Chapter 17: The Mirror Gallery

Maelis's POV

The sparrows stayed on the roof all afternoon and did not sing again.

By night they had gone quiet in their thousands, and I could hear them shifting on the glass above my room.

I lay awake with my hand over the thread.

Every time I closed my eyes, I felt his mouth on the Dawn step.

I got up, put on a robe, and went to the Mirror gallery.

It was my family's wing, and it was empty, with a lamp lit at the far end.

The Mirror stood under its cloth between two pillars.

I pulled the cloth down, and the glass showed me a woman in a grey robe with her hair loose.

"Show me what I forgot," I said.

The glass showed me the same woman, in the same robe.

It could not lie, and it could not show me what I no longer owned.

"I thought so," I said.

"It won't," said Daelan behind me. "I asked it myself, last week."

I did not turn round at once.

I wanted to see what my own face did first, and it did what I had expected: it went warm.

"You followed me."

"I came to check on the glass. I didn't know you'd be here."

"You're a bad liar."

"You said that this morning."

"It's still true."

He came and stood next to me, and the glass showed us both.

He was in a plain shirt with the collar open, and the Crown sat on his brow, dimmed to a pale ring for the night.

The ember in its cradle sat on a stand near the pillar, and it lit the side of his face.

I looked at him in the glass because it was easier than looking at him.

"I've been thinking about it all day," I said.

"About what?"

"The step."

His reflection went still.

"You kissed me back on the step as if you knew how," he said.

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