Page 99 of Prince of Masks
Dray says, “You’re welcome.”
“Fuck you,” I mutter under my breath, and fish out the book from my waistband.
Of course, Dray is a fucking supervillain with super hearing and my mutter doesn’t go unheard.
He snatches me by the arm, then hauls me into him. “Is that offer on the table?”
The breath that shudders me is too loud against these marble walls. I feel the danger of his glass-sword gaze scraping over me, the edge of a blade running over my skin.
I scoff, but there isn’t heart in it. “You would pollute yourself with a deadblood?”
Unfazed, his lips tug into a grin—and I get the prickling sense he’s about to take a bite out of me. “You’d be surprised.”
His grip tightens, hard, and the premature burn of bruises is quick to litter the flesh of my bicep. He draws me in closer to him, our bodies touching, and my neck arched.
His grin is wicked, it is cruel. “I’m sure your cunt tastes as lovely as your mouth.”
The vice-grip relents.
I stagger back into the wall, face slack.
Dray just smirks, then draws back.
I watch as he heads into the foyer, and unlike the rest of the party who have been dried off and dressed for the drawing room, he moves for the staircase.
I slump against the wall.
The pulsations of my heartbeats are too strong through my body. I feel them in my fingertips. I half expect to see the pulses there.
But as I study my hands, shaking like leaves in a blizzard, I see nothing more than plain old fingers and a book.
Iwhoosha hefty breath before I turn for my coat and sink the book into the deep, inner pocket. Then I drape it over my arm to carry it to the coat closet.
There, I hang it with the others.
But time is up, and I must drag myself to the drawing room where the others are waiting.
They all look up as I come in. The piano calls to me.
I can’t cry right now.
Can’t bury my face in my bed and scream.
Can’t do anything about that ache, that fucking ache plaguing me.
So I plant myself at the stool—and I play.
Another upside of it, no one bothers me.
No one strikes up a conversation with the one playing the piano. That’s just rude and clumsy.
So I play, and play, and play.
Long after Dray finds us, showered, clean, dressed in all black; long after Mrs Barlow retires for the night, a fatigue from the lassitude limit that has her mind disconnecting from reality.
I play until my fingers are sore.
Only then am I lured away from the piano by the espresso martinis that Dez is making.
