Chapter 12: Smoke, Scales, and Shattered Glass

Genevieve had finally been summoned home by her father. Her presence was required for all the trappings of future nobility—finishing school lessons, posture refinement, and the delicate orchestration of her upcoming courting season before the frost arrived. Ayoka stood silently in the upper hallway, hands clasped behind her back, watching the ornate carriage rattle away down the gravel path.

As the dust settled, a smile slowly unfurled across her face. Not one born of politeness. Not survival. But a rare, blooming expression—soft, steady, and alive, like a garden that had waited too long for rain.

In that moment, if anyone had dared to look closely, they might’ve caught the shimmer in her gaze—eyes that shifted like myth, gleaming with the eerie brilliance of snake eyes: red-ringed, with a stark pupil resting atop pure black, as if ink had swallowed every trace of white beneath. It was a darkness that wasn’t just color—it was memory, instinct, something older than fear itself.

Later that morning, standing in front of the mirror brushing out her hair, that same smile remained. Sabine noticed it from across the room while folding linens and raised a brow. “You smilin’ hard today,” she said gently. “Like water slippin’ down stone. Did Mami Wata finally bless your bath this time?”

Ayoka chuckled, but the sound was sharp—cutting—as she applied her lipstick. “Mami Wata don’t come here anymore. The deities… they got their own wounds to tend. Too many cries in the world, too many broken altars. It’s not that they don’t care—it’s that they can’t always hear us through the noise.”

She paused, her voice softening. “One village begs for rain. Another for revolution. A mother pleads for her child’s fever to break while a father in another land carves prayers into stone to keep his daughter from the noose. Pain overlaps. Hope gets buried. Maybe even gods get tired.”

Sabine’s hands slowed as she folded the last sheet. “Sounds like you’re givin’ up on prayer.”

Ayoka glanced at her reflection. “Not givin’ up. Just… acknowledgin’. They may still exist. But if they’re fightin’ their own battles, then maybe we need to become our own answers.”

Sabine gave her a soft nod, both proud and cautious. “Still... that smile. It’s different today. And your eyes—” She paused. “Girl, they flashin’ strange again. Like moonlight on obsidian.”

Ayoka blinked, and in that instant, her snake-like gaze faded, shifting back to its usual deep brown. “Just a trick of the light,” she said lightly, though her voice held something older underneath.

Sabine raised a skeptical brow, but there was something else in her gaze too—something sad, something familiar. As if she understood that moment better than she wanted to admit. Like she’d once looked into a mirror and seen her own power blurred beneath someone else’s history.

She said no more—but Ayoka saw it. That shared weight. That quiet understanding of what it meant to know you came from something divine, only to have the world convince you it was dirt. It wasn’t just forgetting—it was being forced to remember the wrong version of yourself.

Ayoka looked back at her reflection and smirked, a slow-burning light behind her eyes. “Maybe I realized if no one's comin’ to save me, I might as well become the storm they’re too busy to send.” She paused, her voice curling with thought. “Which made me wonder...”

Sabine frowned but said nothing. She turned back to the wardrobe and resumed folding linens, her silence stretching thin until Ayoka’s voice cut through, not hesitant but direct.“I’m going to seduce Viktor.”

The fabric slipped from Sabine’s fingers and fell to the floor. She turned slowly, her gaze sharp with caution. “You playin’ with fire, cher. I know you ain’t no virgin, but this? This ain’t just heat. I’ve seen people mistake desire for control and end up burned past recognition.”

But Ayoka was no novice in this dance. She'd played this game before—just never with stakes this high or a board this finely crafted. Her smile didn’t waver. Inside her, something clicked into place. The rules hadn’t changed. Only now, she wanted to be the one moving the pieces. Just one step forward. One tilt of the board. Just enough to see what happened when she stopped reacting and started playing.

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Ayoka let out a breath and shifted her weight, walking slowly toward the small vanity table. Her fingers grazed the edge of the polished wood as she stared at her reflection—not out of vanity, but calculation. She wasn’t a doll. She wasn’t a pawn. Not tonight.

Her voice came low, with a fire stitched beneath the calm. “I’m not offering him my soul. I know better than that.” She picked up a small comb, began teasing her curls into deliberate softness. “It’s just tea. In the right dress. That fiancée of his—she floats around like she owns every breath in this house, including the ones my child takes. I’m tired of pretending this place is anything but a cage dressed in velvet.”

She stepped back from the mirror, adjusting the curve of her shoulder with practiced ease. “Maybe I can’t buy my freedom outright. Maybe freedom is still a fairy tale with a gate too high for women like me to climb.”

