Page 69 of Prince of Masks
Come morning, we will leave Monaco behind and return to England. I hope some witches there decide to bring out the sun a little.
I tuck myself up on the chair and watch the lights wink at me. Cities always look so wonderfully beautiful and mysterious from a distance, like they will offer the wildest experiences of your life—and so rarely deliver.
It’s the mystique that is pretty.
That unfulfilled promise hooks my gaze, and I watch it with a hollowness in me.
And all the while, I know Dray watches me.
*
The relief of the Diamond Suite sags my shoulders as I push through the door—and I am barely a step inside before Oliver is shoving me out of the way.
I hit the wall hard enough to wince. “What the fu—”
Oliver rounds on me. “You didn’t mean that.”
The door tries to shut itself, but Oliver is in its way, and if the weight of it pressing into his shoulder is a bother, he doesn’t show it.
I push from the wall. “Mean what?”
“Even if Father let you marry a gentry,” Oliver scoffs on that, as though it’s a ridiculous notion, too preposterous to ever be considered, “do you really think that means your separation from our family?”
“I’ll be married.” I shove at him, to push him out through the parted door, but he doesn’t budge. “My family will change from this one to my husband’s.”
Oliver sneers down at me. “Our parents kept you when so many other aristos would have thrown you to the krums. They kept you in this world, fought for your place at Bluestone—and you plan to up and leave?”
“Oh, I will see our parents.” I fall my weight back onto one foot and arch my brow. “I won’t see you.”
His face twists as he moves for me, a single, determined step. “Of all the fucked up things to say, that is the ugliest.”
I choke on a laugh, but the fatigue weighs me down, and so it’s all so tired and weak. “You have got to be kidding—or at least out of your mind.”
Whatever he parts his mouth to say, doesn’t come. Instead, he bites down on his words.
Jaw clenched, he turns his cheek to me and narrows his darkening eyes on the hallway.
For a beat, he looks out there—as though there might be another lurking, an eavesdropper, perhaps Dray standing by the door to their suite, waiting, listening.
Oliver keeps his secrets.
“Did you expect that we would graduate—and our entire history, all the things you did to me at the academy, all the things you allowed to happen to me… would simply go away? That we would be friends?”
Slowly, his jaw rolls, and he steps back into the weighted door. His voice is a soft whisper, “There is so much you don’t know, Liv.”
My brows are raised, expectant, bemused, and I just look at him, like he’s sprouted fangs or has coughed up a furball.
“There is one thing I do know for certain,” I start.
He looks at me—and not a moment after, I shove him, hard.
He staggers back, into the hallway.
“You overstayed your welcome.” I slam the door on his face.
15
First thing I do when I am through the doors of Elcott Abbey is claim a headache from all the travel and beeline for my bedroom.
