Page 127 of Prince of Masks
Serena welcomes my mother’s warmth, since she has no mother of her own to be here, fussing over her.
“I do love the silver,” she says and ghosts the tip of her fingers down the crushed glass glitter.
I nod, as though she can see the gesture, but she can’t.
Mother smiles sweetly, too sweetly, and so I think she doesn’t agree. But she takes the platter of shoes away all the same and sets out the glittering silver pair at the foot of Serena’s gown.
Moments later, my makeup artist is done, my hairstylist gone to stand at the rear wall, and the inspector comes to evaluate my face.
Just so happens that the inspector is Grandmother Ethel.
I set my shoulders back and stare straight ahead as she blocks my view, looming over me, her grip too tight on the cane…
I almost think she will strike me.
But her grip softens and she hums something of approval, something surprised almost, and that’s my queue to be sewn into the gown.
I should be nauseas with the nerves, I should be jittery and wringing my hands together.
Instead, while I do feel the worms slapping around my gut, my body is steel. My muscles don’t cave to the dread pooling in my belly.
My mind whirls back to Amelia in my chamber, the potion she offered me for vitality—and suspicion rises through me.
Huh.
I doubt energy was the only thing I got from that brew. Must be something to do with composure, perhaps a nerve sedative of sorts.
I turn my gaze around until it lands on her.
And, in a blink, Amelia looks over her shoulder at me, sensing my stare. Her smile is a graceful whisper. A ghost gliding through space.
Then it’s gone and she turns her back on me.
A dubious look would crease my face if I let it. But the makeup means I shouldn’t. Not yet.
I consider her, the flowy black gown that drapes her, elegant but a little underwhelming, like a fancy muumuu she decorates with diamond earrings and glistening necklaces falling down her spine.
Amelia’s print is literally the sense.
Not to be confused, ever, with prediction.
Prediction changes. It is ever flowing, ever shifting. It is future.
But sense is different. It comes when it does, it cannot be summoned. It is now.
So Amelia likely did sense my stare on her, my wonder of the potion she had me drink. Her little way of helping me out after my stay at Grandmother Ethel’s.
A thought startles me.
A similarity with Dray and Amelia.
He always senses me, senses my arrival in a room, my stare on him, senses when I’m up to no good.
But he couldn’t have inherited Amelia’s print…
Witches inherit only one print each. We can practice other magics, but we will never excel in them.
And yet…
