I squeeze the cloth hard, and water drips down onto the floor.
“Isn’t it wonderful, being in love?” she asks.
“No.” It feels like the rope is back around my throat, cutting off my air supply. And yet, to finally be sure, to know my feelings, even if they are desperate, even if I may never see him again—it’s terrible and wonderful at the same time.
“I love him,” I whisper.
“Love.” April spits the word out. “Even if I live and by some miracle I’m not hideous, all Kent really wants is to take his airship and explore, to see what’s left of the rest of the world. That’s why he built it.”
“Kent?” I ask.
“Don’t ask. I can’t explain it. And it will never work. I could never go with him,” April continues. “Even if we find a way to stop my illness, no one with the contagion can go exploring.”
I take her hands. “We’ll find a way.”
“I’m pretty sure that everything doesn’t always work out in the end,” April says. “Not for everyone. You’ve just figured out that you love Will. So you’re going to break my brother’s heart.”
A few weeks ago I might have argued that Elliott doesn’t have a heart to break. Now we just sit in silence, waiting for the night to be over.
April drifts off, and I go check on Mother.
She is sitting in her chair, with her eyes closed. I’m not sure if she has dozed off or not, but her mask is askew. I reach over and adjust it, not wanting to take any chances now that April is with us.
She reaches for my hand. Despite the makeshift splint on her crushed finger, her hand feels like it always has. Cool. Loving. Hands that tucked me into bed at night and felt my brow when I was sick.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
She opens her eyes. “You don’t need to apologize, Araby.”
I kiss her forehead and then tiptoe back to the bedroom, where I stare at the ceiling as the gruesome images of the night replay in my head. April lies beside me, and though she is quiet, I know she isn’t sleeping either. Tomorrow is the masked ball. Tomorrow it all ends, one way or the other.
Sometime in the earliest hours of morning, we hear screams. The nights’ festivities are coming to an end.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
FOR HOURS ONCE THE SUN IS FULLY RISEN, THE castle is silent. Guests are sleeping, or hiding, terrified by the revelries last night. We’re given no breakfast, but taciturn servants deliver an afternoon meal. April asks if she can visit her mother, but the request is ignored.
She shoves back from the table and stalks over to the barred window.
My bag was brought to the tower, along with the mask that Prospero borrowed, so I pull out the little poetry book that Father gave me. Tucked inside is the flyer accusing Father of creating the contagion. I hand the pamphlet to Mother and watch as she reads. Her cheeks turn pink.
“Did he know—” I start, but I can’t bring myself to finish. Did he know it would kill people? Would kill almost everyone?
“He had nightmares. So many nightmares. Afterward . . .” She crumples the pamphlet in her fist, rips it, and lets the pieces fall to the floor. “There was a time when he actually hung a noose in our bedroom. I begged him to stop, reminded him that you were still alive.”
I dreaded hearing this from him, but it’s worse hearing it from her.
“The guilt was crushing him,” she whispers. “He never meant to hurt anyone. That’s why he was so driven to create the masks. And then Finn—”
She stops at the sound of a key rasping in the lock. I leap to my feet, but Mother is seemingly frozen, and April remains at the window. A troupe of maids sweep into the room with bundles of satin and bows.
I bend closer to Mother’s ear. “What will they do to Will? The one who saved me, last night,” I ask in a low voice.
“He didn’t save you, Araby,” Mother says. “There are two plagues raging through the city. We’re trapped in this palace, and Prospero has decided to use you for his entertainment. He never changes his mind about such things. None of us have been saved.” It isn’t an answer. She can’t tell me that she thinks Will must be injured or dead. I refuse to believe that he’s dead.
The maids draw us apart and shake out the dresses.
April’s dress is silver, soft and flowing. It reminds me of the one I wore from Elliott’s closet, though this is satin rather than silk.
“You are going to be beautiful,” a tiny maid says to her. Even in this terrible place, there are kind people.
“I already am, though this dress is nice.” April smiles. But she is leaning against the wall and doesn’t move to touch or truly admire the dress. I’m afraid to show too much concern for her in front of the audience of maids. Still, I keep my eye trained on her when I can. She is very pale.
Next the girls unwrap a dress the same shade of blue as the strands of my hair. It’s lovely. I reach out to touch it, but they pull it away and usher us from our tower prison, down a hall and two sets of twisting stairways, to a series of interconnected rooms with bathing alcoves.
I look for a chance to break away, but guards flank us the entire time.
The room fills with steam and condensation builds up behind my mask, but I don’t take it off. The maids begin to untangle my hair. If they brush April’s, they will see that she’s been hiding the contagion.
Even as I try to come up with a plan, they gather around her, exclaiming over the waves in her long blond hair. One brings out curling tongs and begins piling her hair on top of her head.
