The Man Behind the Mask

I snipped away and she sucked a few peanut M&M’s—she’d always had a thing for them—and told me all about her quest to find Valbrand.

“They all swore he was dead.” She met my eyes in the wide mirror over the marble counter. “But he wasn’t dead. I knew it.” She put her hand over her heart. “I knew it here.” I’d never seen her so intense and passionate—well, except maybe when she looked at Eric. “So, since no one would believe me, I took a guide and flew to the Vildelund to find the mysterious Eric Greyfell, who had gone looking for Valbrand after he disappeared at sea.”

“And this was when—that you went to the Vildelund?”

“Didn’t I say in my letters?”

I shook my head. They were postcards, actually. There had been three of them. What can you write on a postcard?Hello, how are you? I’m fine. Wish you were here…

Brit said, “I went to the Vildelund in early September.”

“And at that point you still hadn’t met Eric?” “Nope. He was a hard man to meet. When he returned from his quest to find Valbrand, he came to Isenhalla just long enough to report to my dad that he was certain Valbrand was dead—and then he rushed off to the Vildelund, where he’d been hanging out ever since. I wanted to hear the story of what happened to my brother from Eric himself.”

“So you flew there and…”

“The plane crashed.”

I stopped snipping to stare. “With you in it?”

“That’s right. My guide was killed.” Her blue eyes, right then, looked nearly as haunted as Valbrand’s. “I was knocked out when we went down. I came to in the wrecked plane. The guide didn’t. The crash broke his neck.”

I sighed. “Bad, huh?”

“Yeah. Real bad. I crawled from the wreckage to find the renegade waiting. He shot me. Eric found me and took me to the village where his sweet aunt Asta lived. Asta took care of me until I got well. And eventually, I found my brother—right there, in the Vildelund.”

“With Eric?”

“That’s right. For a long time, Valbrand wasn’t…ready yet, I guess you could say, to come back here and deal with everything he’s dealing with now. He’d made Eric promise to stay with him in the north until he could bring himself to come home.…”

Our eyes were locked in the mirror.

It was a good opening. The right place to ask a few questions about her brother—and maybe even to tell her the way I felt. But she looked away and the moment got by me.

I finished trimming. I’d taken some off the sides, in layers, to give it more lift. I worked in a little styling gel, then grabbed the blow dryer she’d set on the counter for me.

“I love it,” she announced when I turned the dryer off. She fluffed with her fingers and turned her head this way and that. “It always looks fuller when you do it—now for the pedicures.” She dragged me into the enormous marble bathroom, where we soaked our feet in the sunken tub and then took turns in a paraffin bath.

She did me, then I did her, long sessions with a pumice stone and deep foot massage. We yakked the whole time. For polish, she had a rack full of Urban Decay, great colors with Goth names: Asphyxia. Freakshow. Gash. I chose Pipe Dream, a nice barely-there shade. Brit went for Toxin, a sort of Easter-egg purple that didn’t fit the name at all.

We wandered back to the bedroom, dropped our robes and stretched out on the bed, where we continued to whisper to each other.

Brit said she doubted she’d ever finish any of her novels now. That was how we’d met—a shared interest in writing. She’d started nine or ten books. About halfway through, she’d always get tired of them. She’d start something else or real life would beckon.

She grinned. “There’s a lot going on here in Gullandria. No time for scribbling, if you know what I mean.”

“Maybe later, huh? It’s not like you don’t have plenty of years ahead of you to get back to it.”

She made a noise of agreement, but her eyes had doubts in them. Whether the doubts were about her ever writing again or the number of years ahead of her, I couldn’t have said. I almost asked.

But she’d already begun the story of her adventures in the north. She’d stopped a rape and met a cousin she hadn’t even known she had. And she’d lived among the Mystics. Eric’s aunt, the one who had nursed her back to health, was a Mystic. The Mystics lived simply, by the old Norse ways. Eric was at home among them; Medwyn had been born a Mystic and Eric’s mother had, too.

