The Raven's Gilded Cage

Chapter 1

Alessia

The champagne flute feels flimsy in my hand, like I could crush it with a thought. Around me, the future leaders of the world laugh, their voices a high, bright sound that grates against my nerves. The great hall of Moretti University is a cathedral of legacy, all marble columns and vaulted ceilings painted with forgotten myths. It smells like old money and new perfume.

“Well, well. Look what we have here.”

The voice is slick with manufactured charm, the kind that costs a hundred thousand a year in tuition to perfect. I don’t look up from my sketchbook. I keep the charcoal pencil moving, tracing the line of a column’s capital. Observation. My father’s first lesson. Know your environment, from the exits to the egos.

“Talking to you,” he presses, his voice louder now, drawing the attention of his little circle. I can feel their eyes on me. I am a foreign object in their pristine world. A smudge on the glass.

I finally lift my head, blinking as if waking from a dream. I let a touch of confusion color my features. Feign weakness. Lesson three. “I’m sorry?”

He’s exactly what I expected. Blond hair artfully messy, a navy blazer with a crest I don’t recognize, and a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. His name is Julian Vance. I heard it whispered earlier, attached to the words “legacy” and “Aegis Society.” He’s a prince in this little kingdom. And he has found his peasant for the evening.

“I said, I was talking to you,” he repeats, gesturing with his own glass. “Or are scholarship students not taught basic manners?”

His friends titter. The sound is like mice skittering behind a wall.

“I must have been focused on my drawing,” I say, my voice soft. I hold up the sketchbook slightly. It’s a drawing of the column, perfectly rendered, but what he can’t see is that I’ve also noted its structural load points. I know exactly where to place a charge to bring the whole ceiling down.

Julian scoffs, taking a step closer. He peers at my sketchbook with exaggerated disdain. “Doodling. How quaint. Is that what you do? Sketch your way through a world you don’t belong in? You think a paintbrush gives you the right to be here? To breathe our air?”

*Breathe our air.* My grip tightens on the pencil in my hand. The tip threatens to snap. I know a dozen ways to stop a man from breathing. None of them involve a paintbrush. My father made sure of that. This freedom, this ‘normal life,’ was supposed to be my escape from that kind of thinking. But the old lessons are carved deep.

“It’s a scholarship for the arts,” I say, keeping my eyes wide and my voice even. “I was just trying to capture the architecture.”

“The architecture,” he repeats, drawing the word out as if it’s ridiculous. “This hall was built by my great grandfather. My family’s name is on half the buildings on this campus. What’s your family name? Let me guess. It’s not on a building, is it?”

My family name is Volkov. It’s not on any buildings. It’s on gravestones. It’s whispered in back rooms and screamed in warehouses. It’s a name paid for in blood and fear, a legacy far heavier than any cornerstone he can point to. This arrogant boy is playing with a loaded gun and he thinks it’s a toy.

I need to play the part. The quiet, unassuming Lia. The girl who is grateful just to be here. So I drop my gaze. I let my shoulders slump a little. “No. It’s not.”

“Of course it’s not,” Julian says, triumphant. He turns to his friends. “She’s probably never even heard of the Aegis Society. That’s for people whose names mean something. For people who matter. We don’t waste our time with charity cases.”

I know all about the Aegis Society. A secret club for the elite, the powerful, the connected. My research before coming here was thorough. To the rest of the campus, it’s a myth. To people like Julian, it’s a birthright. To me, it’s a potential threat. A variable I need to control.

“I’m sorry to have bothered you,” I murmur, closing my sketchbook. I make a move to slip away, to melt back into the crowd.

Julian puts a hand on my arm to stop me. His touch is light, but it feels like a brand. Every instinct in my body screams to break his wrist. Instead, I freeze, my eyes darting to his hand and then back to his face. I let him see fear. A flicker of it. It’s what he wants.

“Not so fast. I’m not done with you,” he says, his smile turning cruel.

“Julian.”

The name comes from behind me. The voice is different. Not loud, but it cuts through the chatter of the hall like a razor. It’s calm, smooth, and laced with an authority that Julian’s can only imitate.

Julian’s hand drops from my arm as if he’s been burned. He straightens up, his smug posture shifting into something more deferential. “Dante. I didn’t see you there.”

