Page 2 of Prince of Masks
His gloved hands delicately manoeuvre the phials of thick, sloshing blood into the firm black foam embedded in the case. Three slots for three phials, a row on the bottom half of the case, another on the top. The top row is positioned beneath anengraved plate that spells ‘OLIVIA CRAVEN’. That’s where he slots my phials.
Dolios is the family’s preferred witchdoctor.
Father has him on call for us.
He is summoned for me, most of all. So he has an exclusive briefcase for me.
Another reason to think I am the favourite.
Oliver had his clavicle pulverised in a game of ice-hockey at Bluestone. It was a few years back, but Father didn’t bring him home. Didn’t even consider it. He simply let Witchdoctor Urma deal with it at the academy.
But if that had been me, injured, a crushed clavicle…
Father would have snatched me out of school in a heartbeat, then thrown me into the healing hands of Dolios.
Maybe it’s that I am the favourite. Maybe it’s that I’m babied a little, given my deadblood, and my parents have always fussed over me that bit more than they ever did with Oliver.
I’m glad for it, no matter the reason.
Because here I am, sunken into the armchair in Father’s cerulean office in the Blue Wing of Elcott Abbey; Mother hovering so close that I can smell faint wisps of her familiar perfume over the stink of manure; Father, just out of reach, watching studiously as Dolios slots the final phial of my blood into his case; even Mr Younge, who—at one look from my father—turns for the rotary phone beside the desk, a movement so ordinary that it should hardly bring comfort. Yet it does, because all of this, even the ordinary, means one thing:
I am home.
If I’m lucky, I will stay home for a whole two weeks before the dreaded reality that, at the end of the fortnight, the term ends for the Solstice Season.
Oliver will return home.
Dray will be on his heels.
There won’t be an escape from Dray then.
But I shove that thought out of my mind, violently. My mouth even twists with the effort, something of a silent snarl.
“Almost done,” Witchdoctor Dolios murmurs.
He misreads my expression as he turns for me and, bent at the hips, slips the impossibly long syringe out of my arm.
I feel it, I feel itslideagainst the walls of my vein, an intrusion that stirs my insides rotten and curls my toes in my boots.
Father’s voice is rough with disturbed sleep, “How is she?”
My mouth flattens.
So typical of him. Ask the men, not the women who couldn’t possibly know themselves, right?
But I am letting the bitterness creep in too soon, too prematurely. I have two weeks, I remind myself.
I hope Mother lets me sleep those weeks away.
“Fair,” Dolios says and unscrews the metal syringe. “I will run the usual tests, but I am confident that her exhaustion is mostly of the mind. I recommend Miss Craven rests.”
Mother sighs, a curt and relieved sound. “Yes, she will stay home.”
Dolios doesn’t so much as glance her way. He honestly couldn’t give a shit whether or not I return to Bluestone for the rest of the term.
Mother’s announcement isn’t for the witchdoctor, it isn’t even for me. It’s for my father.
The look she aims at him, the one that stiffens his shoulders and raises his chin just a touch, decides it. I won’t return to Bluestone, not for the rest of the semester.
