Page 123 of Prince of Masks
I throw a longing look at the double doors she stands at, snapping at passing servants.
Mother is barking orders here, there, everywhere. If her voice doesn’t call out through the room, it’s distant, an echo through the lavish corridor beyond the door.
Her stress isn’t for nothing.
All around me is a flurry of bustling servants, their boots thumping on the hard floors and thudding on the rugs.
I watch them pass me by and, as I sip my coffee, try to guess their jobs just by the looks of them. The one in black scrubs, I decide, is a cosmetologist; the one with bulky bags is another hairstylist; the man who walks with flair is a cosmetic artist; the one who wears body glitter is a body artist; and the sudden influx of garment-bag-carrying ladies are the seamstresses.
“No, no. No!”Click, click, click. “You!” Mother is snapping her fingers at the guy over by the doors to the Queen’s Bedchamber. “Are you cosmetics?”
He nods, once. His cheekbones glisten with the gesture.
“Then you are there!” Mother points her finger to the dozen golden chairs planted throughout the room, each one with a side-table tucked to it—and I guess that is where the face-painting will happen.
“Mother!” My complaint is wrapped in a whine. “Can I get my facial now?”
She throws a bothered look at me. Then she blinks, once, as though just realising it’s me.
A tut smacks her mouth before she lifts her wrist and eyes her watch. “Facial now,” she agrees, and the stare she lifts to me is sharp, “then a one-hour rest. Not a second more, Olivia.”
I scurry my way to the Room of the Queen’s Guard, two rooms down, doors opening to more opulence. The walls are drenched in colour, in gold, in art; the ceilings of every room are gilded and painted.
My slippers slap on the parquet the whole way, the silk of my robe catching between my legs with each step and clinging to my dewy skin. The full body massage I snoozed through an hour ago has left its residue all over me. I should shower before slipping into the sheets of the gilded bed in the private chambers… but Iwon’t, because I care more about my precious time than I do the maid who has to wash body oil out of the sheets.
I down the rest of the coffee before I set the mug on a trolley, then I let myself fall onto a blanket-covered loveseat.
My spine drapes over the arch of the seat, my head lolling back until my face is horizontal.
A cosmetologist is quick to bring her soft fingertips to my face and start peeling away stray strands of hair. Then she slips a headband in place before she gets to work.
Impatiently, I wait.
The itch to be elsewhere flexes my toes back and forth, over and over, in the confines of my slippers; almost as though my feet are on the verge of taking over and leading me through the opulent palace to the private chamber I’ve been assigned to, a chamber that was not meant for the royals of Versailles, and yet is adorned with extravagance all the same.
We don’t live like this anymore.
Krums, throughout history, were only ever used as masks. The royals were in their place because the witches needed them to be the faces of the power.
Just goes to show why it’s done that way.
The revolutions slaughtered royals, krums, masks.
Not the true power.
And over time, the lessons were learned, new patterns and masks woven—until the reality of a too-lavish life in the face of impoverished people became a truth too great to ignore:
They always eat the rich.
So while we are wealthy, we do not live as the royals throughout history did, in gilded homes.
It’s in poor taste.
But that gilded wealth follows me once my facial is done, and I march my way through the corridors, squeezing by the newly arriving debutantes, overtaking slower servants.
I falter before the narrow corridor which will take me to a strip of rooms, all private bedrooms. But I hesitate in the busy corridor because I spot Serena coming up the sprawling marble stairs.
My cheeks swell with a long huffing breath.