I turn slowly. And there he is. Dante Moretti. The true prince of this university. His family doesn’t just have their name on the buildings; they own the ground underneath them. Moretti. Our name, Volkov, is a curse on their lips, just as theirs is on ours. The Moretti family. Our rivals. The only people on this continent who could match my father’s organization in scope and brutality.

And here is the heir. He’s taller than Julian, with dark hair that falls perfectly over his brow and eyes so dark they seem to absorb the light. He wears a simple black suit, no crest, no pretense. He doesn’t need it. The power rolls off him in waves. It’s a language I understand better than English.

He ignores Julian completely. His gaze settles on me. It’s not a condescending sneer or a predatory leer. It’s… an assessment. He looks at me like I’m a puzzle he’s trying to solve. His eyes flick down to my sketchbook, then back to my face. For a terrifying second, I feel seen. Not as Lia, the art student, but as something more.

“Are you enjoying the welcome event?” Dante asks me, his voice a low murmur.

I clutch my sketchbook to my chest. “Yes. The hall is beautiful.”

“It is,” he agrees, his eyes still locked on mine. “My grandfather had those frescoes restored. He said art is the only legacy that lasts.” He says the word ‘legacy’ while looking right at me, a subtle challenge. A test.

Julian, desperate to get back into the conversation, forces a laugh. “We were just discussing legacies, Dante. And how some people… don’t have them.”

Dante’s gaze finally slides to Julian. He doesn’t frown, he doesn’t scowl, but the temperature around us seems to drop a few degrees. “Is that so, Julian? I find everyone has a legacy of some kind. Sometimes, the most interesting ones are those that aren’t carved in stone for everyone to see.”

My heart beats a little faster. He’s talking about me. He has to be.

He turns his attention back to me, and a faint smile touches his lips. It transforms his face, making him dangerously charming. “You have charcoal on your cheek.”

I instinctively raise a hand to my face. “Oh.”

“Here.” Before I can react, he steps closer. He’s so close I can smell the faint, clean scent of his cologne, something expensive and subtle. He raises his hand and gently brushes his thumb over my cheekbone. His touch is surprisingly soft, but an electric current shoots through me. It’s the proximity to danger, the nearness of a natural predator. He doesn’t just see me. He recognizes me. Not my face, but my nature.

He pulls his hand back, showing me the grey smudge on his thumb. “There.”

“Thank you,” I whisper. My voice is steadier than I feel. My training keeps my exterior calm while a war rages inside me. This was not part of the plan. The plan was to be invisible. The plan did not involve Dante Moretti, the crown prince of my family’s sworn enemy, looking at me like he knows my darkest secrets.

“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” he says, his smile lingering. “I’m Dante Moretti.”

“Lia,” I say, offering only the name I’ve chosen for this life. “Just Lia.”

“Just Lia,” he repeats, tasting the name. He holds my gaze for a long moment, his dark eyes searching mine. “I have a feeling there’s nothing ‘just’ about you.”

With a final, lingering look, he gives me a small nod and then turns, melting into the crowd as silently as he appeared. He leaves a vacuum in his wake. Julian and his friends are staring after him, momentarily forgotten.

Julian quickly recovers his swagger, but it’s a cheap imitation now. He glares at me, his brief humiliation curdling into resentment. “Don’t think that means anything,” he sneers. “He’s just being polite to the charity case. You’re still nothing.”

He stalks off, his cronies trailing behind him like pilot fish. I’m left alone in the swirling currents of the party.

My hand goes to my cheek where Dante touched it. The skin still tingles. I let out a slow, controlled breath. My father warned me this would be difficult. He said trying to pretend to be a sheep when you are a wolf is a dangerous game.

I thought the danger would be slipping up, revealing my training, letting my true nature show. I never imagined the danger would have a name. I never imagined the danger would be Dante Moretti. And I never imagined he would see the wolf in me on the very first day.

Chapter 2

Alessia

The room smells of old paper and furniture polish. It’s a library, or a convincing imitation of one, filled with leather bound books that have never been opened and maps of places that no longer exist. This is the stage for the Aegis Society’s first open challenge. An escape room.

