31. Amal
AMAL
I’m dressed in that red monstrosity of a dress. They’ve sewn me into it. Made to size, they said. An inside joke I’m the butt of.
One of the women pushes the wine glass to my mouth.
I forgot I held it. Forgot they forced it into my hand.
It dribbles onto my chin. My mouth is numb.
I swallow the last sips, choking a little before it’s taken from me, before that final part of the lace is wrapped tightly over the lower half of my face.
I don’t understand what is happening. What has happened. This room. These women. The smoke of the fire mingling with the scent of those roses, the wine.
The wine. It’s the wine. It’s making my head foggy.
I part my lips, suddenly claustrophobic, and gasp for air. The lace is split where my mouth is but only so much. I drag my gaze from that tapestry to the antique mirror and back, and back again. I look at the portraits of the men glaring down at me, hatred in their eyes.
Someone tugs at my hand. I look down to find my wedding band gone. Taken from me.
I start to protest but a woman hushes me. “It will be right here for when you’re back,” she says. She’s lying. I know she is. But I can’t protest. I can’t even make a sound.
“Beautiful,” someone says, a buzzing behind her voice, like static on a radio when you just can’t get the channel tuned.
They’re shorter than me, all of them. But it’s because I’m standing on a raised platform. They’re holding me up in turns, pushing me upright as I sway, unsure how my knees haven’t buckled.
The seamstress cuts the last of that red thread with her teeth. She steps backward. The one who did my hair tucks the final piece beneath the intricate, thick lace wound around my head. It hides my face entirely. The only relief of color in all that red is the blue of my eyes.
I see them, but barely.
I can breathe but barely.
And I cannot speak. This strange mask of lace is too tight to allow me speech.
Circling my throat is a collar of thorns like the one that spears the bird.
Blood red to match the dress and made of shard-sharp crystal.
If I’m not careful, it’ll cut me. As I take in this ancient dress with its musty, old smell, I see the stains that tell me this choker has cut already.
It cut the woman or women who wore it before me.
Because what is happening here, whatever the purpose of this masquerade is, it’s not the first time. It’s happened before. And as I count the portraits upon the walls through my prison of red, it’s happened exactly eleven times.
“Look,” one of them is saying. “Look.”
She’s gesturing for me to look into the mirror. I drag my gaze to my reflection.
“So beautiful.” The women chatter, voices just coming through the static. “Yes. So like the other.”
They nod and I look although I want to ask who? Who is the other?
The dress is something else, surely. Lace and silk and lace and more silk. It’s not so much made for me. It’s the other way around.
I’m made for it.
Sewn into it.
My nipples are dark points that show through the fabric, my breasts bound by soft, unforgiving silk. I’m naked beneath. I don’t even know when I took my panties off but there they are, lying discarded on the floor along with the rest of my clothing.
I open my mouth to ask what’s happening, to ask when I can go to Jet, but between the tightly bound lace and what feels like cotton in my mouth, it’s impossible. I only make the smallest of sounds.
A man’s voice carries over that of the women’s mutterings. I turn, nearly fall off the stool, but the women catch me, push me back up to stand, their hands holding me up as two men enter. My breath catches and I try to jump backward but I can’t.
They step into the room, these men in their long black cloaks, hoods pulled over their heads to hide their masked faces.
I hear a sound. It’s me, I realize. It’s me trying to speak. That empty glass of wine with its residue of red at the bottom, what was in it? What drug? Because what I am feeling is not simply the effect of a single glass of wine.
“Lovely.” A man says and I realize it’s Jameson. I recognize his voice. They walk toward me turning a circle around me. I can’t see their eyes, but I don’t have to because I feel their aggression. I try to follow, the women’s arms holding me up, the silk of the dress winding around my legs.
In the corner I spot my bag. It’s the only familiar thing in the room. Inside, there’s a gun. I remember I’m supposed to strap it to my thigh, hide it beneath this dress. But how? How when I’m trapped inside all this fabric and with limbs that no longer obey me.
“She is beautiful,” the other man says. His accent is American. He’s the only American. “Fell into your laps, did she?” He chuckles.
The shorter one gestures for the women to help me down off the stool.
My bare feet touch freezing stone. They didn’t give me shoes.
The dress is so long no one will see my feet.
Crystals scratch my thighs. The skirt of the dress must have a thousand tiny shards sewn into it.
Looking closer, I see how old it is. How many rips and tears, its beauty an illusion.
A third man enters the room. I look up at him as he stops there. His mask is in his hand, the hood of his cloak not yet covering his head as he adjusts it as if he pulled it on in a hurry. He’s in his fifties, I’d guess. And he looks irritated.
“I don’t even see her before it’s done? She could be an old crone.” He pushes his mask onto his head, keeping it on top so it doesn’t yet cover his face.
“I assure you she is not,” the American says. “I saw her myself. You’ll be pleased. But even if she were a crone, does it matter for your purposes, Callum? Once you’re wed and the deed is done, it is done.”
Wed? I must say the word out loud or try to because they all turn to me. Do they mean me? But I’m already wed.
“Jet,” I try to say.
