smile touched his lips. He took a long pull on his cigar, exhaling a slow, fragrant cloud that wrapped around them. “Thorne’s study. Twenty-three minutes. You exit looking like you just negotiated a treaty, not like he tore you a new one.” His eyes traveled over her, an appraisal devoid of lechery, full of calculation. “Which means you’re either the best actress in Queen City, or you got something else going on.”
“Maybe Ah’m just a professional who enjoys her work.”
“Maybe.” He nodded slowly. “Professionals are reliable. They understand value, and reciprocity. My driver’s here. Let’s talk value.”
It wasn’t a question. A long, black sedan with opaque windows glided to the curb. A man in a sleek suit emerged, opening the rear door. Mancari waited, watching her.
Ruby considered the park, the dawn, her room at The North Star. This was a different kind of contact. The other side of the law Thorne pretended to uphold. She needed both to map the battlefield. She smiled, the Ruby smile snapping back into place, this time with a sharper edge. “Ah never turn down a conversation with a connoisseur.”
The interior of the car was a silent, leather-clad vault. The partition was up. The city lights slid past the darkened windows, painting streaks of gold and neon across Mancari’s impassive face. He didn’t touch her. He just studied her.
“Thorne is a useful man,” he said, his voice barely above the whisper of tires on wet pavement. “A clean hand for dirty work. But he’s a scared man now. He talks in his sleep, they say. You have a way of making men talk while they’re awake.”
“People like to confess to a friendly face,” Ruby said, crossing her legs, the satin of her dress whispering. “Especially when they think it don’t matter.”
“Everything matters.” He tapped ash into a built-in tray. “You’re new. You’re remarkable. And you’re gathering information. Why?”
The question hung in the scented air. A direct challenge. Lying would be pointless; he’d know. She went with a fractured truth. “Ah find this city fascinatin’. It’s beautiful. But it’s sick. Ah like to know the anatomy of a sickness before Ah decide how to enjoy it.”
He leaned back, a deep chuckle resonating in his chest. “I like that. A tourist with a surgeon’s eye. You should see my view.”
The car turned, descending into an underground garage beneath a modern tower of steel and glass. A private elevator took them up to the penthouse. The doors opened not into a home, but into a command post. Floor-to-ceiling windows presented a dizzying panorama of the city’s glittering spine. There were no personal touches, only a vast open space with a few low sofas, a fortified desk, and a ceiling that seemed to vanish into shadow.
He shrugged off his overcoat, revealing a simple black silk shirt. He poured two glasses of grappa from a crystal decanter on the desk, handed one to her.
“To profitable relationships,” he said.
She clinked her glass against his. “To mutual understanding.”
He drank, his eyes never leaving hers. Then he set his glass down with a firm click. “Understanding. Let’s understand each other. You have needs. I have needs. My need tonight is to see what a legend feels like. To see if the reality stains the sheets, or just washes right off.”
He closed the distance between them. His hands were broad, his grip firm as he took her shoulders. There was no fumbling for a zipper. He found the seam at the side of her dress and tore it, the satin parting with a sigh. The garment fell away. He unhooked her bra with a single, practiced twist of his fingers.
His calloused palms covered her breasts, kneading them, his thumbs grinding rough circles over her nipples. It wasn’t pleasurable; it was an assessment of quality, like testing fruit.
“Good,” he grunted. “Strong.”
He pushed her backwards until her legs hit the edge of the massive desk. He spun her around, bending her over the polished black stone surface. Her reflection, wide-eyed and exposed, stared back at her from the dark glass. He kicked her heels apart, his foot between her ankles.
She heard his belt buckle, the zip of his trousers. He didn’t bother with her remaining underwear. He shoved the lace aside, his fingers probing her roughly, pushing inside to test her wetness.
“Ready for business,” he stated, a cold observation.
He entered her in one long, relentless push. There was no teasing, no build-up. He was thick, stretching her, a solid, invading presence. He grabbed a handful of her auburn hair, winding it around his fist, using it to pull her head back, arching her spine.
“You wanna understand this city, girl?” he growled, his mouth close to her ear. His hips began to piston, short, deep, brutal strokes that drove the air from her lungs. “This is it. This is the fucking root of it. Power. Taking what you want because you can.”