Julian Vance stands before a grand fireplace, a smug conductor about to begin his symphony of condescension. He’s dressed down today, in a cashmere sweater that probably cost more than my first semester’s meal plan.

“The rules are simple,” he begins, his voice echoing slightly in the high ceilinged room. “Solve the puzzles. Open the final door. The first team to do so proves they have the intellect and composure worthy of consideration.”

His eyes scan the crowd of hopefuls, a mix of eager freshmen and ambitious sophomores. They hang on his every word. Then his gaze lands on me, and a small, cruel smile plays on his lips.

“Of course, this requires a certain level of thinking. It’s not for everyone.” He pauses, letting the insult hang in the air, aimed directly at me. “We can’t all be winners.”

I offer nothing in return. No fear, no anger. I just watch him, my face a carefully constructed mask of mild interest. Across the room, leaning against a towering bookshelf, is Dante Moretti. He isn’t part of Julian’s sycophantic circle. He stands alone, a silent observer in a perfectly tailored suit, watching the proceedings with an air of detached amusement. Our eyes meet for a fraction of a second. There is no warmth in his gaze, only that same unnerving assessment from the party. He sees me. The question is, what does he think he sees?

The large clock on the mantel chimes, and the game begins. The room erupts into a flurry of motion. Students tear books from shelves, spin a large globe in the corner, and shout theories at each other. It’s chaos.

I remain still. This isn’t a puzzle. It’s an evaluation. My father taught me to read a room before acting. Who is the natural leader? Who panics under pressure? Who is the weak link? In a matter of seconds, I have everyone categorized.

“Having trouble keeping up, scholarship?” Julian’s voice slithers into my ear. He has materialized beside me, his presence an unwelcome weight.

I turn to him, feigning a slightly overwhelmed look. “It’s very clever. I’m just trying to take it all in.”

“Take your time,” he sneers. “The rest of us will be finished by the time you figure out the first clue.”

He walks away, satisfied he has put me in my place. The fool. He thinks the game is about speed. It’s about precision. I finally move, my path deliberate. I drift through the chaos, an unseen current. My eyes catch everything. The faint scratches on the floor by a bookshelf, indicating a hidden mechanism. The way the books are organized not by author, but by publication date, a clear numerical code. The subtle discoloration on a single key of the dusty harpsichord in the corner.

It’s all so simple. Obvious, even. It’s a puzzle built for children playing at being spies. I could solve it all in ten minutes, but that would destroy the one thing I came here to build. My cover.

So I watch. I listen. I let them struggle.

From his vantage point, Dante is not looking at the puzzles. His gaze is fixed on me. He watches my slow, methodical path around the room. He sees me pause by the globe. He sees me glance at the fireplace. He doesn’t see me solve anything, but I can feel the intensity of his focus. He’s not watching a player. He’s studying a predator that is pretending to be prey.

“Has anyone checked the portrait?” Julian barks at a flustered team. “My ancestor was a brilliant strategist. Maybe he left you something.”

His voice grates on me. He’s a peacock, all flash and noise, with no substance.

The final puzzle has them all stumped. A large, ornate chest sits in the center of the room, secured by a lock with five rotating dials. They need a five letter word. They’ve tried everything. ‘Aegis’. ‘Power’. ‘Julian’. That last one made me almost smile.

I already know the answer. I saw it twenty minutes ago. It’s not in a book or on a map. It’s in the room itself. In the architecture of the game. A weakness.

There’s a tall, ornate mirror hanging on the far wall. From most angles, it just reflects the chaos of the room. But from one specific spot, a small, quiet corner near the window, it provides a perfect, unobstructed view of Julian, who stands near the main door. And every few minutes, when he thinks no one is looking, he pulls out his phone. The passcode he taps in is a pattern. Five points. Five letters. M O N E Y. How predictable.

I need to pass the victory to someone else. My eyes land on a quiet boy near the fireplace. He’s been methodical, but he’s too timid to shout over the others. He’s the one. I begin to drift towards him, planning my move.

“Don’t even think about it.”

Julian’s voice is a low hiss. He’s in my path again. “You’re not solving this. I won’t let some charity case show everyone up. You’ll just stand here and watch.”

