Page 114 of Prince of Masks
“I…” I blink the memory away. “Am I engaged?”
“Almost,” Father says, then returns his stare to the syringe that pushes into my vein.
I don’t look.
It’s best not to.
I feel the intrusion.
“Almost?” I echo. “To who? Since when? Is it Eric Harling?”
Lashes lower over emerald eyes. Father slides his stare to me. “Mr Harling had the happy chance to run into you in London, did he not?”
A few days ago, now.
I would shrug if it didn’t mean moving the syringe stabbed into my vein. Even the shift of it with the pressure of the phials changing over, that’s enough to grit my teeth.
“I saw him, yeah.” I keep a casual tone, disinterested, because the moment I show guilt is the moment I betray myself.
“Before you lie to me, Olivia,” Father says, and his voice is a weary sigh, “you might want to know that I have good reason to believe your meeting was arranged.”
A heartbeat shudders through my chest… then I just soften. The weariness deflates me.
And I speak an awful, dismissive thing, “So what?”
Father’s eyes flare.
That look glares at me for a long moment. Then, his dark tone growls out the words, a dangerous echo: “So what?” He enunciates theT.
A sigh is lured out of me, because I fucked up.
Blame the sleep, the disturbed rest, the morning mood because I haven’t had my coffees, or that I seem to be a prisoner who isn’t allowed to do anything but breathe without the warden’s permission.
Serena gets a phone, a car and a driver, she gets freedom—freedom I don’t have.
Asta is allowed it, too.
Why am I the only fucking aristos woman who’s on constant lockdown and supervision?
Why am I not allowed to just… go on a date?
“I am in the process of negotiating a proper arrangement for you,” Father tells me, his tone dark. “Anaristos. Eric Harling is a substitute, a poor one. Even if I had to consider a gentry, I might prefer that you stay unwed, as opposed to lowering yourself to the likes of him.”
My tongue drags over my thinning lips.
I keep my gaze downcast.
“You risk the arrangement of this aristos,” he goes on, and out the corner of my eye, I see that he leans his fingertips on the edge of the desk. “You meet with a gentry, a fortune hunter, in public—and you askso what?”
Silence is my best friend right now.
I should have stayed quiet. I never should have dismissed him with a huff and a sigh.
It’s not how to get what I want.
“I will tell youso what, Olivia. You are in need relearning your place—and how your actions reflect on our family.”
The threat springs ice through my chest.