He fucked her with a controlled, devastating rhythm, each thrust a declaration. The desk shuddered. Ruby’s moans were punched out of her, involuntary sounds of overwhelming fullness. “Christ,” she gasped, her vision blurring against the reflective surface.
“Not Christ,” he corrected, his voice a hard rasp. “Just Gio. Say my fucking name.”
“Gio!” she cried out as he snapped his hips forward, hitting a spot that burned through her core.
“Who owns this cunt right now?”
“You do! Fuck! You own it!” The words were a fuel he burned. His rhythm broke, turning frantic, animal. He released her hair, his hands splaying on her back, pinning her to the cold stone as he slammed into her, over and over. The sounds were obscene: the wet slap of flesh, his ragged grunts, the shudder of the desk.
“Gonna fill this pretty, professional pussy,” he snarled, his composure cracking. “Gonna mark my territory. You’ll remember who you talked to tonight.”
His control shattered. With a final, guttural roar, he buried himself to the hilt, his body locking against hers. She felt the hot, urgent flood of his release jetting inside her, pulse after possessive pulse. He shuddered violently, his full weight leaning on her for a long moment.
Then he withdrew. The sudden emptiness was a shock. Cool air hit the wetness between her thighs. She heard him fastening his trousers.
Ruby pushed herself up, her arms trembling slightly, a genuine physical reaction to the onslaught. Her body was already soothing the internal ache, erasing the fleeting fatigue. She turned, not bothering to cover herself. The slick evidence of him trickled down her inner thigh.
He was back at the decanter, pouring another grappa. He tossed a thick, folded stack of hundreds onto the desk beside her hip. “For your time.”
She picked up the money, holding his gaze. “And for our mutual understanding?”
He smiled, a real one this time, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re a resource, Ruby Thompson. Thorne has his clean laws. I have the dirt that holds the foundations together. You have questions about how this sick city works? You come to me. You need something the law can’t touch? You come to me.”
He picked up a business card from his desk, plain black with a single, embossed phone number. He tucked it into the fold of cash in her hand. “My private line. Don’t waste it.”
She found her torn dress, holding it against her front. “And what do you get from this arrangement?”
“I get a window into Thorne’s frightened mind. I get a sensor in places I can’t always reach.” He sipped his drink. “And I get to know that a remarkable creature is, temporarily, on my ledger. Now get dressed. My driver will take you wherever you need to go.”
In the elevator descending, clutching the cash and the black card, Ruby felt the night solidify around her. The judge’s whispered names were scribbles on a legal pad. Gio Mancari’s card was a stone tablet. She had a point on the map in the halls of power, and a point in the shadows that propped them up.
The ghost had its weapons. The map was taking shape. The next phase could begin.
The next phase could begin.
Alden Rusk, Deputy Mayor for Urban Development, was a man who wore his hunger openly. It shimmered in the too-eager handshake, the quick, assessing glance at Ruby’s body as she was ushered into his spacious office the following afternoon. The meeting was ostensibly about "community outreach partnerships," a façade so thin it was laughable. He’d requested her specifically after a discreet call from a mutual acquaintance—likely Gio’s doing, a test of her "value."
"Miss Thompson, what an absolute pleasure," he said, his voice a practiced baritone. He rounded his desk, not returning to his chair but leaning against its front, crowding her space. "Your work in... community engagement... is becoming the talk of certain circles."
"Ah aim to please, Councilman," Ruby drawled, letting her gaze wander over the framed photos of ribbon-cuttings and handshakes. The office smelled of lemon polish and ambition, a cheaper cologne than Thorne’s study.
"Call me Alden." He smiled, revealing very white, very even teeth. "I believe in direct dialogue. In hands-on collaboration." His hand came to rest on her waist, a proprietary gesture. "Let’s collaborate."
He wasn’t a domitor like Thorne, or a force of nature like Mancari. He was a consumer, greedy and impatient. He fumbled with the button of her blouse, his breath already hastening. Ruby guided his hands away, doing it herself with slow, teasing precision, then unfastened his belt. He groaned as she freed his erection, which was thick and flushed.
