Page 30 of A Reign of Roses
The handmaiden instructed me to purse my lips and finished applying rouge and charcoal to my face. The glossy vanity was cluttered with powders and creams, and the mirror before me ringed with a fuzzy white glow—powered by some kind of lighte that lit my face too brightly. The white marble was cold against my arms as I leaned forward for her. I wasn’t sure I’d seen a single beam or plank of wood in all of Solaris. The entire city was a reflection of Lazarus’s stony, unmoving heart.
I longed for the hundredth time for Kane’s warm, cozy bedroom in Shadowhold, and those clean, dark cotton sheets. The way they smelled of lilac soap and him. I missed all his unexpected clutter, and those fat history books, and even the scratches Acorn had left across the wooden floorboards.
“You almost done?” Maddox asked the woman from his post across the room. “If we’re late, it’ll be my head on a stake.”
“And wouldn’t that be a shame,” I muttered.
“Yes, sir,” the woman replied to Maddox, pinning up another strand of my curled hair with Wyn’s artful birthday gift. I’d askedher to include it and she’d been kind enough to comply, though I got the sense if I’d asked her to put a fork in my hair she would’ve. I’d never seen anyone so deeply unenthused.
I focused on the hairpin as the handmaiden worked my curls around it. The daisies at its tip were the only things on me that felt likeme.
I despised my gilded dress. It was bare of any straps or sleeves, and corseted into oblivion, flattening my chest and pinching my stomach and ribs. The liquid gold skirt offered even less flexibility. Both made my heart panicky, only calmed by the fact that I knew if I really wanted to, I could rip the damn thing clean off. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d stood naked before the Fae king.
The gown was completely sheer. In direct candlelight any lascivious eye could see the entire outline of my nipples, and the high slits on either side left nothing of my legs to the imagination. Another strategic maneuver aimed at my humiliation. A reminder of what I was inside these palace walls. What I’d become, so long as I remained in captivity.
“You, Arwen, are just a womb,” he’d said.
My skintight gloves crawled all the way up my arms, hiding the bruises clustered along my veins, and my shoes bound my feet and wound up my ankles with unbending cord. My hair had never been piled so high, nor my face been so caked, only to be covered by a mask anyway.
All of it to drive me further to the brink of discomfort.
Once the handmaiden pressed the gold-threaded mask flush against my face, I studied the two red droplets under the left eye—made to look as if I were crying tears of blood.
“Hurry up,” Maddox hissed. “Or I’ll drag her there by those damn curls.”
“Maddox,” Wyn cautioned behind me, and my brows rose against the fibers of my tragic mask. Wyn never spoke up against the higher-ranking guard.
My handmaiden hurried her work, securing the back of my corset and looping diamonds through my ears. I could feel her fingers trembling.
Behind us, Maddox pushed off the doors and prowled toward Wyn. “You’ve gotten a bit too bold since losing your limp. Might be a favor to crack you a new one.”
I watched through the mirror as Wyn didn’t cower, but didn’t argue with the taller, broader guard, either.
Maddox’s lips cut a harsh line. “Your service in the kingsguard is a disgrace. Everyone thinks it. You do know any of us coulddemolishyou if we so desired, right?”
He said the words with such promise. Such intent. Wyn’s expression remained as rigid as a bowstring. My handmaiden didn’t breathe, and the room crackled with intensity.
I scrambled for the crystal perfume bottle and I pumped it once, primrose filling my nostrils, before I stood abruptly. “I’m ready.”
Like undertakers guiding me into the afterlife, Maddox and Wyn stalked alongside me through the winding, laborious hallways of the palace. At night, I found the red marble floors and glinting obsidian décor even more insidious. The stuffy, too-warm air for early winter was suffocating, and the pulsating, sickly sweet aroma of vanilla that scented it turned my stomach in on itself.
How had Kane grown up here? The palace didn’t suit him at all. Maybe the isolated, lofty ceilings and depthless black walls were new additions, after Kane’s rebellion. I couldn’t imagine his mother, such an elegant and thoughtful soul as Kane had described her, had lived somewhere so cold. Like dwelling in the heart of a primordial beast.
Raucous music and dissonant voices alerted me to the ball before we rounded the sharp-edged corner and found the grand staircase. Dozens of those silver soldiers lined the hallway on either side—a display of power, or a necessary protection, I wasn’t sure—and spare partygoers lingered in hallways, some trying to curb premature inebriation, others hunting for a hidden washroom, and others still exchanging secrets or affection in shadowed alcoves.
The celebratory, opulent veneer might have had the desired effect if it weren’t for all the masks.
Most were twice the size of mine, headpieces covering the entire face of the wearer—reaching high above their heads, or hanging low down to their necks as if their jowls were melting. Everyone appeared to be in on some unspoken competition: the larger the mask, the more affluent the wearer. Some were beautiful—a crescent moon beside a sun; dainty, silken butterfly wings spread wide; a weaving of bronze beads across an entire face—but most were not. Most were crafted to terrify: maws wrenched open, pearl teeth dripping carnelian blood; moonfaced owls with translucent white-blue eyeballs or dozens of heavy golden chains hanging from noses and sagging mouths and ears.
A black leather bird mask with an elongated, pointed beak swooped in too close and I flinched. The wearer ducked toward me again, cackling, and I recoiled from a whiff of something much more potent than wine or ale.
Righting myself, my heart immediately slammed into a stone wall at the sight a few feet down the hall.
Leaning casually against a black marble pillar was an impossibly tall, broad-shouldered man with a dark head of rugged hair. His hands were folded into his pockets with ease as he leaned close to apetite woman in a revealing magenta gown and a mask that glistened like the scales of a fish in sunlight.
It’s not him. It can’t be—
But my stupid, thumping, pulsating heart didn’t listen. Not for a second.
