Mask of Shadows (Untitled #1)(63)
“Street fighters and road agents don’t get costumes.” I washed my face with my free hand best I could without touching Elise’s words. The lifetime of wounds I’d collected were a map of bumps and pits under the ink. “We get fancy scars.”
“Have you got enough to justify going to dinner naked?” Maud grabbed my other hand.
“Is it too late for you to find me something?” If I was going to dress to impress tonight, I wanted to be like Ruby. Power and grace, a figure fit to be noble and deadly. “Can you make me look like Ruby but in white?”
No reason to dress as the past when Opal was my future.
“No,” Maud said but stopped, hands drifting to her pocket. “How much like Opal?”
“Close as can be without being rude.” I pulled my new mask on and sighed. Soft cotton and silk lining the eyes. So much better. “Let the others be themselves. I want to be Opal.”
She stood, nodding to herself. “I think I can do that. You go to tutoring, and I’ll get your clothes.”
No more mistakes, no more close calls, and no more deaths like Seve. I could put those lords to rest when I was Opal.
And I had to be Opal because I was fairly sure the only way out of the final three was death.
Thirty-Six
I knocked, straightened my mask, and opened the door. “Sallot!”
I startled, not used to hearing my full name, and Elise barreled into my chest. We fell back against the closed door.
“How are you?” Her arms hooked around my neck, warm and heavy, and she tucked her face against my shoulder. She wore mourning colors—an ash-gray bodice trimmed in black and laced with opalescent ribbon—and had bound her coiled hair in a silver net. She touched my mask. “You’re Twenty-Three again.”
I nodded, not sure about what to do with my arms but entirely sure I could not do this.
“Plan worked, and I didn’t die.” I splayed my fingers over the wide curve of her hips, blood rushing in my ears, and curled my other arm around her back. “So here I am.”
Elise traced my collar, fingertips skimming my neck. “I’ll miss calling you Sallot.”
“You can call me Sallot.” I rubbed my thumb along the dip between her hips and ribs. She’d liked me for days—I had to catch up. “In private. Probably best not to do it in public.”
“Yes, I’ll call you Honorable Opal like everyone else.” She drifted out of my arms, dragging her fingers over the words on my arm and letting the cold sweep into the space she’d left behind. “I admit I have nothing to teach you today. I wanted to talk.”
I nodded and trailed after her, too pleased to say much more. She sat and gestured to the chair across from her. I took it.
“Yesterday,” Elise said, fiddling with her locket, “you gave a very rambling rant about how much you hated Erlend, and I am less interested in that and more in you, but what did you mean?”
I swallowed. “Just what I said—never had much good to say about Erlend.”
“Well, I wasn’t too fond of you when we first met either. I suppose we’re even.” She closed her fingers around the locket and shrugged one shoulder. “And now?”
“You proved me wrong.” I reached between us and took her hand, studying the lines of her palm and faded ink stains on her fingers. “I thought you were clever and pretty, but I expected you’d be like every other northern noble and dislike my sort. Then you didn’t do any of their sneering, and I moved on to thinking you liked me because I was mysterious and dangerous.”
Elise tapped the imprint of her lips on my palm. “I didn’t like you until you corrected me about sounding literate.”
“What?” Speechless, I let her lace our fingers together while I found my words. That was ages ago, back when I’d slipped with my pretending and called her on how I sounded. “I snapped at you.”
“You were honest with me, and I was wrong. You hardly snapped,” she said. “People are rarely honest with me. You couldn’t rob me, couldn’t be angry without softening it with a joke, and you always showed up to tutoring on time and ready to work.”
Elise leaned in front of me and added, “You look like I’ve shifted your world.”
“Just about.” I tapped my forehead against hers, slipping an arm around her waist. “Thought coming here would be different but didn’t expect you.”
“You kept my ring.” Her gaze dropped to my lips, and my heart leapt into my throat.
“It was pretty, and Our Queen had touched it. Never had anything nice I could get away with wearing.” I nudged her with my nose and tugged her closer.
“Come here.” Elise pulled away, and I swallowed back my protest when she slid from her chair and onto the floor near my feet. I sat next to her, back to the sturdy table legs, and she settled into the curve of my side, legs stretched out and pressed to mine, cheek on my shoulder and arm tangled around me. All the warmth in the world couldn’t have compared to her. “How did Sallot end up as auditioner Twenty-Three?”
“Easily.” I traced the curves of her thigh through her dress and pulled her legs across my lap till there were no gaps between us, the press of her steady and sure as the sun rising. “You had a poster in your purse, and I wanted out of Kursk.”