His attempt to control me is pathetic. It changes nothing. I simply alter my plan. I turn my back to him and face the wall of books, pretending to search for a clue. I see the boy I chose in the reflection of a framed picture.

I speak to the bookshelf, my voice just loud enough to carry. “It’s always about what they value most, isn’t it? The thing they can’t live without.”

I don’t wait for a reaction. I move away, melting back towards the edges of the room. I see the boy’s head snap up. I see his eyes flick towards Julian, who is once again impatiently checking his phone. A spark of understanding lights up his face. He watches Julian’s thumb move.

Then, the boy walks to the chest. He doesn’t shout. He calmly turns the dials. M. O. N. E. Y.

A loud click echoes through the now silent room. The chest opens.

For a moment, there is stunned silence. Then, an eruption of cheers. The boy is swarmed, his back slapped, his name chanted. He looks shocked, a deer in the headlights of his own sudden victory.

Julian’s face is a mask of fury. His plan to humiliate me has backfired spectacularly. I did nothing, and he is still impotent. His glare finds me in the crowd, and it is filled with pure hatred.

I don’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction. I turn and head for the exit, my work here done. The noise and celebration fade behind me as I step into the quiet hallway. I just need to get back to my room, back to the safety of my sketchbook and charcoals.

“An impressive performance.”

The voice stops me cold. Dante Moretti steps out of the shadows of the hall, blocking my path. He wasn’t in the room at the end. He must have left just before the puzzle was solved.

“I didn’t do anything,” I say, my voice steady. “A boy named Michael solved it.”

“That’s not the performance I was talking about,” Dante says, his dark eyes searching my face. He takes a step closer, and the hallway suddenly feels very small. “You played the part of the meek, overwhelmed scholarship student perfectly. You let Julian think he had you cornered. You even let him believe he was winning.”

My heart beats a steady, dangerous rhythm against my ribs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you?” A ghost of a smile touches his lips, but it holds no humor. It’s the smile of a hunter who has cornered something interesting. “I was watching you, Lia. You weren’t trying to solve the puzzle. You were mapping the room. You were assessing the players. And when you had the answer, you didn’t take the credit. You gave it away. Like a king moving a pawn.”

He is too close. I can feel the warmth radiating from his body. I can see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes. I am a wolf, and for the first time in years, I feel like I am in the presence of another one.

“The question is why,” he continues, his voice dropping to a low, intimate murmur. “Why go to all that trouble to hide how brilliant you are?” He leans in, his next words brushing against my ear.

“What are you so afraid they’ll see?”

He holds my gaze for one more impossibly long moment, then steps back, clearing my path. He gives a small nod, a gesture of dismissal, and walks away down the hall, leaving me alone with the echo of his words.

I stand frozen, my carefully constructed walls trembling. I thought Julian was the danger. A loud, stupid dog that barks a lot. But I was wrong. The real danger is Dante Moretti. Because he doesn’t just see the girl on a scholarship. He sees the game. And I think he wants to play.

Chapter 3

Dante.

The glass of whiskey is cool against my palm. The ice chinks softly, the only sound in my penthouse apartment that overlooks the sprawling campus of Moretti University. Down there, they are students. They worry about exams, about parties, about legacies carved into stone. Up here, I worry about empires.

My purpose here is not academic. Moretti University is a breeding ground, and the Aegis Society is its most promising specimen. A network of future leaders, judges, and titans of industry, all bound by shared secrets and a sense of entitlement. My father sees an asset to be absorbed. A tool for the Moretti family. My job is to assess its strength, find its weaknesses, and determine the cost of acquisition.

It was supposed to be a simple, sterile evaluation.

Then she happened.

Lia. Just Lia.

I close my eyes, and the escape room materializes behind my lids. Not the chaos, the shouting, the fumbling of children playing a game. I see her. A phantom drifting through the noise. Her movements were economical, precise. She never touched a puzzle, yet she solved every single one.

I saw her eyes track the pattern of wear on the floorboards. I saw her register the publication dates on the spines of the books. I saw her notice the single discolored harpsichord key from across the room.

She absorbed the entire schematic in minutes. A feat of observation my father’s own intelligence officers would respect.

And then she did nothing.

