The Jewel by Amy Ewing Read Free Book Online Page A

tightens.
    â€œDon’t cry.” Lucien says it gently, but there is an urgency in his tone. “Please.”
    I take a deep breath, willing the tears back, away from my lashes, from their precarious balance on my lids, back down into the deep well inside me. In a second, they’re gone.
    Crying will be useless from now on anyway.
    â€œAll right,” I say, my voice steady. “I’m not crying.”
    Lucien raises an eyebrow. “No, you’re not. Good girl.” The way he says it, it doesn’t sound condescending. He seems impressed.
    â€œSo,” I say, hoping I sound braver than I feel, “what happens now?”
    â€œNow,” he says, “you look in a mirror.”
    My heart plummets to my toes so fast it leaves my head spinning. I force myself to breathe normally as all the colors of the room blur together.
    Lucien puts a hand on my shoulder. “It’s all right. I promise, you’ll like what you see.”
    He leads me over to a lumpy, covered thing in the corner. It’s elevated on a little platform, and Lucien indicates that I should step onto it. My legs are still shaking.
    â€œDo you want to close your eyes first?” he asks.
    â€œDoes it help?”
    â€œSometimes.”
    I nod and squeeze my eyes shut. In the darkness behind my lids, I remember the last time I saw my own reflection. I was twelve. I kept a little mirror on the dresser in the room Hazel and I shared, and I was brushing my hair. Everything about my face was thin and pinched. My nose, my cheekbones, my eyebrows, my lips, the little point of my chin. Everything but my eyes. Huge and violet, they seemed to take up half my face. But the memory is old; it’s been taken out and pored over so many times, like a letter, read and reread until it’s wrinkled and creased and some of the words are blurred.
    There is a gust of air and a swish of fabric. “Whenever you’re ready,” Lucien says.
    I hold my breath and focus on my heart as it punches against my chest. I can do this. I won’t be afraid.
    I open my eyes.
    I’m surrounded by three identical women. One looks directly at me, the other two at angles on either side. There is no thinness in her face, except maybe in the tiny point of her chin. Her cheeks are round, her lips full and parted slightly in surprise. Black hair cascades over her shoulders. But her eyes . . . her eyes are exactly as I remember them.
    She is a stranger. She is me.
    I try to reconcile those two thoughts, and as I move my hand to touch my face, I start laughing. I can’t help it. The girl in the mirror moves with me exactly, and for some reason I find this funny.
    â€œThat’s not the usual reaction,” Lucien says, “but it’s better than screaming.”
    That brings me up short. “Some girls scream?”
    He purses his lips. “Well, now, we don’t have all day. Let’s get you ready. Please, sit.”
    He gestures to a chair beside a table littered with makeup. I take one last look at the stranger in the mirror, then step off the podium and sit down. There are so many tubes and creams and powders, I can’t imagine what they’re all for or that they could possibly be used on just one person. Three hourglasses sit on a small shelf above the table, in different sizes with different colored sand.
    Lucien dips his hands into a basin of sweet-scented water, drying them on a fluffy white towel. Then, very carefully, he turns over the first hourglass, the largest one, full of pale green sand.
    â€œAll right,” he says. “Let’s get started.”
    W HENEVER I’ D IMAGINED THE PREP PROCESS, I ALWAYS thought it might be the only fun part of the Auction. Someone doing your hair and makeup and all that.
    It’s actually incredibly boring.
    I can’t see anything Lucien’s doing, except when he manicures my hands and polishes my toenails, or covers me from head to toe in a