She turned to Sabine then, the smirk returning—not with cruelty, but certainty. “But fate?” Her eyes narrowed like a blade sharpening. “Fate bends. Sometimes it just needs a steady hand... and the right kind of pressure.”

Sabine crossed her arms, tilting her head with a skeptical arch of her brow. “This for Viktor? Most folks I’ve seen go down this road did it outta love. Or what they thought was love. And it wasn’t just slaves, either. Some of 'em walked in free and still lost themselves.”

Ayoka let out a short, dry laugh. Sabine caught the faint shimmer of scale rippling under her skin, shadows clinging to her like smoke. “Please. I ain’t no Pinchico. I don’t mix love with lust, and I sure as hell don’t mix either with survival.”

She stepped forward, running her fingers over the edge of the windowpane, her voice steady, almost detached. “Ownership is still ownership—even if they let me sleep under silk instead of straw. Whether I’m out there breakin’ my back in the fields or curled up in some parlor entertaining a dozen men with sweet nothings, it’s still the same game.”

Ayoka paused, her gaze distant. “I’m just choosing when to move. When to play my hand. If I act like a jewel, they treat me like I’m rare—even if I’m still locked in a box.”

She looked back at Sabine and added with quiet resolve, “This is for my son. At least, that’s the reason I let myself believe. Because if I admit anything else… well, I wouldn’t be survivin’, would I?”

Sabine wanted to believe her. She truly did. But there was something in the way Ayoka smiled sometimes when Viktor passed by—something unspoken, half-hidden. Sabine felt it in her bones. And deep down, she wondered if this was the role Ayoka had chosen to wear like armor. Or if, maybe, it had started to become her skin.

Sabine blinked at the word. Ayoka paused, fingers stilling in her oiled hair, then resumed with a little more force than necessary. She leaned against the windowsill, her reflection catching in the glass, voice dipping into something both amused and resigned. “Please. I ain’t no Pinchico.”

She smirked, shaking her head slowly. “You know the kind—made from storydust and scripture. Born into fairytales and forced to speak nothin’ but truth. The problem is, truth ain’t always safe. And even Pinchicos... they ache to lie. They ache to live. Some say they’re tryin’ to be human—like they’re climbing up from clay with glass skin and splintered hearts.”

She gave Sabine a dry, crooked smile. “And whales. Don’t even ask why, but for some damn reason, people like that always afraid of whales.”

Sabine countered with a shake of her head, oilin’ Ayoka's own hair a lil’ too rough, like a big sister tryin’ to shake sense into a stubborn cher. “Cher, this ain’t no fairy tale. Folks love to yap like Cinderella just woke up with slippers fallin’ from the sky—but that girl clawed her way up from ash, one blister at a time. Got her shine the hard way, believe that.”

She leaned in, eyes sharp with warning. “Lemme tell ya, cher, folks always forget—when somebody become a story, when dey turn all glass an’ shimmer, dat ain’t no magic. Non, it’s survival. It’s pain wearin’ perfume.”

She clicked her tongue and pressed her palm flat against her knee, voice thick with Creole drawl. “Bodies turn t’ glass, fragile as crystal in a carriage. Dey go huntin’ feet, collectin’ ‘em like stolen shoes, searchin’ for dat one perfect pair to make ‘em whole again. But it always tied to some twisted true love nonsense—marriage or contract, don’t matter which. A gilded chain still binds, cher.”

Sabine eased her grip on Ayoka’s hair, smoothing it down with a gentler touch. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with wantin’ more. Just remember—glass can sparkle, but it shatters too.”

Sabine pulled back, smoothing Ayoka’s curls with a gentler touch. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with wantin’ better, long as you remember who you are without the slipper.”

She stood taller, adjusting the ribbon on her wrist. “I know the game. I’m just trying to control the board for once. Just a little. Just enough to matter.”

Sabine stood frozen, her shoulders slumping as the truth settled in. She’d seen this before—too many times. Bold girls, clever boys, desperate ones, all trying to bend the rules. Most ended up more broken than free. But Ayoka? She wasn’t naive. Her eyes were too clear, too sharp. With trembling fingers, Sabine handed her a white nightgown—thin, soft, cut low at the front. It hugged her breasts, exposed her collarbones, and flowed like silk down her thighs.

Ayoka painted her lips in a rich, defiant black, clipped lavender blue to her ears, and let her natural curls fall free down her back like a cascade of shadows. A crown, not a veil.