Read Online The Princess in the Opal Mask by Jenny Lundquist - Free Book Online Page B

from a vendor near the Clock Tower and ask him to point me toward the prison.
    “It’s just over that way,” he answers. “Make a left at the next street, and you can’t miss it.”
    The prison is several stories high, topped by a watch tower. I approach slowly, finishing off my apple tart and watching as a man and woman knock on the entrance gate, which is opened by a palace guard. They speak with him briefly before being shown inside.
    This is it. If I’m ever going to find out what Mister Travers knows about me and my family—or if he is my    family, the time is now. I pound on the gate. When it opens, a guard with bristly black hair peers out at me.
    “Yes,” I begin, “can you help me—”
    “State your name and the name of the prisoner you wish to see,” he interrupts, leaning against the gate.
    “My name is Elara, and I wish to visit Mister Travers.”
    He eyes me suspiciously. “There is no one here under that name.”
    He begins to close the gate, but I put my hand out to stop him. “He may have come in under a different name. He would have come from the village of Tulan, approximately two weeks ago.” I tilt my head and let my hair fall over my shoulder. Give him my most charming smile. “Surely there must be a way to find out if you’re holding someone of that description?”
    It works. He returns my smile, revealing a mouthful of gray teeth. “Maybe. What’s it worth to you?”
    I open my satchel and remove my four worthings. Wordlessly, he snatches them out of my hand. “Stay here,” he says, and shuts the gate.
    While I wait, I imagine all the questions I will ask Mister Travers. Several minutes later, the gate opens and the guard emerges. “I spoke with the warden.”
    “And? What did he say?”
    He looks pointedly at my satchel, until I open it and hand him the three worthings Mistress Ogden gave me the night before. I tell myself I’ll think up a good excuse for why I came back without the money or the fan. “That’s everything I have. Now what did the warden say?”
    He stuffs away the coins. “He said no prisoners from Tulan have been admitted in the last month.”
    With that, he slams the gate shut.
    His words settle over me like heavy chains. Chains that will keep me bound to the Ogdens. Blindly, I trudge back up the streets, pushing angrily against the crowd of people making their way to Eleanor Square. I drop onto a bench next to the fountain of King Fennrick, open my satchel and yank Mister Travers’s book from it. Of all the things my mother could have left me, there has to be some reason why she chose this dusty old history book.
    I flip through the dog-eared pages. Just like I’ve done a hundred times in the last two weeks, whenever I was out of sight of the Ogdens. I’m searching. For what, I don’t know. A sign from my mother, maybe. Something to tell me who she was and who she might have been—who I might have been—if she hadn’t given me up. The only memory I have of my mother is a vague, hazy image of a kind-faced woman, her curly red hair tickling me as she sang a lullaby. Or at least, I’ve always assumed she was my mother.
    I settle on a page and begin reading:
    The Legend of the Split Opals weighed heavily on Eleanor in her final years. Indeed, she called for her physicians often and said she was haunted by nightmares. She claimed that in these dreams she saw who would eventually cause the Opal Split. “Me,” she was said to have confessed. “She looked just like me.”
    I stop reading at the sound of Serena’s voice, coming from a nearby bench. A rose bush sits between the benches, shielding us from view of each other. I can barely make out her words. Something about a fan and a new dress, I think.
    I slam the book shut. For Eleanor’s sake, what more could she possibly want? Slippers made of pure gold? Hair ribbons blessed by the Masked Princess herself?
    “I don’t care about a silly fan,” she says.
    “You could’ve fooled me,” comes