What if the spy sent to destroy the rebellion fell in love with its leader?
The Mask and The Flame is an adult queer sci-fantasy epic about a royal spy, a rebel warrior, a dying sentient moon, and a love powerful enough to challenge an empire.
Cael was trained as a royal spy, and gifted with psionic power. He has spent his life becoming whatever the empire required of him. His latest assignment should be simple: infiltrate the rebellion hiding on the shattered Crater Moon, earn the trust of its mysterious leader Ashfall, and deliver him to the throne.
But Ashfall is not the monster Cael was taught to fear.
He is flame and command, gentleness and fury, a warrior beloved by rebels, bonded to an ancient cosmic creature, and far too skilled at seeing beneath Cael’s masks. The deeper Cael sinks into the rebellion, the harder it becomes to remember which parts of him are performance, and which parts are truths finally beginning to wake.
As Cael begins to uncover the truth about the Crater Moon, the Nhyrkahl, and the parasite behind the throne, his loyalties start to fracture.
This is a story about what happens when the parts of yourself you were taught to hide become the very things powerful enough to save you.
Welcome to the beginning.
For the ones who were told they were too much,
too soft, too hungry, too strange, too full of fire.
May you find the hand that reaches back.
The Mask and The Flame
Josiah B Vale
ACT I
Ashes of Earth 32 by Galyn Aras
Long After Earth 32 died
We sucked like parasites on the thigh
We drained all the life we could find
Left mostly ashes and shadows behind
Some worlds broke some worlds burned
A few stood tall a few returned
But none could rise none could stand
Like the Sovereign Span the Sovereign Span
Astraedane jewel of Vaerenthis in the sky
Rose-gold mist where the psi-storms fly
She is the eye she wears the ring
Watch your back She will destroy everything
BANNED
Galyn Aras hereby sentenced to absorption into the Throne of Memories
CHAPTER ONE
Cael folded up the parchment etched in Galyn’s own psiscript as the navy-blue marble walls of his room glowed faintly from the psilight orbs floating around his bed. He tucked the poem back in its hiding place under his mattress, and after throwing himself onto it, pushed a button on his nightstand console that started a projection of stars onto the smooth white ceiling.
It was meant to relax him. Instead, it brought to mind once again just how small he was in this vast universe. How utterly replaceable.
Though luxuriously draped in silky sheets and warm blankets that should be a comfort, the mattress felt more like stone.
A weight settled on his chest — psionic mask flicking into place on instinct.
Though no one was around to witness, he was supposed to always cover his face unless necessary. It was law on the planet Astraedane.
A stained glass window was his only peek at the outside world while in his room, and he could barely see anything through it besides fractured light.
He liked the art, at least.
It depicted a scene from The Tales of the Starborn Oath, an old myth his childhood caregivers used to whisper to him before sleep. The centerpiece was undoubtedly the mythical creature called a Nhyrkhal: bird-winged and serpent-bodied, vast and glimmering through the stars. It coiled protectively around a silver moon that wept metallic tears into space. Upon its back rode a lone, cloaked and masked figure — one hand reaching out as if trying to grasp something just out of reach.
Etched into the wooden window frame, glowing softly azure in ancient Moondark script, was the myths final verse:
Wings may take you past the place of your making
But not the laws that made you fly
No flight escapes the thread it is breaking
No bird forgets the sky
Once, Cale had thought the poem was about freedom. Now … it read more like a warning.
A snap — subtle but impossible to ignore — entered his mind. A pop-up followed on the inner interface of his mask. Shadows in the room thickened for one single breath.
Her Sovereigness, the Queen, requests your presence in the Throne Room immediately. The message read.
Sighing, Cael swung his legs over the bed’s edge.
Right, he thought, brushing a hand through his golden hair, time to put on a show.
✦✧✦
Usually only referred to simply as Her, the Queen of this country, planet and even galaxy, bore the title of Sovereign Prime. No one knew her real name. No one dared to ask.
Not even her son.
