Page 4 of Prince of Masks (Hearts of Bluestone #2)

I wake to a knock on the door. It’s dainty, so faint that it doesn’t even rattle the wood.

Father’s knock would come firm on the frame. It would shudder, and he always calls out my name with it.

The imps don’t bother announcing themselves, they just barge in, if they use the door at all. Mostly, they scuttle about the manor through the vents.

Oliver’s knock is a quick rap of the knuckles by his waist, lazy and disinterested. And he’s still at the academy, so it’s double certain that it’s not him at the door.

The knock is easy to identify.

Mother , my mind mutters as I drag the pillow off my head and croak, “Come in.”

She does.

I aim my puffy face at her, the weight of my lashes bordering my cloudy vision.

Still, I make out the navy silk blouse gliding over her body, cinched around her midsection with an eggshell belt that practically melts into the breeches of the same hue.

With a glance down at the rug she walks on, I notice her new loafers, cream, and clasped with a gold buckle.

She’s going out.

If the Chanel dripping off of her isn’t the giveaway, then it’s the one constant truth about Mother: at home, she wears slippers.

I blink on the lofty smile she spares on me, and my lashes catch on caked sleep residue.

Mother perches on the edge of my bed.

I just now notice the envelopes in her hand as she sets them down on the quilt. “These arrived this morning from Bluestone.”

I glance at the clock above the dresser. It’s almost noon. I’ve been gone from Bluestone for over twenty-four hours now.

A grunt catches in my chest as I flail my hand around for the nightstand. My fingertips graze the cool kiss of glass. The phial.

I snatch it and, pushing up onto one elbow, uncork it with my thumb and throw back the tonic.

The face I make is instant.

It’s thick, thick like mucus pouring down my throat to my chest.

I shudder and toss aside the phial. It clatters on the bedside table.

Mother watches it rattle for a moment before she touches her fingertips to the envelopes, then slides them along the bed, closer to me.

I look down my body at them. The milkiness of sleep-eye-goo distorts my vision.

Still, I make out the cheap, thin paper of the envelopes and the ink staining them both.

One will be from Courtney. I don’t doubt it.

Once she found out I am gone from the school, maybe returning to the dorm and seeing that my things are gone, or walking in on the imps packing my belongings, she will have taken pen to paper to write the expected letter.

One without heart, but the letter that friendship requires.

The fleeting wonder passes my sleepy mind, the thought that Courtney probably fought the urge to write a reprimand, write the words, ‘ You brought this on yourself. Did you think you could just attack him and get away with it? Now me and James are open targets in your absence .’

I’ll bet she wrote something along those lines, then scrunched it up and tossed it before she started on the letter she actually sent.

I flick my milky stare to the other envelope.

That one has more mystery to it.

I can’t even guess who that’s from, not through the sleepy fog clouding my mind. Maybe James…

Mother says, “Both arrived early this morning.’

It is now a few minutes shy of noon. “How early?” I echo, a grumble. “Why didn’t they just come straight to me when they got here?”

Mother presses her hand into the mattress, then leans her weight to the side. Her onyx eyes run me over. The tilt of her head has a piece of inky hair falling into her olive-hued face that, delicately, she brushes out of the way.

Mother says gently, “When they arrived .”

I hardly register her correction.

I flop back down on the feathery pillows.

My mind snags on one thing.

There’s a cold cup of coffee on my nightstand, a folded copy of the day’s Videralli newsletter, which I don’t need to read to know is mostly made up of announcements (births, weddings, deaths, that sort of thing) and market updates (stocks, gold, rates, all the boring stuff I couldn’t care less about).

I don’t read it and, like all other ones in the world, the ink will start to fade.

Twenty-four hours from its creation, the newsletter will be just a few sheets of blank paper.

But those two things mean that Abigail delivered them to my room this morning. She delivered the newsletter that arrives at Elcott Abbey the same time as the mail, and a coffee.

I slept through the visit—but the doubt stands.

Why didn’t she bring the envelopes, too?

The sluggish churn of my mind doesn’t stop the realisation from landing: My mail has been intercepted.