She pulled a heavy silver chain out from under her pajama top and showed me the disc-shaped serpent pendant I had noticed the night of the ball. “My marriage medallion,” she said. “Among the Mystics, for each newborn son, they create a different medallion. This one was made for Eric. He wore it as a child. He gave it to Medwyn when he turned eighteen. And Medwyn gave it to me—as Eric’s chosen bride…”

I knew she wasn’t telling me everything. There were those moments when she’d get going on some part of the story and, out of nowhere, her voice would trail off. Her eyes would shift away.

I didn’t push her. I figured what she didn’t say was probably none of my business.

She wanted to know how my writing was going.

I told her I’d finished my fourth novel—a murder mystery with a female bounty hunter heroine. I was already thinking series. “And lately, I’ve been raking in the rejections.”

We both chuckled. It was a private joke with us. The more rejections, the closer to that first sale. She asked about my job in a boiler room, selling office supplies—toner, pens, inkjet paper, you name it—on the phone.

I groaned. “That was so last summer. I’m on to bigger and better things now. A Mexican restaurant on Pico.” Actually I wasn’t a hundred percent sure the job would be there when I got back. But such is the life of a struggling artiste. “Early shift,” I added. “Try not to be too jealous.”

“I am doing my very best.” She was grinning. And then she wasn’t grinning. “Dulce…” I knew by her sudden change of tone, by the shadows in her eyes, that something bleak was coming. “Last night, at the ball, I noticed you and Valbrand really hit it off.”

I made a sound that could have meant anything. “Um?”

“Well, I, um…” She was having real trouble getting around to it. I kept my mouth shut. Though I loved nothing so much as finishing other people’s sentences, right then, I made no attempt to fill in the blanks. She tried again. “That’s the first time I’ve seen my brother dance, did you know that?” I shook my head. She looked so sad. “They say he used to love to dance.…”

At that moment, I was absolutely certain that she knew how I felt—and that she was going to warn me off him. It was all there, in her worried blue eyes.

And yes, I’m aware that reading minds is not dependable, that you’re just too damn likely to get it all wrong. A girl should have sense enough to go ahead and ask.

But I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t want to hear her tell me how he was not the man for me.

It wasn’t as if I didn’t already know.

“I’m so grateful,” she said quietly, “that he’s back with us. But how can I tell you? Dulce, he’s…damaged, you know, by what happened to him? And I don’t just mean his poor face. He’s never going to be like your average guy.”

“What, exactly, happened to him?”

She was frowning. “I told you. A storm at sea. A fire. He was washed overboard.…”

Yes, she had told me.

When Valbrand went missing, Brit’s mother had phoned her with the news that the brother she’d never known was lost at sea and presumed dead. Brit had just moved in across the courtyard from me. She came over to my place and we drank strong coffee and talked all night.

It was really hard for her, to think that he was gone. She hated it so much—that she’d lost him when she hadn’t even met him yet. There had always been all those family issues that had kept her from ever getting to know him. Since her father and her mother split—when Brit and her sisters were ten months old—there had been zero communication between the two halves of the family. I say two halves because it was some kind of trade-off, I think. Daughters to Ingrid. Sons—Valbrand and Kylan—to King Osrik.

Kylan was dead within a year or two after the split, killed in a stable fire at the age of five. Which made Valbrand the only son left—and then he was gone, too.

I’d assumed at first that Valbrand must have been on some kind of cruise when he disappeared. That night in my apartment, sipping coffee, trying not to cry, Brit had set me straight.

In Gullandria it was tradition that any young prince who hoped to someday be king must accomplish a Viking Voyage. I instantly pictured wild men in horned helmets burning down picturesque villages and having their way with terrified women.

But I had it all wrong. There was no raping or pillaging involved, just a sea voyage in an authentic reproduction of a Viking longship. It was a symbolic trip, Brit said. A nod to Gullandrian history, to the time when kings went a-Viking and were unlikely to live all that long.

Valbrand had set off from Lysgard Harbor with a trusted crew of thirty. He made it to the Faeroes and set sail for Iceland. They’d heard nothing from him after that, though it was only a matter of days to Iceland and he had agreed to check in with his father when the ship made land there.

The rest we’d learned later, after Eric went looking for him and returned to report that he’d found the few survivors, all of whom told the same story about a storm at sea.

“The bit about the fire is new,” I said. “You never mentioned that until the other day.”

Brit pursed up her mouth. “It’s not a bit, Dulce. It’s what happened to him.”

