Page 152 of Prince of Masks
Oliver touches the phial to my mouth. He tips it.
The moment it hits my tongue, a sludge of copper and ink, my face twists. I make to spit it out, but Oliver’s hand smacks onto my face, and holds, tight.
I swerve my wide gaze to him, my cry muffled by his palm. I choke on it, the potion stuck in my throat.
His face is hard. Steel. Determined.
And slowly, my fight fades.
The coppery, inky sludge falls down my throat.
“Sleep,” he tells me.
That’s the last thing I remember before, at some point, I wake in the bed, constricted by the dress that’s damp against my cold skin.
Oliver is nowhere to be seen.
I drift off again, knowing he drugged me into slumber.
28
The jet engines are smooth through the clouds. I hardly feel the flight beyond the pressure against my ears, that odd muffled noise.
Distantly, I’m aware of Father’s cross voice, more clipped than usual. It’s across the jet, and so I’m safe from it for now, but since he speaks so sharply outside of my immediate presence, I am guessing that I will be in for it once he has me alone.
At the front of the jet, Mother is quiet.
She hasn’t spoken a word to me since the ball.
To say my parents aren’t happy about the things they heard is an understatement. Whispers of their daughter running through the gardens in a muddied dress, soaked skirt, and in tears.
Gods forbid they ask if I’m alright.
But they won’t.
Not only because they couldn’t care less in the face of cracked decorum, but because I am convinced Oliver told them everything.
Knocked me out with a potion, put me on the bed, then locked me in the room. His first stop will have been our parents.
Neither of them will consider an engagement between me and Dray to be a sad thing. There will be no pity spared on me.
Instead, I get their silent treatment. Their turned cheeks. Their lifted noses. Their dark glares.
The reprieve from my parents comes at the back of the jet, on my preferred seat.
But it’s not enough, not nearly enough, because that leaves my company to the worst of the worst.
Oliver is sat at the other window with Grandmother Ethel; and Dray sits across from me.
The jet has only been in the sky for some minutes, but it feels like a lifetime too long as I wait for the attendant to find her way to us.
She can’t even get the question out, to ask after my order, before I say, “Bacon sandwich, cake, and a double espresso.”
Out the corner of my eye, Dray arches his brow. “It’s a one-hour flight.”
I swerve a snarling look at him. “I’m hungry.”
I’ve been starved for a month, now. My weight dropped for the dress, for the ball, and now it’s about to go back up to its happy size.
