Chapter 7 #3
My mouth falls open. Spelled objects are banned.
During the Incarnial Wars, objects imbued with magic gave mortals the ability to fight back against, and even kill, the ageless incarnials.
The thanovarians, divinials of death and decay, were banished for making them.
Illio decreed they upset the natural order, granting divine power to those without divine blood.
Spelled objects have been banned ever since, with only a few sanctioned exceptions for practical items.
That mask is not a practical item.
She catches my expression and rolls her eyes. “Oh, hush. The magic only lasts till tomorrow. By the time anyone reported me, it wouldn’t work anymore. Besides, it’s my power.” One corner of her mouth curls up. She wags the mask back and forth. “Though I wouldn’t mind sharing it.”
I blink, taking in what she’s suggesting. “Oh no, I couldn’t…”
“You’d be doing me a favor. I can’t let my husband catch me with this.” She holds the blue mask out to me. “And a beautiful young woman like you should have the fun she deserves. With this, no one in this household will recognize you.”
I hesitate. Accepting it would be a crime, and even with a disguise, I could not possibly pursue the kind of night she is suggesting.
“Hasn’t anyone caught your eye?”
I wait too long before shaking my head, and her smile widens. She steps behind me and pulls the string on my plain black mask before I can object.
“Oh my,” she says softly. “You really are beautiful.”
She presses the new one to my face and cinches the ribbon tight.
A hum spreads from the edges of the mask over my face and scalp. Black curls twist down to my chest, and my eyes turn ocean blue in a single blink. Tingles coat my torso and arms as blue satin replaces black velvet, reforming the neckline, sleeves, and length of my dress.
I lean closer to the mirror. My face is different. I reach up to touch a slightly squarer jaw, my nose a little more lifted at the tip. I don’t not look like me…I look like a close cousin. Each feature on its own is similar, but the whole is someone else.
The whole is a lady who belongs at this party, not a governess.
As I examine myself, the blonde woman ties my plain mask around her head. “The magic will wear off by midday tomorrow, so make use of it. Find a bed with some nice company to keep you warm. Promise me you will?”
Her eyes shine, and she clasps my shoulders. I don’t know if she is drunk or always this bold, but it sends warmth through me. Even though we just met, her investment in my evening makes me care more too. “I will.”
She winks as she opens the door. “You never saw me.”
I turn back to the mirror. I raise my fingers to my cheek.
Can I go and do something reckless tonight? Can I find a man and do the kinds of things I listened to from behind the screen? I still feel the faint throb of what those sounds did to me.
Sex was always going to be part of my future. I understood that before I understood most things about the world. My womb is a vessel to carry Ignar’s bloodline into other lands. I will have a husband, and I will join him in bed to produce heirs, in whatever shadoward province my father can arrange.
I know the mechanics. I know which days of my cycle are best for conception, and I have been given dry, clinical instruction on how to motivate a husband so he will put a child in me.
But pleasure? Pleasure was never part of it.
What I’ve learned about desire, I’ve learned in stolen pieces. Whispers between maids who thought I was not listening. Scenes in books where the words made my pulse quicken and my face heat. Dreams that left me aching. The careful exploration of my own fingers in the dark making me writhe.
But I never even considered finding someone to join me.
I was young when Rinalda’s lover burned, the blue flames etched into my memory.
I found their letters before it happened, hidden in the hollow of her bedpost. I remember being confused why Rinalda would break the rules.
I didn’t understand the longing scrawled across those pages.
But now I do. Rinalda wanted love. She wanted passion. She wanted more than the emperor had planned for her. And that ended with her locked away in the Sunrise Palace, her lover ashes.
I had resigned myself to a life without.
But tonight feels different. Tonight is different.
Maybe it’s the wild energy of Somnus. Maybe it’s my constant dreams of death making me hungrier to live. Maybe it’s the mask, and the permission it gives me.
My face is not my own, and I’m seeing the woman before me with new eyes.
I run a delicate finger along my bust, pushed up against the square blue neckline. Tingles follow my touch. My pulse is thumping faster, and the heat between my legs is still there. What would it feel like to be touched there?
I want to know.
Whether I return to the palace, or die, I’ll never get this chance again. And if I’m only going to get one night of pleasure, I want it to be with someone who knows what he’s doing.
I set off to find the man in the silver mask.