“It’s vague. You know it is. Who started the fire? And what about these survivors? Who were they? Why did Eric have to track them down, if they were part of a trusted crew? I mean, why didn’t they come back on their own and report what had happened, if they were so trustworthy?”

She gave me another long look. “Dulce…”

I waited. She didn’t say anything else—I mean, beyond my name, in a weary sort of tone. Finally I said, “You’re my best friend. I know you. And I know when you’re not being straight with me.”

“I’m being straight.”

“Right.”

“I am.” She lifted up, punched her pillow, dropped back down. “There’s just…things I can’t talk about, that’s all.”

“Getting that. Loud and clear.”

We lay there, on our separate pillows, looking in each other’s eyes, both of us frowning. Finally she sighed. “I’ve said all I can say about what happened to my brother. So will you just please let it go?”

I could see there was no point in keeping at her. She’d made it painfully clear she wouldn’t say any more. “Yeah,” I whispered. “I’ll let it go.” For now, anyway, I added silently. I strove for a lighter tone. “Hey.”

“What?”

“You said that Valbrand was never going to be your average guy.”

“Yeah?” She was looking at me narrow-eyed—probably anticipating the next question she would have to evade.

“So. Was he ever your average guy?”

The corner of her mouth twitched. In relief, I was certain. Here was something she could be honest about. “No. No, he wasn’t. Once he was…everything this country needs in its next king.”

“And now?”

“Now…” She paused, considering. “Now, I don’t think he’s really sure who he is.”

I rolled to my back and stared up at the sculptured ceiling. “Maybe, over time, he’ll…get better.”

“I have a lot of hope for that. We all do. He’s come a long way already. You cannot imagine…”

I guess I couldn’t. And by her silence, I knew she wasn’t going to tell me. I rolled to my side again and propped up on an elbow. “Look. I think we’d better get it out there, much as it makes me cringe to do it. You’re telling me not to get interested in him, right? That there’s zero hope for any kind of…future between him and me.”

She shut her eyes and let out a groan. “Yes.” She looked at me again. “That’s what I’m telling you— Oh, Dulce. I’m so—”

I cut her off. “Do not,” I instructed, “say you’re sorry.”

“Okay,” she whispered. “I won’t.”

“And don’t look so worried. As of now, there is nothing going on between your brother and me. And nothing will be going on—or at least, I’m about ninety percent sure nothing will.”

“Only ninety percent?” She looked so irritatingly hopeful. She wanted my guarantee that nothing had, was, or ever would, happen between Valbrand and me.

I couldn’t give her that. “See, this is the deal. If your brother would give me half a chance, I would be on it. No hesitation. No looking back. Crazy as it probably sounds to you, considering I’ve spent a total of ten minutes in his presence, I have that strong a feeling for him. But as of now, things look seriously unpromising.”

She sat up. “What if I were to ask you right out to stay away from him?”

I held my ground. “Sorry. Won’t do it. I’m not going to avoid him.”

She flopped back down hard on her back and stared ceilingward. “Terrific.”

“Hey. Relax. I have the distinct feeling that he will be avoiding me.”

She rolled her head to look at me. “He’s right to avoid you. It can’t go anywhere.”

I said, with what I considered admirable tact, “I think we’re getting into repetition mode, don’t you?”

She rolled to her side and faced me again, reaching to brush my shoulder—a tentative touch, quickly withdrawn. “Bad move on my part, huh? To make such a big deal out of this…”

I caught her hand and only let go after I’d given it a good, firm squeeze. “See, that’s where you’re wrong. You’re my best friend in the whole wide world. You cannot make a bad move when it comes to me.”

Her wide mouth quivered. “God, Dulce. I have missed you.”

“Double back at ya.”

“There’s just so much going on.…”

“Hey, I’m picking it up.”

“So much I really can’t talk about.”

“You said that before.”

“Well, I feel like you’re not hearing me.”

“I’m hearing. I just don’t like it.”

“You have to know. Under ordinary circumstances, I’d be thrilled to see you and Valbrand hook up. But things are far from ordinary here. My father has big plans for my brother. Please don’t be offended, but they don’t include—”

“Brit.”

She stifled a yawn. “Um?”