"On the desk," he panted, his bureaucratic veneer evaporating. "I want to see those papers scatter."
She turned, bending over the polished surface, sending a stack of zoning proposals fluttering to the floor. He didn’t tease. He mounted her from behind, pushing her thin skirt up, shoving her panties aside. He entered with a single, graceless thrust, burying himself with a wet grunt.
"Fuck, yes," he hissed, his hands clamping on her shoulders. He set a rapid, jackhammer rhythm, his hips slapping against her ass. It was fucking as transaction, devoid of even the dark ceremony Thorne demanded. "You’re tighter than the city budget."
Ruby moaned, a high, encouraging sound, and pushed back against him. "You’re so deep, sugar. A real public servant." She felt him swell inside her at the words. "Bet you know how to develop every little piece of property in this town."
"God, I do," he grunted, his pace becoming frantic, messy. "Every permit... every variance... it all crosses this desk." He was pounding into her now, chasing his finish, his fingers digging into her flesh. "The north quadrant re-zoning... that was me. Pushed it through for a... a friend."
He came with a sharp cry, his body convulsing against hers, his release hot and sudden. He slumped over her back, breathing heavily. Ruby, bent over the desk, stared at the fallen papers. North quadrant. Another piece.
She left his office twenty minutes later, her body already immaculate, her mind cataloging the new data point. The money was in her purse, but it was the information that felt weightier. Each client was a fragment of a ledger, and she was piecing together the empire’s balance sheet.
But a dull fury began to simmer beneath her collected calm. It wasn’t directed at the Aldens or the Thornes. They were symptoms. The disease was the silent, weeping man in the park and the invisible hand that had remade him. The disease was the ghost of a woman named Athena that lived in her bones. She had names, she had points on a map, but she had no vector for her rage.
She walked, not toward The North Star, but toward the riverfront warehouse district, the memory of Valiant’s shattered sobs echoing in time with her footsteps. The legend of Ruby Thompson, the joyful hedonist, felt like a costume she was itching to tear off. Another, older costume called from the dark back of her closet.
The warehouse she entered was one she’d rented under a false name, paid for with Silas’s cash. A bare concrete space, empty except for a single, long metal case on a worktable under a hanging bulb.
She opened the case.
The white leotard lay inside, folded with a kind of severe precision. The material was unfamiliar, a dense polymer that felt cool and frictionless under her fingertips. Beside it, the chestnut wig, the black utility belt, the white opera gloves and thigh-high boots, the white domino mask. The ghost’s uniform.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat of revulsion and a terrifying, magnetic pull. She didn’t remember this. But her hands did. Her fingers traced the contours of the belt, finding hidden clasps and pouches by instinct. A profound cognitive dissonance threatened to split her skull: the lifetime of memories as happy, chaotic Ruby warring with the muscle-deep knowledge of this arsenal.
“No,” she whispered to the empty room, her southern accent stark against the concrete. “Ah ain’t you. Ah’m Ruby. Ah’m the best goddamn thing that ever happened to this town or any other.”
But Ruby wanted to make the Empress pay. And Ruby, for all her legendary skills, couldn’t fly.
Her hands were moving before her mind could protest. She stripped off her street clothes, letting them fall to the dirty floor. She stepped into the leotard, and it sealed up her front with a faint hiss, conforming to her body like a second skin. She pulled on the boots, the gloves. She affixed the belt around her waist, its weight both alien and comfortingly familiar. Finally, she gathered her auburn hair, tucked it under the net of the chestnut wig, and settled the mask over her ice-grey eyes.
She looked at her reflection in the dark window. A stranger stared back. A severe, anonymous symbol. A ghost she was about to impersonate.
A wild, reckless energy surged through her. It wasn’t Athena’s disciplined focus. It was Ruby’s furious, joyful defiance, channeled through a stolen vessel. “Alright, you borrowed bitch,” she said to the reflection, her voice now her own, echoing in the mask. “Let’s see what you can do.”
She bent her knees and jumped.
The warehouse ceiling rushed at her. She threw out her hands in instinctive panic. And she flew. Not a jump, but a sustained, powerful ascent that she controlled with a thought. She banked hard, a laugh ripped from her throat—half terror, half elation—as she shot toward a high window, slipping through its broken pane into the vast, cold mouth of the Queen City night.
