Page 32 of Prince of Masks
His hands come together in a sort of prayer gesture, and he lowers his mouth to the tip of his fingers. He does that sometimes when he’s drowning in thought, considering me, the moment, strategy.
I wait.
Gentle, his hands clap together; and all the severe tension setting his shoulders, tightening his stubbled jaw, it all unribbons from him.
Father sets his hand on the edge of the mousepad, fingers flicking the monitor back to life—and he just considers the reading list from the crypts a while.
I wait, picking and picking at my shoe.
“What other questions do you have?” he asks, not taking his eyes off the screen.
“Less like questions, more like … wonder?” I let my hands still on my lap, giving the thread of my shoe a break. “Like, there’s always that thing about witches, the women, only having one powerful child—and if they can have another… then it’s just not as powerful.”
Father turns his blank face to me, a wiped-clean expression, but eyes that work like machines. His thoughts whirl to figure out every angle of mine, every single way that I could take this topic.
“So I… wondered if, because all my magic is like… in my body but I can’t touch it, and magic isn’t limitless, then does it store inside of me for my children?”
Father’s brow arches, silent.
“I mean, what if because all my magic is in me, waiting, I can have more children—and they are all powerful?”
Father’s smile is faint.
Mine is bitter. Ashamed.
“See?” I tug at my sleeves. “Not real questions, just… thoughts. I let my mind wander away from me sometimes—that’s all.”
Father’s faint smile isn’t cruel or wicked; but it is patronising and teeming with understanding that reaches up and softens his eyes.
For a beat, he considers me—then he nods, as though responding to himself, his own thoughts.
“I am not oblivious to your plight, Olivia. You do not always feel that you belong,” he says. “I worry that you will seek that comfort with those who will never understand you.”
Those like the krums.
The frown furrows my face. “You wonder if I’ll… want to go be with them?”
His sigh is a gentle thing that loosens from his chest, and now that I consider him in this softer light, I see that it isn’t just anger that has been weighing on him, but travel fatigue, maybe from the jet, maybe from veils, whatever it is, I don’t think he has slept a wink in a while.
“To be a deadblood is a difficult thing, but to be one among the aristos…” He shakes his head and exhales. “All the times you have run away to the bus stop,” he says and my cheeks flame, “I never panicked, but the worry grew over time that one day you would decide the world of the Videralli was not for you… and that you would choose the krums.”
To live among the krums—I never considered it, not for a fleeting moment. Not even on those days and nights that I ran away for the bus stop down the road, halfway between the estate and the village. I think that bus passes once a day… or once a week, I am not entirely sure, but in the occasional meltdown and I have grabbed a backpack, declared my decision, and gone off to sit on the bench under the roof of the small bus stop shelter, and eventually I came back home. Every time.
The thing with it is, I never gave it any real thought. I just shouted that I was leaving, running away, then I sat there under the shelter and waited for Mother to come out and lure me home.
So the true concern in Father that I prefer the krum world, a world I have never tasted, never experienced, never known, is... strange to me.
There are many parts of the Videralli I would leave behind in a heartbeat. There are parts of aristos that I would burn to the ground and smile as I watched the flames devour our society.
But live with the krums?
I can hardly have a solid friendship with Courtney, mostly down to the blatant truth that she’ll never understand me, my life, my family.
And she’s a made one.
I tell that to Father. I confess a truth because it will ease him. “I will never want to leave my family. And with the krums? I don’t belong with them, and I never will. I really did just want to find a replacement of a book that I stumbled upon in a little shop in VeVille. I swear that is the truth.”
“I am satisfied with that,” Father says with a curt nod of the chin. “I will, however, decline the reading list request,” he adds. “These books should stay in the right hands.”