Descending into the throne room from chambers high above, her crystal-white robes flowed and folded, fracturing light across the room’s walls in rainbow prisms. Her face was hidden behind her psionic mask: a veil not of fabric, but of thought.
As she draped herself across the Throne of Memories, her robes spread like oil on broken glass. The throne glowed emerald green from within from luminous orbs dancing beneath its clear surface: the last remnants of minds she has bound in stasis, doomed to remain trapped in suspended awareness for eternity.
A handful of guards and attendants flanked the throne. Most of them possessed psionic gifts — psychic powers were a staple of Astraedane — telekinesis, telepathy, and even, rarely, precognition. But none approached Her’s. She was power made flesh, terrifying and wondrous.
Her greatest weapon was not her mind, but her years. She has ruled for five-hundred and eighty-nine, to be exact, and lived for even longer still.
Cael took his place in the center of the room, midnight blue robes with golden threading that caught the light wrapping his figure, and took a deep bow.
Of course, he also donned a psionic mask, and his golden blonde hair spilled from behind it in waves. His mother would, most certainly, not approve. She much preferred his hair meticulously brushed and straightened with heating instruments.
Of the six children born to the Sovereign Prime, Cael was the only one to survive past the age of five. She had never let him see his other siblings before she discarded them, but somehow … part of him still missed them. He knew better than anyone the cost of testing her limits.
Yet … he managed to do so. He had long stopped worrying about whether he would survive his mothers wrath every waking moment … and instead began to crave that possible end to the loneliness she’d destined for him.
His siblings weren’t the only family kept hidden from him. If he had a father, it was never known to him. Never spoken about. Sometimes, though, when Cael was younger, he would look up at the stars and imagine his father was out there somewhere, thinking about him.
Sometimes he would dare his mother to follow through on one of her countless devastating threats, but for some reason … she seemed to want to keep him around.
For now.
“There is a name echoing through Vaerenthis, that has made its way to Astraedane,” She spoke at last, “that threatens the fabric of our very existence —”
He knew the rebel she spoke of. Had heard that echo.
“Ashfall” She gripped her armrests, the only sign of emotion she would convey.
“We’ve known of his band of rebels for some time, but now we have locked onto the long lost … moon, that they have made their base. The forgotten Crater Moon.”
The Crater Moon was whispered to be the home of the Nhyrkhal … he had read of the moon she meant. A place only forgotten because his mother had ordered it so.
Back in his university days, he often slipped into underground libraries. Archives now sealed. There were records, older than him, that spoke on how the Sovereign Fleet psibombed the moon nearly to ruin. The crater it left devoured almost half its mass.
“She slipped my grasp once,” her voice tightened on the words, “It will not happen again.”
The moon, if you could really call it that, slipped its orbit and vanished into deep space — as if it had chosen to flee. Even the Sovereign Span’s finest minds couldn’t track it, or explain how it occurred.
“You will go to the Crater Moon,” she said, pointing a finger at Cael. “Find Ashfall. Win him and the rebel’s trust … and tell me everything.”
The weight of it froze him.
“Uncover whatever information you can before a stealthy extraction.”
“Alone?” His voice cracked.
“I did not raise you to be controlled by fear, boy.”
As his chest felt like it was collapsing … a voice cut through the panic.
“If we have located the rebel base, why aren’t we preparing to attack? Why send your son, when we can just blow it to smithereens?”
Elias had stepped forward.
One of her guards. Draped in a silver cloak with a hood drawn low over his psionic mask. The same as all her guards. Individuality was forbidden. But Cael could tell who it was by the shape of those full thighs bound in skin-tight armorweb. He knew that body well.
The Sovereign Prime raised a hand.
Elias convulsed. Joints bent against their will. His throat spurt stifled grunts as her thought alone pressed him to the floor.
Cael buried the memories that threatened to surface within a deep black abyss — one already full of the million other things he couldn’t afford to feel.
“You will not interrupt me again.” She commanded. Before at last releasing him.
