Chapter 13: The Fourth Day

The glass showed the third night turning into the fourth day.

Maelis stood at the black door with her forehead against the iron.

Her fist was a ruin, and her voice was gone.

She had been there since the first night, and the glass showed it by the stains on the stone.

Behind her, at the bottom of the ninety-one steps, a small brown bird sat on the lowest stair.

It did not sing.

It watched her, and it watched the door.

"Stop," Maelis whispered beside me, in the hall. "Stop it, I don't want to see."

"Lady Fairwater," my father said from the dais. "The Mirror cannot be stopped once it is uncovered."

She did not look away, and I did not either.

In the glass the silver key hung from her hand, and it would not turn.

She tried it again and again, and each time the lock gave a little cold click and held.

"The Water key turns at the fourth dawn and not before," a warden of the Deep said quietly, from somewhere behind us.

"It is the oldest law of her house. An angry family may cool a god in the dark for three nights, and never keep him there a fourth."

I heard it, and my chest went tight.

"Three nights," I said. "She stood outside for three nights."

"She was outside the door the whole time," said Wynne, very low, at my elbow. "Daelan, she was there."

The light in the glass went from grey to pale gold.

Somewhere above the Vault, the Dawn gate must have opened for the first time in four days on a sun that nobody had raised.

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