I Woke Up as the Villainess Fated to Die, and Now the Emperor Can't Forget Me novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Masks

For three days I made a plan.

I would go to the masquerade, because every Selection lady had to.

I would stand on the lawn in the brightest lantern light I could find.

I would not walk Rose anywhere.

And I would never set one foot on that pier.

"Everyone knows your green, my lady," Edie said. "And your red hair. You could wear a sack and a bucket on your head and they'd know you."

"Then find me something that isn't mine."

She came back at dusk with a gown over her arm.

It was midnight blue silk, plain, a little old-fashioned.

"It was my mother's," she said. "She was a lady's maid to the old Duchess. Her Grace gave it to her."

"Edie, I can't wear your mother's dress."

"You'll have to. Nothing else in this palace fits you and isn't green."

She pinned my red hair up under a silver net and tied a silver mask over my eyes.

I looked in the mirror.

I looked like somebody's quiet cousin.

"Good," I said.

The lake lay below the palace gardens, black and still, with a white stone pavilion on its edge.

Hundreds of paper lanterns hung in the trees.

More lanterns floated on the water, little candles in paper boats.

A long wooden pier ran out from the pavilion over the lake, with a lantern on a pole at the very end.

I didn't look at it.

I found a spot on the lawn under the brightest tree and stood there with a glass of lemon water.

Two hundred people in masks drifted past me.

Nobody said my name.

For almost an hour, it worked.

Then a man in a plain black mask stopped in front of me.

He was tall and broad-shouldered, and his gold hair was hidden under a black hood.

He held out his hand.

"Dance with me."

"I don't dance," I said in a low voice.

"You do now."

My stomach flipped.

"How?" I said.

"How what?"

"How did you know it was me?"

He took my glass out of my hand and set it on a passing tray.

"You're the only woman here who's spent an hour making sure she's never anywhere near me," he said. "Every time I moved, you moved. It was like watching a cat avoid a bath."

"Lucan said you never come near the water."

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