“No—” I start to say.
“Leave it down.” April keeps her voice casual, throwing me a look.
I study their faces. These girls are young; they may have come from Prospero’s orphanages. And so they might be sympathetic to us. Even, possibly, to Will. I’m not averse to using his striking looks to help get us out of danger.
“You know what happened to me and my friend in the throne room last night,” I begin.
They don’t answer, but they all look sidelong at me, and then at one another.
“Is he alive?” I ask. “Do you know where he is?”
One girl glances at the red marks around my throat. As she rubs some sort of lotion into my hair, she leans close and whispers, “He is in the cell under the prince’s private chambers. It’s where he keeps the dangerous criminals.”
One of the girls working on April’s hair gasps and drops the curling tongs. She’s seen the contagion. It was inevitable. The girl adjusts her mask nervously.
“If anyone sees this,” she says fearfully, “things will get ugly. Even if you are Prospero’s niece.”
“We need to get her out,” I say. “Back to the city. My friend, Will—he could help.”
“There might be a way,” the tiny maid who admired April’s dress says. The other girls try to quiet her, but she waves them off. “What does it matter?” she asks. “If the prince kills them, then they’re dead, like everyone else. But if not, they can take us all back to the city. They can save us.”
The other maids have all stepped away from April. Her hair shines. It’s the shadows under her eyes that worry me. And the oozing contagion.
“Tell me,” the tiny one says to me. “Did you really attack the orphanage and rescue all of the girls?”
“Yes,” I say.
“We were all trained there. We know what it’s like. You saved those girls, even though you didn’t have to. Even though you are the richest girls in the city.”
“It was the right thing to do.” I meet each girl’s eyes. How far can this heroism take me?
“So can your father cure her?” The small one gestures to the sore that mars April’s neck. “What about the Red Death?” They are as frightened of the city and what’s outside the castle as everyone here. But they may be more frightened by what is inside. Enough to trust me, the scientist’s daughter. I can’t explain to them that it isn’t my father who has promised to help April. That I have to get her to her own father.
“If we get her away in time, yes, I think she can be cured. And my father is working with April’s brother to find a cure for everyone. I want to get her out tonight. She and Will must return to the city.”
“Araby?” April says in a whisper. “I don’t know if I can make it.”
“You have to,” I say. “Just a few more hours.”
The maids help me into my dress. Mother reenters the room, followed by her own maids. She eyes the scandalous way the dress clings to me. The maids pull my hair back from my face and curl it, arranging a few strands to spill down my back.
One of the girls opens a box and presents a mask. At first I think it’s the ornate one Elliott shoved back into the drawer in my bedroom. But then I realize that though it reaches over the eyes, disguising the wearer, it leaves the mouth terribly, dangerously, exposed. The girls have painted my lips a shocking red.
The mask is adorned with sequins and feathers. When I put it on, it complements my cheekbones, the contours of my face, while making my eyes look enormous and mysterious.
“Peacock feathers are unlucky, aren’t they?” Mother asks. I used to say that I was the lucky one, because I lived and Finn died. The rest of this night will prove whether that was true.
April dusts powder over my shoulders, making my skin glow. “It isn’t so different from all the nights when we went to the Debauchery Club,” she says, her voice falsely bright. We both know how different this is. We controlled our visits to the Debauchery Club, deciding when to arrive and when to leave. Our lives were never at stake.
The maids dress Mother in a gown that is the opposite of mine, black with blue accents. Her mask also has peacock feathers. She considers it with distaste.
The small maid leans close to me, applying eye makeup.
“We can hide the prince’s niece,” she whispers. “She must act like she is going to the ball, and we’ll take her to a hidden room. Couples sometimes use them, but not until much later. What about your handsome friend?”
“Can you take me to him before the ball?” I ask. I know it is too much to ask, and her eyes go wide, but then she smiles.
“Do you have something to bribe the guards with?”
“I have a diamond,” I say. “But only one. They will have to find some way to split the wealth.”
Elliott would be furious. But I have nothing else to give.
She grips the seam of my beautiful dress and pulls. The fabric separates, leaving a gaping hole.
“Her dress is ripped,” she announces. “The seamstresses are all at work downstairs. I’ll take her to see if one of them can mend it.” And then she’s pulling me through the corridor, down three flights of stairs, conferring with two more maids, and finally I’m handing Elliott’s ring to a guard. The diamond flashes, and the men are suitably impressed.
“Through here,” the guard says. “You’ll have to speak to him through the door.”
The last time Will and I spoke through bars, I was on the inside, and he was walking away from me. This door is heavy oak, and the bars are so high that I can barely stand tall enough to see through them.