The Blood Mirror Never Lies novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Her Five Years

Cassian's POV

I woke on the catacomb floor with someone else's five years in my head.

Tobias Fenn was kneeling beside me with a wet cloth and his spectacles pushed up into his white hair.

"Your eyes bled, my lord," he said. "The Mirror has never done that to anyone."

The Court had gone. The candles were stubs. Odette's people had wanted to carry me up to my rooms, and Tobias had sent them away.

I sat up, and the room slid.

I knew this room.

I knew it from the inside, from a stool beside the glass with a rag in my hand and a keeper's cold fingers. I knew how it smelled on a Sunday morning, and what Tobias muttered while he oiled the frame.

I had never stood where I was remembering it.

I put my hand against the stone and shut my eyes.

She came in pieces.

A girl climbing the abbey gate with a letter in her teeth. A grey kitchen. Tobias saying, "Never trust a glass that flatters you."

A man on a velvet throne, tall and black-haired, looking up as she crossed the great hall.

I knew what her heart did then. It went off like a struck bell.

I felt it in my own chest.

I opened my eyes and said her name aloud.

"She's gone, my lord," said Tobias quietly. "The hounds put her out at the gate before dawn."

"I know."

I knew something else.

I had the window in my head. Five nights ago, at the vault, from the sill, in the dark.

Odette in the lamplight with her sleeve pushed back.

The Fallen knife in her right hand.

The deep, clean slice across her own forearm, and her face while she made it, perfectly calm.

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