With a frown at Mother and her patient, watchful gaze, the way she dodged my question that she still makes no attempt to answer, I finger the envelopes closer to myself.

I have never before wondered if Mr Younge takes my letters to my parents before they are delivered to my room. That maybe my parents vet the mail first.

Is this something that happens? My mail trifled with. Or is it just now that it’s begun?

All my life, I’ve faced a different set of rules than my twin. Why would it be any different now?

It’s a violating suspicion.

Courtney is the only one who writes to me when we aren’t at Bluestone, James might send one letter a year, but it’s often short, less than a page, a sketch included, and as dull as our conversations in person.

Even though it’s only Courtney, and she scribbles about nothing important at all, there’s a sense of discomfort swaying my gut at the thought of my letters being read by my parents before they even reach me.

As if they need another way to invade on the miniscule privacy I’m afforded.

They would never read Oliver’s mail.

But then, Oliver has a cell phone—and I don’t.

I huff a sigh so harsh that it puffs my cheeks.

My mood is fresh from deep, weighted sleep, and it is too quick to sour.

Unfazed, Mother tells me, “Headmaster Braun spoke with your father this morning.”

She turns her cheek to me, so lovely and smooth that I’m sure she’s made of olive-oil, then she reaches over my buried feet to pick at the quilt. Her fingernails pinch a long strand of my hair. The arched brow look she aims at it is elegant and fleeting before she lets it fall to the rug.

“You won’t return to the academy this semester,” she goes on, but she turns a warning look on me. “You will still be expected to complete your assignments.”

I nod, silent.

“A tutor might help?” she suggests, her voice arching with her dark brow.

Again, I nod.

Mother’s small smile remains, like it’s painted on, and it turns somewhat guilty. “I will arrange for one. However,” she adds, and a familiar glint sharpens her eyes into black quill-tips, “if you are in need of some fresh air, you are most welcome to join me today.”

I rub the heels of my palms on my eyes.

Mother clicks her manicured nails. “That is one way to get wrinkles.”

I drop my hands to the pillow, then speak through a stifled yawn. “Join you where?”

“Brunch with Amelia.” The pearl clasp that pins her hair to the back of her head glitters in the sparse light creeping through the gaps in the curtains. “At Croche.”

I still. “Croche?”

I love that place.

A small, boutique bakery in Dijon, France, whose tiny square cakes melt on the tongue, with the smoothest vanilla cream whipped to perfection, and the slightest hint of strawberry, none of this too-tart glazed rubbish often found in cities.

No, these cakes are the ones to taste, then understand completely how others develop such adoration and passion for cakes that they dedicate their lives to creating them.

“I’ll come,” I manage through a stifled yawn.

“Delightful,” she says it as plainly as she would mention the rain. “I mean to check on the progress of your gown for the ball,” she adds, and my heart sinks.

Already, she’s drawing up an itinerary.

I just want cake.

“After that,” she sighs and that devious smile widens just a touch more, and so I know she has arrived at the hook, the offer that will get me out of bed after the mention of the dress fitting threatens to keep me planted under the quilts, “I shall stop in to visit my mother.”

A smile wisps over my face.

Grandmother Dorotea.

Or, as Oliver and I call her, Nonna.

Beautiful, delightful Nonna.

I prop up on my elbows.

Not Grandmother Ethel, my father’s mother, a wicked witch, a grandmother who has no nickname because she hasn’t earned one and also she would cane me if I ever tried to refer to her in any other way than what she considers appropriate.

But mother’s mother, my favourite, is Nonna.

Ethel is a decrepit, gnarled thing, all spidery and wispy and mean with a cane. One hundred and sixty years of life and she’s still holding on, as firmly as she did when she used to grab my hair too tight and yank it whenever I backtalked as a child.

I waited for her to die. I wished for it.

Every time we meant to visit, I hoped we would find her dead in her favourite chair on the porch, or at the bottom of the stairs, all folded up like a pretzel. And then I could cry, milk the grief, and get all the attention from my parents.

But it never happened. Still hasn’t.

Truly, I don’t know how that creature is still holding on.

More than one hundred years is a fair life, even for witches.

