Greatmask by Ashley Capes

Author:Ashley Capes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epic Fantasy, magic, war, adventure, coming of age, masks, bone mask
Publisher: Close-Up Books
Published: 2020-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 30.

Seto sheathed his knife.

In a sparsely furnished room of stone, a young lady stood by open curtains. The edges of her dark hair were almost afire in the pale light, swirling in a cold breeze that reached him well across the room. Cera’s daughter Mila, he assumed. A small table bore a jug of water, the piece of furniture had been squeezed between a large bed and an armchair, which had a rumpled blanket strew across it.

Lady Cera herself lay within the bed, blankets pulled up to her chin. Her hair fanned the pillow and her cheeks were sunken, deep black rings darkened closed eyes. The scent of death reached him but the breeze took it quickly.

“Who are you?” Mila asked without turning, her voice empty.

“King Oseto.”

She flinched then spun. Her face was haggard for one so young, and there were traces of Cera’s haughtiness, but Mila’s drawn look appeared to come from a careworn place.

“Your mother?”

Mila knelt beside the bed, reaching out to touch Lady Cera’s hair. “She was so bitter at the end. The illness just...I tried to make it easier for her but...it was as though she burnt herself away.”

“I am sorry.”

The girl said nothing. She did not, after her first flinch, appear to care why a king was visiting, or why that man wore a Greatmask. Or even wonder what he might want.

“Mila, I...” he trailed off. Ana, could he really go through with it?

You no longer have a choice, Little Oseto. Her voice was hard. I will not accept your body but I will absorb you if I must, then simply rest upon your corpse until I am found. And it will be a shorter wait than that which you offered at the bottom of the ocean – the moment Mila lifts me from your face I will commence the Sacrifice.

“Then she truly is my brother’s –”

Yes. She bears the blood of Casa Pesce. And I will have her as Sacrifice with you alive or dead. Choose.

Seto removed Chelona and hesitated. Mila was still lost in her grief, she’d bowed her head. “Will she feel the pain I did?” he whispered.

Yes. Though it will not last.

“And she will simply...be gone?”

No. She will become part of me. Enough, Oseto.

He knelt beside her and took a deep breath. The girl was miserable, was his act one of mercy? Seto sneered at himself. Hardly.

And yet... “Mila, I have something that may ease the suffering you feel. For your mother.”

Mila lifted her head. Her eyes were moist with tears. “What?”

“The Greatmask. If you wear it, you will forget your misery.”

A slight frown marred her brow. “How?”

“It is very powerful.” As you will soon discover, sadly.

“Then can it restore Mother?”

“No, that is a feat it cannot achieve.”

She reached out a hand. “But wearing the mask will take the pain away.”

He could only nod.

Mila accepted the mask and examined it a moment before raising it to her face, her eyes revealing little expectation. Yet when Chelona was affixed, Mila’s eyes widened in terror and then the hollows of the mask flicked to midnight black.

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