Page 79 of Prince of Masks
I look at the stairs as Serena’s brother, Desiderio, comes jogging up them.
Just like his sister, his silvery eyes are storm-clouds wisping over sunrays, and he wears that same polished complexion, of olive oil.
He flashes a greeting grin my way—and I can only manage the stupidest sputtered smile in return.
Dez has that effect on me.
Always has.
Six years our senior, he was gone from Bluestone before I finished the secondary school portion. But no matter his age, a lot of the girls had a crush on him.
Can’t blame us, not when he looks like he’s stepped out of the glossy pages of Italian Vogue.
His wife is equally hot.
A curvaceous babe from the South Americas, and he finds her right away, tucked at the back of the terrace, sheathed in a fitted maroon dress so wrong for this weather, and her cell in her hands.
My cheeks heat at the smacker he plants on her full lips.
She receives it without much reciprocated affection, more like he is a bother to her, a nuisance.
My mouth tilts.
Dez was promised to another European aristos when he met Isabella—and he dissolved that arranged marriage for her. It just took seeing her once, and he was a goner.
Mr Vasile didn’t challenge the shift of Dez’s affections, since Isabella comes from an elite line, but I’m guessing she said yes because Dez is aristos, and that means money.
Maybe I’m just being bitter.
And a little jealous.
Envious, more accurately.
That a polished, aristos gentleman—who looks like a mahogany sculpture came to life with the pearliest, most dazzling grin of all time, and winks that make me weak at the knees—decided to use his power and influence to choose someone many consider beneath him.
Guess if I felt like looking further into myself, I might find that there is a withered flower in me, one that was foolish enough to bloom in youth with hope that one day, that might happen to me.
It never did.
And so the flower is wilted.
And the glower I aim at the couple is withering.
I cut my moody glare to the steps again as a thudding, clacking sound smacks down on them. Rugby boots, heavy and cloppy and cacked with dirt, and the metal dirt-grips grating over stone in a way that grits my teeth.
Grey Barlow runs up the stairs, jumping two at a time. His chest heaves with harsh breaths. Cheeks roar beneath scrapes and dirt, and he somehow looks younger than the last year I saw him.
In all fairness, he is only seventeen.
Funny thing about Grey is that he used to go to Bluestone with us, a while back, even if he was below us a few years. But then he went and blew up the mess hall in a blackout dust prank gone wrong. Literally blew it up, ceiling caved in, walls crumbling, and a couple of students were so injured they had to be sent to a witch hospital in Geneva.
Got himself expelled.
Now, he’s homeschooled with a governess.
He doesn’t look at me as he barrels into the crowd; and just as he does, Father steps closer to me.
I look at him, but then I realise he and Mr Vasile are in conversation, backstepping from the doorway where servants are trying to push trolleys of teapots and sandwiches onto the terrace.
