Page 3 of Prince of Masks (Hearts of Bluestone #2)

Of all the troubles I suffer at Bluestone, of all the escape attempts I’ve made, I have only been brought home during the term once before.

Years ago, Father pushed me to sign up for at least one extracurricular. I chose skiing. I’m practiced enough, even if I loathe it, every minute of it; but it isn’t an extracurricular that comes with more schoolwork, and so it is what I chose.

I lasted one day.

Mildred Green knocked me over on the slopes, swiped her snowboard right into my boots. She took my legs out from under me, and when I landed, and the ski strapped to my right boot slipped out from under me at an angle, and I got all tangled up—my ankle snapped.

Literally, snapped.

Still, all this time later, I can hear it. Both a thud and a crunch. A sound no one should hear.

The break was clean, as though my bones are made from nothing more than dehydrated twigs and packed with some muscle and fat for protection, but to just fall at the wrong angle, and crack!

The memory is forever burned into my mind.

Crumpled on my side, I was distantly aware of three things. The snap of bone, the thrum in my dazed head, and the whirring of skiers and snowboarders spearing past me.

I spat snow from my mouth, then twisted around to look down my body, all the way to the calf of my pants, where there was the most peculiar protrusion of white.

I blinked at it.

I swear, to this day, it was after I blinked that the crimson started to pour. And I realised the protrusion was bone.

I don’t remember the scream beyond some seconds. I do recall there was a gasp, sharp, like a knife cutting through me. Then came a harrowing, guttural sound from my slack mouth before I slumped to the snow.

I blacked out.

And when I awoke, I was on a bed in the infirmary, my broken ankle still spearing out of my flesh, pants cut free from my leg.

The blood was congealed down my black and blue complexion, like the flow had been paused, but the wound was not healed, the bone not set.

My leg was strung up by the cloths and ribbons that unravelled from the ceiling. And, at the foot of my bed, just through the gap in the flimsy curtains, witches were gathered. Father was one of them.

He came.

Came to the school the moment he heard about my injury, stormed through the veil, an unstoppable force. He insisted my bleeding be halted and that only the best—Witchdoctor Dolios—would be the one to treat me.

Still, I remember the hushed hisses of Witchdoctor Urma, of Headmaster Braun, of Master Novak (who I am sure is the one who plucked me off the slopes), and the impatient shout of my father that thundered through the infirmary.

His firm, final command, “My daughter will be treated at home—and another word about it, I will personally see to the ruin of this institution.”

That silenced everyone. All protests, vanished. Even Witchdoctor Urma gave up her cause, that she is just as capable as Dolios.

Stone-faced, Mr Younge swept through the curtains and scooped me up.

Father was on his heels and, once I was cradled in Mr Younge’s arms, he poured a tonic into my mouth. It was thick and inky, a sludge down my throat.

I blacked out again for the journey home.

Our family’s witchdoctor tended to my wound.

With the right magic, the right healer, my ankle was repaired enough to run on just three days later. Not only healed, but strong enough to take the jutting and fractured weight of a sprint through the halls of Elcott Abbey.

Can’t get that at Bluestone, no matter how highly Urma thinks of herself.

Father didn’t send me back to school, not right away. My recovery was monitored by Witchdoctor Dolios, who did my blood tests from home, monitored the risk of infection, visited me daily and worked on my physiotherapy.

I was content.

I was home, resting, reading in bed, practicing piano, joining my parents for dinner wherever they went, and Mother took me to the spa, then to Milan for a day of shopping, and Amelia Sinclair joined us, which was great because she bought me a Hermes backpack for my return to Bluestone.

I got to be the only child at home for a whole week.

I was doted on—and I loved it.

For a whole week, I tasted a life without Bluestone, without Oliver, without Dray.

I got that taste because Father blamed himself. Maybe only a little, but enough that his guilt had him charging into the academy to bring me home. To him, if he hadn’t pushed me into an extracurricular, I never would have broken my ankle.

But I know the truth.

My ankle never would have been broken if not for many things, like my deadblood, or that Mildred Green has a special hatred for me, or the way I looked Mildred’s snowgear up and down before hitting the slopes that morning, the small smirk I hid at the sight of her 80’s block-colour getup.

My snowgear was all black, black zipper and black lined pockets. In style.

Milderd’s were dated. I suspected they were hand-me-downs, which I thought odd since she’s high gentry enough that one might expect she can afford new snowgear.

Still, I let my judgement show in a small smirk.

I paid the price with a snapped bone.

Excruciating .

This time, coming home early to heal, the pain is of a different kind. This time, the pain is a withered mind, a brain melted and sloshing around my skull.

The last of my strength abandoned me in that dungeon storeroom.

It must do something to the body, to the mind, all this constant suffering. Can’t be good for me, it must be eating at me from the inside out.

So many years of this torment, of the vulgar and violent hatred aimed at me, from when I was thirteen all the way to now, at twenty-two. One year shy of a decade, I have suffered, endured, survived .

I had just one year left, and I didn’t even make it to the end of the semester.