She played the part of a frightened mouse, cornered by a housecat like Julian Vance. She let him sneer. She let him posture. She gave him the illusion of power, all while holding the key to the entire room in her mind.

That wasn’t caution. It was control. The kind of control that takes years of brutal training to perfect.

I saw the moment she found the final answer. It wasn’t a flash of insight. It was a simple confirmation of a theory. Julian’s ego was the lock. His phone was the key. She saw it, processed it, and then, with the subtle grace of a master puppeteer, she gifted the victory to an insignificant pledge.

She didn’t want the win. She wanted to remain invisible.

My phone buzzes on the polished surface of the bar. I glance at the screen. Marco. Perfect timing.

I answer, putting it on speaker.

“You’re supposed to be enjoying university life, cousin,” his voice comes through, laced with its usual dry humor.

“The social experiment continues,” I say, swirling the amber liquid in my glass. “I have a new file for you.”

“Another one? The Aegis profiles are already thick enough to stop a bullet.”

“This isn’t about Aegis. Not directly. This is a person of interest.”

A pause. Marco knows my work. I don’t deal in persons of interest. I deal in assets and threats.

“Name?” he asks, his tone shifting, all business now.

“Lia. She doesn’t use a last name. Scholarship student. Fine arts program.”

I can almost hear him frown through the phone. “An art student. Dante, is this personal?”

“Strictly professional,” I lie, and the word tastes like ash. “She was at the Aegis recruitment challenge today. She solved a room designed to stump legacy kids in under an hour without leaving a single fingerprint.”

Silence from his end. He’s processing. He understands the implication.

“She made no overt moves,” I continue. “She observed, she analyzed, and she manipulated another student into taking the credit. It was a flawless piece of misdirection.”

“So she’s intelligent,” Marco says, though he knows it’s more than that.

“She’s disciplined,” I correct him. “There is a difference. Julian Vance tried to provoke her. He backed her into a corner and insulted her. For a moment, I saw something in her eyes.”

I remember it clearly. The meekness fell away for a split second. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t anger. It was assessment. The cold, clear look of a predator calculating the distance to its prey’s throat.

“What did you see?” Marco presses.

“Fire,” I say, the word feeling inadequate. “She looked at him like he was a nuisance she could erase. Then the mask was back in place.”

“Who does she work for?” he asks. It’s the same question echoing in my own mind.

“That’s what you’re going to find out. The official records are useless. Her scholarship is from some anonymous international arts fund. It’s a ghost. I want to know who is behind the curtain. I want to know who trained her.”

“You think she’s an operative? From another family?”

“I think no art student moves the way she does. She’s a professional. But there’s no signature. No affiliation I recognize. She’s either the best I’ve ever seen, or something entirely new.”

“I’ll start with the fund. Trace the money. It always leads somewhere.”

“Be discreet, Marco. She’s clearly operating under deep cover. If she senses we’re looking, she’ll vanish.”

“Of course. Anything else?”

I hesitate. “Yes. Keep this file between us. My father doesn’t need to know. Not yet. He sees the Aegis acquisition as a simple corporate takeover. I won’t introduce a new, unknown variable until I understand what it is.”

“An unknown variable,” Marco repeats slowly. “You sound intrigued, Dante.”

“I’m cautious,” I counter. “Someone has placed a queen on a board full of pawns. I want to know who the player is before they make their next move.”

“I’ll have something for you in forty eight hours.”

“Good.”

I end the call and the silence of the apartment returns, heavier than before. I walk to the floor to ceiling windows, looking down at the lights of the campus. A board full of pawns. And one queen, hiding in plain sight, pretending to be the most fragile piece in the game.

She is a distraction. A dangerous one. My focus should be on Julian, on the society’s alumni, on the structure of their network. But all the strategic lines I draw in my head are disrupted by the image of her. Her quiet defiance. The charcoal smudge on her cheek. The unnerving intelligence in her eyes.

She is not an asset. She is not yet a threat. She is a question. And I have never been able to leave a question unanswered.

I take a sip of the whiskey. It burns on the way down, a welcome fire. Who are you, Lia? What game are you really playing here at Moretti?

Because I was wrong. She isn’t playing the same game as everyone else.

She’s playing a different one altogether. And I’m starting to think I’m her only opponent.