Roasted Wallpaper Quotes

At eighteen, Lady Joanna ben Luke had a talent for being invisible. The night of the Coronation Ball, she applied herself to the task and blended into the yellow and gold wallpaper like a chameleon. Invisibility, unfortunately, did nothing to ease her physical discomfort. She surmised the seventh ring of Hell was not much hotter than the Palace ballroom tonight. Her brown eyes widened with dread as she felt a slow rivulet of sweat run down the inside of her arm. A covert glance confirmed it, wet armpits. Great, just great. Even if they dried, which was unlikely in this heat, silk stained. She resigned herself to keeping her arms plastered to her sides for the rest of the night, which did nothing to improve her mood or ease the pain from the corset stays. Those medieval torture devices were supposed to make her appear trim. Instead, they dug painfully into her soft belly and forced her ample bosom so high she was afraid one of the straining gold buttons was going to launch and put someone’s eye out. She couldn’t even take a deep breath, trussed up and sweating like a pale chicken ten minutes into the roasting cycle.

and mouth and made her eyes feel roasted. She felt no fear, merely sat with her arms around her knees, her white, flannel nightgown tucked over her feet, and marveled at the fire’s power and beauty. She had never seen such color. It made every memory she had of this dismal room seem even more faded and dispirited. Then the heat battered at her again, and she realized she would die if she did nothing. So she reached out from within herself, and extinguished it. It vanished between one heartbeat and the next, leaving behind the cold ash and charred beams of a long-dead fire. Patches of wallpaper here and there lent a leprous look to the walls. She heard screaming from somewhere nearby; that, and the void left by the fire’s howl, filled her ears with a dull ringing sound. I believe