The American studies me, forehead furrowing. He crosses the room to refill my glass of wine and brings it toward me. I put my hands out to stop him when he presses the glass to my lips. I refuse it and manage to knock it out of his hand. It’s the only way or they’ll force me to drink it.
Cold liquid seeps into the silk of the dress, making my breasts even more visible.
“Shit!” he curses, looking at the splash on his sleeve. It won’t show. Red doesn’t show on black. It’s why Jet always wears black. Blood doesn’t show.
“Leave it, Senna,” Jameson says.
Senna. I search through the fog of my mind for the name but can’t place it.
Jameson checks his Rolex.
Rolex. That’s what got me into this mess. My mind recalls a picture of me standing in Jet’s strange bedroom the day I stole it. Just slid it right into my pocket. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. I was never supposed to end up here.
“She can barely stand as it is,” he continues. “And we need her standing,” he continues. “For a little while at least.”
Callum chuckles.
“Jethro Blackstone will be a problem,” the man named Senna says. “I’m telling you.”
“Jethro Blackstone will be long gone,” Jameson says in a way that I can almost see his grin behind his mask.
I cry out, try to scratch at the American who is closest to me, because I know what Jameson means. I know.
He jumps backward. “He won’t leave her. I’m telling you—”
“And I’m telling you it’s none of your business,” Jameson says finally with more authority than I’d heard from him thus far.
“How dare you? I am a Councilor—”
“You are not our Councilor. We called you in as a courtesy, considering your history with the Blackstones. That is all. That courtesy can be revoked. And besides, the Blackstone brothers will be appropriately... taken care of.”
The American’s hands fist at his sides but he doesn’t retort. He doesn’t hold the power here.
“Bring her to Master Robertson.” Jameson gestures to the soldiers who are still waiting in the wings. They approach and I’m handed from the women to them. “Once he gives final approval, the ceremony can begin.” He turns to Senna. “Papers are ready?”
Senna turns back to Jameson. “I do not report to Master Robetson’s manservant,” he says with utter disrespect before exiting the room.
Jameson’s posture betrays his annoyance but he follows Senna out.
I’m right behind them escorted by soldiers.
The other man, Callum, waits until I pass him.
His black eyes bore into me as I do. I’m wrong about his age.
He’s younger than I thought. It’s the cruelty in the set of his mouth that ages him.
I walk, somehow placing one foot in front of the other, stone cold beneath my bare feet, colder now in the corridor than that room.
No fire to warm the passage. That secret door is opened and we proceed down.
When I stumble, I’m caught. They don’t allow me to fall.
But their hands will leave bruises on my arms.
Behind me, Callum’s phone rings. He barks a greeting into it and when we reach the landing of the floor the bedroom they’d originally put me in is on, he gestures to Jameson to go ahead.
It’s warmer here in this main part of the castle.
I even appreciate the scratchy carpet. At least my feet won’t freeze.
The sound of a string quartet drifts from the distance as we turn in a direction I’ve not yet been and walk through another doorway.
More stairs. Neverending stairs. It feels like an eternity before we finally reach the place we’re going.
“Master,” Jameson says to Master Robertson who is seated behind a huge desk set far back from the entry of the large room.
He’s changed out of the strange robes he was wearing when I first met him to the same cloak as the others, the hood of it still down, mask on the table as he finishes writing whatever it is he’s writing.
I sway on my feet, the floor not quite solid beneath my feet, the room not quite steady.
“Sit her down. For Christ’s sake, how much of that stuff did you give her? We do need her walking,” Robertson barks.
The others rush to obey, Jameson dragging a chair forward and the soldiers setting me into it. They stand on either side of me, each with a hand on a shoulder like I might try to run for it. Can’t they see I can barely hold my head up as my stomach roils with nausea.
Master Robertson comes toward me. Behind him I watch a servant I recognize from the dining room carrying a vase of roses. I smell them before I see them and they make my stomach turn as my head lolls on my neck.
He curses, grips my jaw to force my face up.
“It’s almost as though you wanted to be found, young one,” he says, turning my head this way and that. “My predecessor allowed your mother to slip away. You I will take better care with.”
My mother?
What happens next takes us all by surprised. All but me because I feel it coming. I feel the surge of nausea bringing up my lunch and the wine and even the tight mask can’t hold back the rush of vomit as my body lurches forward and I hurl.
Robertson jumps backward but too late. Vomit coats the front of his shirt, his cloak, his sleeve.
He shakes it off his hand, an expression of disgust on his face, the stench of roses and vomit making me heave again and I’m grateful for it.
So grateful. Because I already feel my head clearing.
Feel at least some of that poison drug leave my system as the men rush to help Master Robertson who is throwing curses at me as I slump back in my chair, not quite strong enough to stand.
The American pushes his mask to the top of his head, and I see the amusement on his face. This is not his circus.
“Clean this mess up! Get those women down here to fix her. Christ!” Robertson orders, trying to get my puke off himself.
“Master Robertson, let me help,” Jameson is muttering but Robertson shoves him away calling him an imbecile.
“Fix this!” Robertson orders. “Fix it now or so help me—”
“Allow me, Master Robertson,” Senna says, stepping forward. “You take your manservant and change your robes. You are Master of Ceremonies this evening, after all. My part is nearly done. I will make sure she is properly readied.”