“At this point what His Majesty would think about your brother and me getting together is seriously moot.”

“I’m only warning you that the rules are different here, that a king’s son is not going to—”

“Got it.” I was yawning, too. “We should get some sleep.”

She yawned again, this time full out. “You know, you’re right.” She closed her eyes.

I swear she was deep in dreamland instantly. I could have been, too. But you ought to try sleeping with Brit. Restless is too mild a word. She tossed and turned and groaned and kicked me repeatedly—all while utterly dead to the world.

Eventually, clinging to my pillow at the far edge of the bed, I drifted off, too.

Someone was shaking me. “Go ’way…” I grumbled, batting at the hand that clutched my shoulder.

“Dulce…” Brit’s voice.

I opened one eye. “Huh?”

“Gotta go. Back soon.” She was already halfway out of the bed.

I sat up, swiping a swatch of tangled curls back from my face, blinking against the bedside light that we’d never bothered to turn off. “What time is it?” The clock beneath the lamp said 3:10. “Ugh.” I fell back to the pillows. “You’re nuts, you know that?”

“I just… I have to see Eric.” Her face was positively glowing. “What can I say? It’s love, you know? I didn’t want you to wake up and worry when you saw I was gone.…”

I grumbled something unintelligible, turned on my side and shut my eyes again. I was asleep so fast, I didn’t even hear her leave.

The hidden door through the mirror in my sister’s room began to move. I doused my palm-size flashlight and stepped back into the shadows.

Brit came through, wearing a pink robe and absurd fat pink bedroom slippers. She shut the secret door, turned and saw me there. I was all in black, including the smooth mask of perfectly tanned karavik skin that covered my face.

She gasped, then shone her light hard in my eyes. “Valbrand. What are you doing here?”

“Keeping watch.” I had my arm across my eyes, guarding my night vision. “Shine the light away.”

She did as I asked, then reached out a tentative hand to me. Trusting her as I did few others, I allowed her to brush the side of the mask, which fit my face like another skin—one both flawless and without expression.

“Is this really necessary?” She meant the mask. In her eyes there was great sadness.

I saw no reason to answer her. “What brings you into the passageway at this early hour?” I knew what, of course. “Eric?”

“I miss him. Love’s like that.”

“Ah.” They were happy, my youngest sister and my bloodbound lifelong friend. This pleased me. Behind the mask, I smiled.

She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering a little at the chill in the passageway, and sent me a look of dawning suspicion. “It’s Dulcie, right?”

I did not so much as blink. “I fail to grasp your meaning.”

“You’re here in the passageway, by the secret entrance to my room, because Dulcie’s in there.”

I hadn’t known. But my foolish heart beat faster to hear it. “Dulcie. Your friend…”

“Yeah, duh. Like you have trouble remembering who she is.”

“You are angry with me.”

Her eyes grew tender again. “No. Never. I just… I saw the way you looked at her the other night. And the way she looked at you. Valbrand, you do have to ask yourself, where can it go?”

Nowhere, I silently replied. It was a truth I fully accepted. “We shared a dance.” I sketched the most casual of shrugs. “It means nothing.” And it didn’t, not in the greater scheme of things. I had felt something powerful when I looked in Dulcie’s eyes, and experienced a thoroughly shaming physical response to her. But it was of no consequence, I kept telling myself. And I would hardly have occasion to see her again. I asked my sister gently, “You object to my dancing with your friend?”

“No. No, of course not. It’s only…she doesn’t have an inkling of what we’re up against here. I don’t want her involved. I want her to enjoy her visit to Gullandria and I want her to fly home safe and sound the day after the wedding.”

“And so she shall. As for tonight… I knew a strange foreboding. It caused a restlessness within me. I looked in on Eric. And then, unbeknownst to him, on our father. I checked on Elli and Hauk.” Elli was our sister and Hauk was Elli’s husband. “Hauk woke, of course. He saw it was I and rose to speak with me briefly, vowing that all was well with them and their unborn babe. After that, I came here to assure myself that you, like the others, were undisturbed.”

“I’m fine. Honestly.”

“Good, then.”

“Eric’s awake?”

I chuckled. “Go to him. Find out for yourself.”

She came closer, laid her hand on my arm and brushed a quick kiss against the mask. “Don’t hang around in the passageways all night. Please?”