Elias collapsed forward against the marble floor with a heavy thud.
When he rose, he regained what dignity he could, and returned to formation without another word.
“Small minds cannot fathom the art of timing,” She continued, “I cannot risk the Moon being able to flee my grasp again.”
She stepped off her throne, and already began to levitate away.
Knowing better than to question her further, Cael simply said, “Yes, Mother.”
“Not mother. Sovereign,” she declared. “This is an official order.”
Soaring upwards with effortless telekinesis, his mother added one last command: “Meet Dazari in the Sanctum of Silks, as you will need a disguise. Immediate preparations.”
As Cael exited the throne room, the air seemed to exhale his doubts back into him. She had told him almost nothing, then sent him on a mission he was far from prepared for …
Sure, he’d endured training since childhood: drills that tested psionic power, delicate hybrid combat styles from a hundred forgotten cultures that tested his body, meditation, and tactics until dawn. On paper, he was everything she’d demanded, but in practice, she had never let him prove it. His leash was always short, and pulled taught whenever he strained.
This could be a sign of trust … but he didn’t think so.
What it was, he could not yet name.
✦✧✦
Beyond the last arch of the royal wing, the architecture softened. The Sanctum of Silks was everything the rest of the palace was not: lout, chaotic and flamboyantly alive. Cascading fabrics shimmered. Mirrors angled across the chamber cast reflections upon reflections creating a hall of selves.
Suddenly, too-bright psilight orbs swarmed.
“Valen Tareth,” Dazari said, appearing out of nowhere as if the fabric had conjured him. Tall, round, and radiant. “You’re here for fashion,” he said, circling him now. “The kind that disguises itself as armor.”
He swept toward a table of fabrics, accessories, and instruments that hummed faintly with stored telepathic energy. “As a spy entering the rebellion, you must blend. But not vanish.”
“Don’t most rebels wander around in tattered garb, starving and miserable?” Cael questioned.
“You’ll find that’s mostly propaganda.”
“Propaganda?”
“She really doesn’t tell you anything, does she?”
The casual honesty hit harder than it should have. He knew the Queen kept many secrets, and spun many lies, but hearing it named so plainly was still a shock.
His tone shifted more serious. “First, we need to see the canvas … Are you ready?” he asked gently.
Cael nodded. A lie.
With a thought, his mask dissolved into air.
His face bare.
“You truly do look like her,” Dazari hummed, just above a whisper.
Cael’s stomach twisted. “You’ve seen her?” The words were quieter than he intended.
“Once. A very long time ago.” Dazari’s voice was distant. He brushed Cael’s cheek with a fingertip. Then, with a sudden flourish, snapped back into motion to his table of wonder, silks alive in his hands.
Cael turned slowly toward one of the mirrors that lined the chamber. As he stared, waiting for clarity, or truth, or anything at all … nothing came.
Dazari snapped his fingers. “Off with your robes.”
Cael let dread curl into humor. “You always open with foreplay, or am I just lucky?”
“Please. If this were foreplay, the lights would be lower. And you’d be sweating already.”
A laugh escaped him, shaky, but real.
He stripped, layer by layer, until nothing remained. The air struck his bare skin cool and electric, ghosting down his chest, across his thighs. It had been years since he had felt this nude. It was almost … freeing.
“Oh my.” Dazari’s voice snapped him out of introspection. “No wonder they keep you covered up in court. If the nobles saw all that royal endowment parading around, you’d cause uprisings in the viewing balconies.”
Heat flushed Cael’s cheeks. Without his mask, he feared it could be seen.
“Forgive me. I am usually very professional,” Dazari replied with a wink.
He snapped again. A lattice of glowthreads descended from the ceiling, casting ribbons of light across Cael’s skin.
“It reads you,” Dazari said, pacing. “Not just your measurements, darling, but your energy. Your aura.”
