Page 128 of Prince of Masks
I can’t shake the thought, the wonder creeping through me to the bone.
It only disperses from my mind when the seamstress pats me on the back once, and that one gesture declares that it is done. I am now sewn into the gown.
24
The Hall of Mirrors spills out onto the Parterre d’Eau, where all of the guests are congregated, waiting for us.
We, the debutantes, are being ushered into a line in the Hall of Mirrors, moments away from the introductions.
The procession we take is not random. Time and date of birth is what determines the line of debutantes.
That same order is mirrored in the brochure that Dinara Korolyov unfolds in her dainty hands.
She tucks up to the wall, cutting a cautious glare up and down the corridor at our wardens, then lands her gaze on the brochure.
I inch closer to her, a lift to my chin, and I glance down at the glossy page flickering under the light of the wall-sconces.
Her page is her number in the line: 4.
And on that page, with a lovely smiling photograph of her, is a list of information. Her age, eye colour, hair colour, print, family name; followed by some personal trivia.
Dinara Korolyov, as it turns out, has something in common with me. A collector of animals.
I read that on her page, swiftly, before she must hide the brochure away or pass it off to another debutante so that she’s not caught with it.
She makes to close it over.
“Page six,” I whisper.
She throws a startled look over her shoulder at me. Her lashes flutter with a stark blink before she drags her darkening stare over me.
Dinara is one of the faces I recognise from balls over the years, as I recognise every debutante in the Hall of Mirrors.
But there is little acknowledgement spared on me, and the acknowledgement I am greeted with is unkind—just like the look Dinara runs me over with.
To say I haven’t been met with warmth at the annual balls is an understatement. Those same sentiments I am met with at Bluestone are my reality at the balls, by my peers, the ones of my age, the ones who are the Snakes of their own schools across the continents.
Dinara hits the brochure aside, right into my midsection.
I take it, quick, then huddle up to the wall. I flick to my number in the line, my page number, and… there I am.
“Let me see it,” Asta snaps.
Before I get a moment to even look at her, she’s snatched the brochure out of my grip.
I huff and turn my back to the wall.
Asta huddles with the brochure, the booklet of meat on sale, women up for auction.
I deflate.
The bachelors out in the Parterre d’Eau, waiting for us, have the same brochures in their hands.
Makes it easier for some bachelor to think, ‘oh, number three looks nice, she might do,’ then mark our pages.
Sometimes I think we make it too easy for them. The men. And maybe I don’t like feeling as though I can be ordered off a menu.
I peel my spine away from the wall as Grandmother Ethel comes stalking down the hall.
