“You’re a worthy opponent, Marist,” he said as he took my king.
I mumbled a thank you and a goodbye before scurrying back to my room, anxious to put on some lipstick and go find Royce. It was a Friday night. Would we go out and make appearances? Or would he carry me off to a place where we could be alone?
There was a black box waiting on my bed, and my heart slammed to a stop before it crashed to the floor. It was roughly the same size as a shoebox, and I approached it with fear until I discovered the handwritten note beside it.
Open me.
I’d seen Royce’s scrawling handwriting enough times at the office to recognize it, and I let out a tight breath. My emotions swung wildly from dread to excited anticipation about what could be inside.
The fancy box was closed with a magnetic latch, and I slid my fingers beneath the lid, peeling back the hinged top. The white diamonds glinted and winked brilliantly in the light, set against the black velvet interior, and the beauty of it forced me to clasp a hand over my mouth.
And it grew more amazing the longer I stared at it.
From a distance, the masquerade mask just looked like glittery lace, but up close was where the finer details emerged. Delicate lines of diamonds curved and scrolled, each ending in a tiny head complete with emerald eyes. The half-mask was a beautiful tangle of slithering snakes.
I gingerly lifted it from the box, and another note dangled from the ribbon I’d use to hold the mask in place.
Leave this here and meet me where I proposed.
The girl who loved the movie Labyrinth swooned. Emotions surged through me in a frenetic mix of excitement and anticipation. What was going to happen when I found him? Was he going to tell me all his plans? Open up?
Would he show me our future?
The desire to put on lipstick was pushed aside—it’d only slow me down. And it would be wasted, anyway, because all I wanted to do was finish what we’d started in the dressing room this afternoon. I tucked the mask back in the box, placed it on the dresser beside my stack of mythology books, and darted out into the hallway.
Where I faceplanted into Macalister’s hard chest.
He gave a grunt of pain, dropped whatever he was holding, and his arms came up around me to stop my fall.
It wasn’t the first time he’d had me in his arms. We’d waltzed together the night of the initiation, but as we stared at each other now, I wasn’t sure which one of us was more uncomfortable.
“Macalister,” I gasped.
I was going to say more and tell him how he’d startled me, but the words died in my throat. Upon hearing me say his name, the glaciers in his eyes melted. His hands clamped down and urged me to stay.
“Are you all right?” He peered down at me like my answer was irrelevant. He’d judge for himself.
No, I wasn’t all right because he had his hands on my waist and it was unnecessary. I was steady now. “I’m fine.” I jerked out of his hold, and he didn’t bother to hide his dissatisfaction. I frowned. “What are you doing here?”
He bent, retrieved the item he’d dropped, and thrust the Greek mythology book toward me. “You seem to be in quite the hurry tonight. You left before I could return this.”
He was a voracious reader and had devoured almost all my books. I couldn’t tell if he genuinely liked the subject or if he only read them to get under my skin.
“Oh,” I said. “Do you want another?”
His expression was ominous. “Not tonight.”
“Okay.” I took the book from him and added it to my stack in my room, and was dismayed to discover he was still in the hallway when I returned, waiting for me.
He asked it like he somehow already knew the answer. “Where are you off to?”
I was reluctant to tell the truth, but he’d be able to tell if I were lying. “I’m meeting Royce.”
“Oh? Where?”
I had to pull the words from my body. “Uh . . . the maze.”
Dark clouds gathered in his eyes at my answer. “The hedge maze?”
I nodded and squeezed out a tight smile, trying to inch past him in the hallway. “He’s waiting for me, so I—”
“I’ll walk with you.”
Alarm coasted through me. “Oh, that’s okay. You don’t have to.”
“I insist. It’s easy to get turned around, and I believe last time you went in there on your own, my son had to rescue you with an umbrella.”
Last time—? I’d been in the maze dozens of times since that stormy night and probably knew it better now than he did. But Macalister often worked late. He wasn’t aware I spent most of my afternoons before dinner sitting beneath the fountain and reading.