Page 145 of Prince of Masks
“I picture someone like Master Welham,” I confess, a small smile on my painted lips. “Round and bulbous and bald. He wears a top hat and has a villainous moustache.”
For a beat, he just looks at me.
Then his mouth relaxes into a lopsided grin and, with a scoff, he shakes his head.
Heat crisps over my cheeks.
I give a lame shrug. “That’s who I pictured since my father first told me about him—just reaching out to inquire on my contract… And he’s haunted me ever since.”
His grin fades with the passing seconds.
Vapours veil him. “When was that?”
Again, I swish my dress, but that is only doing so much to disturb the wall of the heat bubble.
I turn my back on Landon, my movements a sudden whirl, then start down the pavers to the little statue. “Not long after the truth or dare game.”
Behind me, he’s quiet for a moment. Then, “That was me.”
I still.
My blank gaze is latched onto the statue, the grooves of the marble pedestal.
And like ice-cold water raining down on me, I jerk around and throw my glare at him.
Landon watches me already.
There is nothing malicious about his study of me, it’s detached—and the smile he spares me is a tight gesture of pity… for himself or me, I don’t know.
“I made the inquiry,” he confesses, then brings the joint to his lips—but he doesn’t kiss it, not yet, just hovers it there at his face. “I only made one,” he adds in a murmur.
“One?” I arch my brows at him. “On me?”
“Yeah, and that got me into a world of trouble.”
“With my father?” I frown. “Withyours?”
His scoff is accompanied by a shake of the head, a flair of disbelief on his slack face.
Like me, he is exhausted, wears that same fatigue I have carrying on my shoulders, as heavy as pails of water.
“I inquired… then your father told Harold Sinclair.” He touches the joint to his mouth.
I wait for the long inhale, the hold of it in his lungs, then the billowing release. I wait, and swish my dress as the seconds tick by.
Time is up.
Landon lifts his gaze to me. “Harold told Amelia—who then, of course, told Dray.”
I run the sole of my right foot over the coarse paver. The sensation grounds me.
“And I,” he adds, spreading his arms, “ended up tied to a chair in an empty classroom in the Faculty Quarter, doused in potion—the flammable kind.”
My face slackens.
“Dray was sitting on the chair across from me.” Landon drops his arms, then hunches his weight. “Smoking his weekly cigarette.”
My stare turns horrified.
