Behind the Velvet Curtain
The Supreme Ruler's daughter walks out of her father's palace under a name she invents, and finds a freedom that feels, for one bright year, like the first true thing anyone has ever offered her.
Zarina, daughter of the Supreme Ruler, is twenty years old and has never once been in a room where nobody knew who she was. Then she finds a way out of the palace at night, and a room above a side street where a girl in a coat too big for her accepts the name she makes up. But the city has other rooms, and the Velvet Veil is waiting in them: a woman who remembers everything she dislikes, a dancer who has never been embarrassed in her life, a poet who says aloud what she has never let herself think, and a little glass vial that does what nothing in the palace ever has. It lifts the grey. Sera’s rules break one by one, her father looks away from her eyes, and the only question left is who will recognise her first, and in what state.
- Act I A Door Left Open
- Act II The Red House
- Act III Two Lives
- Act IV Behind the Curtain
- Act V When Sera Was Seen
Who is in it
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The Supreme Ruler The ruler who renounced his daughter -
Zarina The Golden Daughter -
Balif The man who stayed for the daughter -
Tessa The one who moved a chair aside -
Oren The roofer who taught a princess to play cards -
Leni The baker who smelled of flour and said so -
Rike The musician who fixed things -
Davin The student who did very little studying -
Nalia The attendant who kept saying she did not know -
Ilyne Velvet Veil The one who went when somebody was frightened -
Veyra The friend who never said stop -
Carisse Velvet Veil The one who could always tell who had been kept - Silas Velvet Veil The poet who saved his endings
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Daren The one who fastened her dress in the dark -
Sabra The one who was never embarrassed - Ansel The player named for a tile he did not throw