A Masquerade of Spiders

Chapter 34: Maiden

Chapter 34: Maiden

I would have to force Waryn from going to the conclave. I could use a few drops of Ether to put him to sleep—if he allowed me to come near him.

I just had to stop yearning. There was no hope for me and him. There never had been.

How far would I go to save Marin? If I couldn't do this one thing Pyren asked of me, then everything was lost. Marin was as good as dead.

Maybe that was the point this whole time. Pyren didn't want to set me free. He would wish to erase my existence, so there would be someone less in this world who knew his secret power.

I couldn't shake the growing feeling of despair, coupled with the overwhelmingly bitter taste of utter defeat.

How could I win if Pyren was ahead of me in everything?

Two days after my first visit to Waryn, Pyren came again and took me there. I spent the hour sitting in my old bedroom, looking at the lion-paned walls and wondering if they watched me.

I visited again two days after. I was numb now. Not willing or unwilling. If it weren't for those sudden pangs of unbearable longing, I could almost understand what it was like to live as a turner.

Four days before the Pinnacle ball, Emil gave me my fourth and final dose of serum. "You'll be strong now," he kept saying, his voice a whisper so the guards won't hear.

He taught me much, more than Pyren knew. I didn't dare hope that this knowledge was enough to let me win. I tested my bounds, but could I truly break free?

Three days before the Pinnacle ball, I was fitted for a new dress and mask.

And then two days before the ball, in the afternoon, a knock sounded at my door. Whoever was there would have been vetted by the guards.

It was a servant bearing a box. "Your new mask arrived, my lady," she said. She was older than most of the other servants, and I had never seen her before.

I took the box from her and dismissed her. I was told the mask-maker needed at least two days to make my mask, even though I had chosen a simple design.

I opened the box and moved aside the wax paper. I wondered if all mask-makers packaged their masks in the same way Shana did.

I looked at the mask inside.

It was not the mask I ordered.

I sat down hard on the bed as I picked it out of the box with trembling hands. For the first time in days, I felt something. I could see through the fog in my mind.

It was a full yellow gold mask that covered even the mouth. The lips of the mask were the replica, in gold, of my own lips. The nose, with holes for the nostrils, was my own nose, and so was the shape of the eyes and forehead.

There were no gems. The gold was as smooth as satin silk. The only adornment was a kind of wig attached to it, made out of long white silk feathers that would cover my hair and reach down to my waist if I put it on.

It was a maiden mask of my face.

I turned it over to look at the inside. Shana always left a stamp on her work. A small G. I never understood it, until now.

It was there, and there was also something else.

A single symbol.

A message conveyed without words.

It was unlikely that Shana would be able to give this to me without Pyren's knowledge. If she wanted to help me, she wouldn't have given me away in the first place.