The Man Behind the Mask

Anyone else would have gotten an automatic, “Please don’t.” I really do prefer Dulcie. But somehow, Dulcinea sounded just right when this magical old guy said it. Plus, he’d said I was sweet to match my name. From him, that sounded like high praise. “Thank you. Dulcinea is fine. And you’re…?”

“Prince Medwyn Greyfell.”

The metaphorical lightbulb went on over my head. No wonder he knew who I was. “You’re Eric’s father.”

“And there you have it.” He gave me a small smile. Brit had mentioned him more than once. Besides being Eric’s father, Prince Medwyn was also the second most powerful man in Gullandria, the king’s top advisor, the one they called the grand counselor.

Prince Medwyn held out that pale, veined hand. I gave him mine. He brought my hand close and brushed his thin, dry lips—so lightly, the whisper of dragonfly wings—against my knuckles.

I realized I adored him. Who wouldn’t? “Tell me more.”

“Concerning?”

“Oh, anything. The Norse myths. Who wove this tapestry and how old it is…”

“In 1640, it was presented as a gift from the King of Bohemia to King Velief Danelaw, in appreciation of Gullandria’s support in convincing the Swedes to withdraw from Bohemian soil. The creator, more likely than not a woman, as women are the weavers in our lands, is not known.”

I turned to the tapestry again. “Artist unknown…” A heated flush crept up my cheeks. “I hate that. Someone labored for months, or even years, creating something so beautiful. And in the end, who remembers her name?”

“Alas, Dulcinea. You do speak true.”

“It’s as if the artist never even existed. It’s just not…” Turning, I saw that the place where the old man had stood was empty. I blinked and glanced around. Nothing. He was gone.

It was pretty bizarre, how fast he’d vanished. And right in the middle of my sentence, too. Yet strangely, I felt neither dissed nor deserted. There was something about him. You just knew the everyday rules of conduct didn’t apply in his case. Like he was above them, or beyond them…

With a sigh, I turned to the tapestry again. By then, I’d forgotten all about my firm intention to avoid acting the wallflower. I was thinking of Medwyn, getting that hungry feeling I get when I meet someone interesting, hoping I’d see him again, planning to have a list of questions ready next time.

When I went back home to L.A., I wanted to have loads of Gullandrian background material. I tried to do that wherever I went, to take lots of notes, to get my questions about the place answered and to keep a computer journal of my impressions. I planned to write a lot of books in my life. Every location was a potential setting for a novel. Up till then, the farthest I’d been from California was a trip to New York City, in the spring, right after 9/11. I’d seen Ground Zero, walked down Park Avenue, visited SoHo and the Village. I’d come home deeply moved, full to bursting with ideas and possibilities. I hadn’t written my New York novel yet. Give me time. Same thing with Gullandria. I would take it all in, and take notes, as well. And someday…

“Dulce?” It was Brit, jerking me out of my authorly delusions of grandeur and back to the here and now. I was still facing the tapestry and away from her, but from the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a black tux: a man, standing beside her. More cheerful greetings, another name for me to instantly forget…

I turned with a big, hello-and-nice-to-meet-you smile.

And there he was.

My prince.

What can I tell you? That the world stopped? That the stars went supernova?

It was nothing like that.

It was everything like that.

“My brother, Prince Valbrand.” Brit’s voice seemed to come from somewhere down at the other end of a very long tunnel. She was so far away, she almost wasn’t there. Not to me.

The music, the glittering lights, the rise and fall of laughter and conversation around us…everything was overshadowed. Eclipsed.

By him.

He filled up the world. He had dark brown hair and eyes to match. A tender mouth—half of one, anyway. He was tall. Lean. Too lean, really, but with strong, wide shoulders.

And all that is…only fact. The full reality was so much grander, so much more complete. He was the handsomest man I’d ever seen—and the most terrifying.

How can I tell you?

How can I make you see?

Half of his face appeared to have melted. Remember that old Mel Gibson movie, The Man Without a Face? That was Valbrand. It happened, I’d been told, in an accident at sea that almost killed him. An accident that included second- and third-degree burns from temple to jaw on the left side—burns never treated, that healed on their own.

Brit had prepared me, or at least she’d tried to. We’d had a few minutes alone the day before and she’d told me of his injuries, so I wouldn’t make a fool of myself, gaping like an idiot the first time I saw him, so that I wouldn’t pile any more hurt on all that had already been done to him.

So much for Brit’s thoughtful preparations. I saw him and the world spun away and I flat-out gaped. Rudely. Blatantly.

There was a sudden, welling pressure at the back of my throat. I was so busy staring, I didn’t make myself swallow the emotion. My eyes brimmed and two fat tears escaped. They slid over the dam of my lower lids and trailed down my cheeks.

They felt hot. Scalding. Should I have swiped them away? Probably. Tried to hide them? I suppose.

But I didn’t. I only tipped my face to him, higher, as if to display both my face—and those tears.

Somewhere, in some part of me, I realized that Brit had to be thinking she couldn’t take me anywhere.

But it wasn’t something I could control. It was love like a thunderbolt. And it was my heart breaking.

For him.

For what I saw in his lightless eyes.

What he was once. What he had become.

For all that was lost.

Chapter 2

I gazed down at the redheaded American in the blue gown, at the wide eyes that were some gleaming color, green and gold and brown all mixed, at the tears sliding over those soft, smooth cheeks, leaving a glittering trail.

First one and then the other, the tears dropped. They fell to the front of her dress, just below where her fine, full breasts swelled from their prison of fabric. I watched them fall, watched dark blue turn darker: twin small stains. I wanted to lower my head, stick out my tongue and taste them: the salt of her tears.

That was when I looked away—for a second or two only, long enough to collect my suddenly scattered wits, long enough to remind myself that, while a madman might bend close and lick the tearstains from a woman’s breast, I must not.

I was a madman no longer. I was, once again, a prince. Once again, I was bound by all the strictures, all the dragging obligations and careful courtesies that being a prince—and the only surviving son of a king—entailed. This servitude to princely sanity was necessary. I had goals. Sworn. Sacred. And murderous. Goals the madman in me was too disorganized to achieve.

I dared to look at the American again. Her expression had not changed. She gazed at me as if all that she was, all she had been or would ever be, was mine. It stunned me how powerfully I wanted to take what she offered—right there. On the polished, inlaid hardwood of the ballroom floor.

I had to look away again. I glanced toward the dancers in the center of the floor. Once I had loved nights like that one, in the ballroom, all the lights blazing, fine music, the laughter of flirtatious women…

And the absolute assurance that I was where I belonged.

But that was before the horror. Before the madness. By that night, the night I met my sister’s friend, it was all too difficult, too hurtful—the pity in such large doses, the expressions of shock followed instantly by broad counterfeit smiles.