The lattice hummed high. Light unspooled into fabric, weaving directly across his bare skin in violets, blues, silvers and blacks. A long coat that sparkled like falling starlight materialized. Beneath it, armorweb took shape, dark and pliant, molding to his frame, and its edges glimmered with that colorful shimmer. For the finale, boots took form, coming up to his knees. They looked elegant yet unyielding.
After catching himself in a mirror, Cael’s eyes widened. “The rebels dress like … this?”
Dazari scoffed. “No. You will look better. Obviously.”
A smile tugged at Cael’s mouth. It felt right, like he was wrapped in myth.
Circling him slowly, Dazari savored the view one last time.
“Go be reckless. Be charming. Be dangerous. And if you’re caught … do not mention my name.” He tilted his head. “Or do. Depends on the audience.”
Cael hesitated. The words he wanted to say were deep, but came out simple. “Thank you.”
Dazari nodded, his psionic mask of shimmering violet bobbing, “come back in one piece, Valen Tareth.”
The name clug as he left the Sanctum.
Valen Tareth …
✦✧✦
The walk to the palace edge was meant to be routine, a quiet exit, but air on his bare face felt like vertigo. Like climbing too high and realizing there was no way down.
People glanced — then slid their eyes away in the practiced manner of those who could not afford curiosity. For once, Cael did not hold his head high. He walked like someone forgettable. Maskless and strangely dressed, he would be mistaken for a foreign noble, tolerated but unimportant.
He neared a lounge to his left, where lesser nobles and advisors sprawled on opulent cushions with ease. His mother allowed places like this — to drink and partake in new experimental drugs — because happily lethargic subjects were easier to control.
Laughter and something narcotic drifted into the air.
Someone looked up. Cael knew, before he saw.
Elias … fuck.
The one person who knew his face. The one person he didn’t want to run into unmasked was right in front of him.
Even seated, Elias carried himself like a soldier between orders: back straight, shoulders square, weight evenly placed. His hooded head turned toward Cael’s gaze.
“Going somewhere, stranger?” Elias asked.
Cael kept his tone cool. “You know me?”
A tilt of the head. “Do I?”
A pause between them filled with everything left unsaid.
“You always looked better unmasked,” Elias said at last.
“You always lied through your teeth,” Cael responded. The steadiness of his voice surprised even him.
Elias rose and walked over without haste, rightfully concerned at others overhearing. The scent of alcohol clung, strong enough to know he was intoxicated.
“I still want you,” he murmured. “And I think you still want me too. Even now.”
Cael knew there were two possibilities here. Either he’s saying this for Her, and this is bait, or he’s saying this for himself … and maybe that was even worse.
The wound reopened. The memories resurfaced. The forbidden gardens. The first time he had lowered his mask. The curve of Elias’s hips. The taste. The sighs when they stopped fighting and surrendered.
For a moment Cael almost gave in. Almost let memory blur into present and become an excuse …
But then he felt the betrayal all over again. The truth of what Elias had been: his mother’s spy. The lies, the denials, the begging once caught. The promises that it had been real. Had been love.
Too late.
Cael stepped back as if the air had burned him.
He let Valen Tareth pour over him and settle like metal cooled.
“I have a mission,” he said. “One I won’t fail.”
He turned and walked.
Fast.
He did not look back. Did not slow down. Every step tore him from chains that wanted to drag him backwards. Elias’s scent clung. And that damn voice. That temptation. He had come too close to surrender. Too close to being taken back into something familiar and ruinous.
The corridors blurred until at last the marble gave way to the docks.
His skimmer waited at the edge like a living thing, sleek and black as eclipse, streaked with pale silver that pulsed across its hull.
Cael paused at the threshold.
His face uncovered. His name rewritten. His past … complicated.
Carrying only the plans of a mother he did not trust, he stepped inside, and the hatch sealed behind him with a whisper.
Then, the skimmer launched into the stars …
Catch CHAPTER TWO the same time tomorrow!
josiahbvale.com
Great first chapter! Looking forward to reading more, I'm intrigued
Great start!👍