Page 92 of The Devil

I turn to walk against the crowd back the way we came, back to the open front doors, fighting my way through what seems like a mass of hundreds. I need to get outside. Get some air. But the castle doors are closed, and two men stand sentry, so I turn into an unlit corridor needing to be away from all the noise. All the people.

“Jet. Slow the fuck down.” It’s Sev but I don’t slow. I walk as far from that room as possible until I can’t go any farther and, after trying several doors, I throw my weight into the final one, breaking the lock, stumbling in while tearing the top button of my shirt in my haste to get it open so I can breathe. Although the room is dark, I can make out a window from the lantern burning outside it and throw it wide open. I lean my head out and vomit, only calming when icy rain hits me, wind or the sea howling in this miserable night on this wretched island of horrors.

“What the fuck just happened?” Sev asks me, hand on my back as I stand half-bent, hands curled around the casement trying to catch my breath. “What did you see?”

It’s impossible. What happened happened over a decade ago. Our grandfather is dead. He’s long fucking dead. Those men? They’re not here, whoever the fuck they are. They’re not here. Not a single one. They can’t be.

“Jet?” Sev asks, worry etched in his face.

I straighten, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, feeling clearer. “Grandfather’s mask,” I tell Sev. “The one he used to wear. The one he made them wear. I saw it. I swear I fucking saw it.”

31

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.