The magic in our blood fuels us, it powers us. Witches can live to around one-hundred-and-forty, maybe even one-hundred-and fifty years before we take our final breaths.

Grandmother Ethel has too many years to boast, and she’s still going.

I hate that woman.

Her print explains the long life— rituals .

Bet she made a deal with the devil or drinks the blood of infants in exchange for more time, just so she can use it to flood me with as much self-loathing as possible.

She has never liked, not for a moment, what I am.

A ‘stain.’

She called me that once.

I was thirteen, I’d just endured the first semester of hell at Bluestone, my life turned inside out, and over the holidays, that’s what she called me.

‘That little stain .’

But Grandmother Dorotea?

Oh, she would never call me any such thing. She’s my favourite. Not just of the grandmothers, but of my whole family.

She’s warmth. Summer and Spring. She’s cosy armchairs and mismatched mugs in glass cabinets. She’s a garden of wildflowers because ‘ roses lack character and tulips are for those with beige souls .’

I writhe my legs, slow, and start to kick down the blankets from my body.

Mother takes the hint and slips off the foot of the bed. She makes no move to leave, and rather, wanders to the tall window where she starts to tug open the curtains.

Flinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I reach for the silky black cord that loops above my nightstand, the servant call. I tug the corded rope, once, twice, thrice. Just one tug will ring the bell in the servant hall and send someone up to my room with fresh coffee, but I make sure they rush.

Drawing away from the curtains, Mother has let in enough light to squint my eyes.

I stretch out with a gaping yawn that splits me.

But she doesn’t leave, yet. She picks through the row of bags on the narrow table that’s pushed against the back of the settee.

All my things from Bluestone must have arrived this morning.

The luggage is stacked under the Victorian-era table, the bags piled in rows.

Guess I slept through the imps hauling in my belongings.

Mother’s tone is light, “What is this?”

She has her back to me, so I don’t know what she’s plucked from the unzipped bags until she turns and, there in her firm grip, is a small leatherbound pocketbook.

“Oh,” I blink, as though just now remembering I have that, because truly I did forget that I bought it. “I found that in a bookstore in VeVille. It’s neat, right?”

Mother’s smile is fleeting, but as tight as her grip.

She reads the title, ‘ THE IMPACT OF DEADBLOODS ’, then drops her gaze to the subtitle glittering on the bottom of the cover, ‘ The ethics of euthanising deadbloods: What are they and where do they come from? ’

Mother turns the book over in her hands. “You should wear the Marchesa Notte dress. The pink brocade one from last season.”

Mother says should but means you do not have a choice, and do not question me about it .

I frown at the tall windows, condensed from the drizzle and battled temperatures. “Does the weather call for a dress?”

The end of the year in England doesn’t make for warm, dress-wearing weather—but then, we are heading to Dijon, Milan and Naples today, so I suppose it’s irrelevant that, outside, there’s a stagnant, damp mist.

“Yes.”

My mouth puckers.

The dress is a pretty thing, cherry blossom pink, and too nice to ruin with a pair of thermal stockings.

Bell-like dresses, though, aren’t exactly my thing.

No matter how pretty they might be, I feel wrong wearing them, like an intruder in something too lovely.

I prefer fitted dresses, but Nonna bought it for me last New Year.

Mother looks up from the book—and her gaze lingers around my face for a beat before shifting to glide along the outline of my hair.

I don’t need a mirror to know it looks a bird’s nest or something of a lion’s mane, since my sleep was so long and deep, and I wear the itch of a drool rash along my cheek.

“You will need an appointment at the salon,” Mother decides, and so it must be severe, straggled strands and split ends.

That’s all she says before she turns for the door—with my book still in her grip.

I scoot off the bed. “Mother, my book.”

She pauses and looks over her shoulder at me.

Her brow is hiked, a how-dare-you look that she rinses over me, head to toe. That look alone is a reminder to stay in my place.

“I would like a read of it myself,” she says and continues for the door. “And you have no time for books today. Get yourself ready. We leave in an hour.”

I make a face at the back of her head.

But I do what she says.

It’s not until I’m in the shower that Abagail finds me—and brings me my three serves of coffee.