The Jewel by Amy Ewing Read Free Book Online Page B

fine silver dust—I have to take my robe off for that part, and I put it back on as quickly as I can. But for the most part, I just sit in the chair. I wonder how Raven is faring, and who is prepping her. She must be hating this.
    â€œWhere are the other prep rooms?” I ask, as Lucien applies a thin layer of translucent powder over my neck and shoulders.
    â€œThey’re all on this level, or the one below it,” he replies, frowning at some imperfection on my collarbone.
    â€œWhen does the Auction start?” I hope I sound casual.
    â€œIt’s already started.”
    I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. I have no idea how long I was unconscious; I have no idea what time it is. “How long?”
    Lucien mixes some powders together on a little palette. “A long while,” he says softly.
    My fingers dig into the leather-covered arms of the chair, and I try to keep my face smooth, but all I can think is, Lily has been sold by now.
    Lily’s gone.
    â€œI’m going to work on your face,” Lucien says. “Try to keep as still as possible. And close your eyes.”
    It’s like he’s giving me a little gift, shutting out the world for a while and staying in darkness. I think about my mother, and Hazel, and Ochre. I see our house in my head and picture Mother knitting by the fire. Ochre is at work. Hazel is in school. I wonder if she’s found my lemon yet.
    I think about Raven, and the first time we met. She was thirteen and had been at Southgate for a year already, but she kept failing her Augury tests (on purpose, she later told me). I was learning the first Augury, Color, and she was in my class. I tried and tried but I couldn’t turn my building block from blue to yellow—they start you off with one block, and you can’t advance to another level until you’ve changed it. I didn’t understand what they wanted from me. I didn’t know how I was supposed to do it. Raven helped me. She taught me how to relax my mind and then focus it, how to see it before it happened, and she held the bucket for me when I coughed up blood. She gave me her handkerchief to stanch my nosebleeds, and showed me how to pinch the bridge of my nose to help them stop, and she promised me it wouldn’t always be this bad. My head was pounding and my body ached, but by the end of the day, that block was yellow.
    I have no idea what Lucien’s doing to my face, and I hope I still look like myself after this. Layer after layer after layer is applied to my cheeks, my lips, my eyelids, my eyebrows, even my ears. He spends a lot of time on my eyes, and uses soft powders and cold creams and something thick and hard, like a pencil.
    â€œDone,” he says at long last. “You have incredible patience, 197.”
    â€œWhat’s next?”
    â€œHair.”
    I watch the hourglass, the tiny trickle of green sand that has been slowly filling the lower bulb. Lucien’s fingers are gentle and deft, and he uses hot irons and steam curlers to manipulate my hair. I hope I don’t lose it when I see myself again. Maybe I won’t have to look in the mirror. Maybe I’ll just go straight to the Auction.
    My stomach tightens at the thought.
    â€œMay I ask you a question, 197?” Lucien says quietly. I wish he’d stop calling me that.
    â€œSure.”
    The silence that follows is so long, I wonder if he’s forgotten what he wanted to ask. Then, in a voice barely above a whisper, he says, “Do you want this life?”
    My muscles freeze. I feel like this question is not allowed, not permitted to be asked, or even thought about in the Jewel. Who cares what the surrogates want? But Lucien asks me. It makes me wonder if maybe he’d like to know my name, too.
    â€œNo,” I whisper back.
    He finishes my hair in silence.
    T HE SECOND HOURGLASS IS SMALLER AND FILLED WITH pale purple sand.
    I stand in front of one of the three closets