Wind screamed past her. The city sprawled below, a circuit board of corruption and pain. She soared, the mechanics of flight an innate, forgotten language her body remembered perfectly. She circled higher, the neon glow painting her white form in momentary flashes of pink and green. She was not patrolling. She was hunting.
The sound led her to it: the thick, meaty impact of fists on flesh, a young voice crying out in pain. In a narrow alley off the garment district, three figures in the grey, paramilitary uniforms of the Empress’s Enforcers had a kid pinned against a brick wall. A spray-paint can rolled near his feet. Above him, a freshly pasted poster of the Empress’s serene, smiling face was defaced with a crude, dripping black X.
“You insult the peace,” one enforcer monotoned, driving a fist into the boy’s stomach.
Ruby dropped from the sky like a silent, white comet. She didn’t announce herself. She didn’t demand they stop. Her boots connected with the first enforcer’s back, a crunch of armor and bone that sent him sprawling face-first into a dumpster. He didn’t get up.
The other two spun, shock wiping the blankness from their features for a split second. Ruby was already moving. Skills baked into her muscles, the property of the woman who used to live in her body, kicked in. But the philosophy was all Ruby. Where White Owl would disarm, Ruby maimed. Where White Owl would subdue, Ruby sought to break.
She caught the second enforcer’s swinging baton, wrenched it from his grasp, and swung it back across his knee. The crack was louder than the sound of the spray can. He screamed, a raw, human sound of agony, and collapsed. The third went for a sidearm. Ruby was faster. She closed the distance, her hand a white blur. She didn’t strike his wrist. She seized his extended arm, twisted it violently at the elbow until the joint gave way with a sickening pop, and drove her other fist into his throat.
He gagged, eyes bulging, sinking to his knees. The fight had lasted less than eight seconds. The boy, slumped against the wall, could only stare, his mouth a perfect ‘O’ of shock.
Ruby stood amidst the wreckage, breathing hard, the enforcer’s baton still in her hand. She looked at the three broken men. The one with the shattered knee was whimpering, clutching his leg, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated pain. And then something shifted. The blank, programmatic haze in his eyes flickered, dissolved. Real terror looked out. Real confusion. “My… my leg… oh god, what… what is this place?”
The one clutching his ruined elbow was sobbing, but his sobs had changed tenor. They were filled with a personal horror, not just procedural distress. “Jennifer,” he slurred through his damaged throat. “My wife’s name is Jennifer. I… I couldn’t remember before.”
It worked. Agony was the key. Suffering could shatter the Empress’s programming, if it was severe enough. The revelation hit Ruby like a physical blow. This was the lever for Captain Valiant. A truth more brutal than any she’d uncovered in a man’s study.
She looked down at the boy. “Run,” she said, her voice distorted, metallic through the mask.
He scrambled to his feet and fled, not looking back.
Ruby turned her ice-grey eyes, visible through the mask’s slits, back to the broken enforcers. The one who remembered his wife’s name was looking at her now, true fear in his regained eyes. He saw a white phantom, a brutal and swift angel of violence. He saw enough to have nightmares for the rest of his life.
She didn’t offer help. She didn’t speak. She simply turned, leaped into the air, and vanished over the rooftop, leaving them to their pain and their dawning, terrible clarity.
Back in the warehouse, stripping off the sweat-damp costume, Ruby’s hands were steady. The righteous fire of the fight was cooling into a hard, clinical understanding. She had a tool now. A terrible, cruel tool. She could break the Empress’s hold, but the cost was measured in screams and shattered bones.
She wanted to help the people here. She was driven to make the Empress pay. But the one thing she was unwilling to do was actually go back to being the real White Owl or Athena Nikos-Coleman. No. Ruby wanted to continue being Ruby, forever.
Even if being Ruby now meant wearing a ghost’s skin and breaking men to see if their screams could set them free. She looked at the white leotard, crumpled on the table like a shed serpent’s skin.
It was just another costume. And Ruby Thompson knew how to wear a costume better than anyone.