“You mustn’t concern yourself with me.” I touched the device on my belt. “I’ll signal if I require your aide in repulsing intruders.”

She made a scoffing sound. “Valbrand, you’re a little overboard on this, don’t you think? Nothing suspicious has happened in months.” Her pretty lips curved down in a scowl. “Not since that SOB Sorenson escaped us.” My sister had a special enmity toward the traitor, Jorund Sorenson. Before we found him out, Sorenson had pretended to be her friend in order to get close enough to try to kill her. “There’s no reason for you to—”

I put a gloved finger to her chattering mouth. “Go. Remind my friend what a fortunate man he is.”

“Will you go back to your rooms? Get some sleep? Nothing’s going to happen here, in the palace, in the middle of the night.”

I took her by the shoulders and turned her gently toward the waiting corridor. “Go.”

She sent me one last fond, exasperated glance over her shoulder before she hurried off down the gleaming stone hallway.

I watched until she’d turned the corner, and then continued watching, until the light from her lantern faded to nothing.

Utter blackness. It was good. Soothing to the formless anxieties I’d been experiencing that night.

I ducked back into the alcove a few feet from the now-invisible entrance to my sister’s rooms and, for a while, I simply stood there, arms crossed over my chest, surrounded by darkness, lulled by the gift of blindness, velvet black all around me…

Yes. I confess. I was thinking of the redhead on the other side of the looking glass. Thinking how simple it would be: to press the spot that would open the wall, to step through the glass.

I pictured her sleeping, wild coils of red hair poured over white pillows. Myself, the handsome prince I once was, bending close for the kiss that would wake her from her dreams…

It was but a fantasy.

In the world of reality, it never could have been—and it would never be.

Once, as a man who dedicated his life to his country and to the sacred duty to someday earn the throne, I could not have allowed myself a dalliance with a commoner from California. Not such a commoner as she, in any case—one with stars in her eyes and true love on her mind.

That would have been wrong. Cruel.

In the months since my return home, I had come to realize that the man I was on leaving had been vain, one who preened in pleasure at his handsome face and lean form, at his very goodness. And yet, all vanity aside, I did strive, in those earlier days, to be a better man. If I gave love casually, it was only to women who gave it back in kind.

Now, since the horror, I gave no love of any kind.

Everything was changed. Without and within.

My father insisted we could simply continue at the point where we had left off, that I should resume pursuing my former goal. That I would still one day be king.

I knew differently. I would never be king. I lived on for one purpose only. To root out and destroy the threat to my family.

Thus, when it came to the redhead from California, nothing was changed. The reasons might be different, but the truth remained the same: I had nothing to offer her. I might dream of her a little. But in practice, I would leave her—and the emotions she stirred in me—strictly alone.

How long did I stand there, in the dark, thinking of honest eyes and Titian hair, tormenting myself with what I wouldn’t do?

Too long.

At last I bestirred myself. My little sister was right. Lurking in the secret passageways was a senseless waste of time, time that would be better spent in slumber. There was no danger here. Only empty shadows and a futile longing for a tender touch I would never know.

I slid my thumb to the switch of my flashlight.

In that fraction of a second before light spilled out in front of me, I saw a glow—another light, moving toward me down the passageway.

Another light, and the sounds of stealthy footfalls approaching.

Chapter 4

In my sleep, I heard the strangest sounds: heavy grunts, the thuds of fists on flesh.

“Wha—?” My eyes popped open.

For about a half a second, I was sure I must be having a really vivid nightmare. But then something fell against the bed.

A man’s voice growled low, “I’ll cut yer balls off, fitzhead.” The bed shook again. There was another volley of thudding blows.

I let out a disgustingly wimpy little yelp. Scooting fast, kicking with my feet, I scuttled to a sitting position—up hard against the headboard. Cowering there, trying to blink the last traces of sleep from my eyes, I had a clear view of what was going on.

Three masked men. Brawling. I blinked some more and shook my head. But blinking didn’t help. They were all three still there, below the dais at the foot of the bed, two in ski masks, one in black leather.

One of the ski masks had drawn a gun. The guy in leather threw up a lean leg and kicked. The gun went flying. I watched it come spinning toward me.