HALLOWEEN ROMANTASY | The Masque Pt 1: Nobody Unmasks Until Midnight

Part One: "Masks On"A Halloween romantasy. Part one of two.

Masquerade, monster romance, one night only.I make masks for a living, and I have worn one to every event for nine years, so that nobody has seen my actual face. That is not a tragedy. That is a system, and it works.Then a letter arrives on paper heavy enough to feel like a slap, commissioning me to restore forty-four antique masks for something called the Mourning Masque. The money is absurd. The masks are older than anything I have handled, carved from something that is not quite wood and not quite bone, and when I clean them they warm under my hands like they are glad to be touched.The Host invites me to stay for the party. One rule: no names until midnight, when everyone unmasks at once.And across a candlelit room there is a man in the stag mask I carved myself, who says the eyes are set wrong, and when I tell him they are set alive, goes very still. We talk for three hours. He tells me almost nothing. And then, on a cold balcony, he begs me to leave before twelve.Twenty minutes to midnight, I finally understand what my finest work was for.Part one of two. 

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