The Mirror Said Don't Go to the Royal Academy novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Mirror Speaks Once
Linnea is about to bleed onto the Royal Academy's contract when her grandmother's mirror shows her ruined self from nine years ahead, and she takes off the engagement ring and chooses Grey Thorn, until Caspar arrives at her door and his lamp dies.
I was about to bleed onto the Royal Academy's contract when the mirror changed.
My grandmother's silver mirror stood on the workroom shelf where it had stood all my life.
It was supposed to show me my own face, nineteen years old and tired from packing.
It showed a woman who looked like she hadn't slept in a decade.
She had my eyes and my mouth.
She also had a burn scar that ran from under her left eye down toward her jaw, glossy and old.
Her black robes were grey with dust.
Behind her a stone door shuddered in its frame, and every blow shook more grit down on her hair.
I dropped the pin I'd used to prick my thumb.
"Linnea," said the woman in the mirror. "Put the contract down."
My thumb hung over the parchment, one bead of blood swelling.
"Don't go to the Royal Academy," she said. Her voice cracked in the middle. "Don't throw away your magic and your whole life for Caspar."
"Who are you?" I whispered.
"He doesn't love you. He loves Calista. They've promised to marry when he graduates."
The bead of blood fell.
It missed the contract by an inch and spread on the bare table.
"You're the only one still wearing his ring," she said.
My right hand closed over my left.
The ring had been cold since the day he put it on my finger.
It felt colder now.
"Anyone could say that," I said. My voice shook. "Tell me something nobody knows."
The woman's face did something awful, half a smile and half a flinch.
"When you were seven you snapped the needle off Grandmother's astrolabe," she said.
"You hid it behind the third brick of the fireplace. You never told a soul."
I hadn't told a soul.
I had been too afraid of Grandmother's face to tell even her.
The woman in the mirror lifted her right hand.
It had three fingers.
At the base of the ruined ring finger, where the finger ended, was a small white crescent scar.
I looked down at my own left hand.
I had the same scar in the same place, from the same night, a slice of brass from that same astrolabe.
"I'm you," she said. "Nine years from now. I only get one chance to reach you through this glass, so listen."
Behind her, the door boomed.
A crack opened across the stone, thin as a hair.
She didn't look back at it.
"You have two letters on that desk."
I did.
One lay under my hand, sealed with a golden griffin.
The Royal Academy's mark, and the dream of every young mage in Verrane.
The other lay by the lamp, its envelope still rimed with frost from three weeks on the northern road.
Grey Thorn.
The scholarship I had applied for in secret because I wanted one thing in my life that Caspar's mother hadn't arranged.
"Take the rune scholarship," my older self said.
"The Royal Academy's Resonance Oath will seal what hasn't woken in you yet."
"Seal what?"
"Grey Thorn has no such oath. There's someone there who can teach you to control it."
Her image flickered.
"Who?" I said.
She was already fading, her three-fingered hand pressed flat against the glass from the other side.
The mirror went dark and then gave me back my own face.
My heart was going so hard I could feel it in my teeth.
I took the poker off its hook, knelt at the fireplace and counted three bricks from the left.
The third one came loose with a scrape.
Behind it, in a nest of old soot, lay a snapped silver needle, tarnished almost black.
I held it in my fist until the point bit.
Then I took hold of Caspar's ring and pulled.
It didn't want to come.
It fought me over the knuckle, tight and cold.
For one second something dragged at my chest.
Then it slid free.
The cold left my hand all at once, and warmth ran back into my fingers so fast it hurt.
Across the room, every rune my grandmother had carved into the shelves began to glow a faint gold.
They had never glowed for me.
I laid the ring on the Royal Academy's contract.
I pulled the frosted envelope toward me, tore it open, and found the scholarship page and a line for a signature.
Under it, in a small neat hand, was a signature already there: A. Dahl, Rune Master.
I pressed my bleeding thumb to the empty line.
The blood sank into the paper and the page gave off a faint blue light.
Someone knocked at the front door.
Three quick knocks, a pause, then two.
I knew that knock.
Caspar wasn't due until tomorrow.
I crossed the dark hall and pulled the door open.
He stood on the step in his dark Royal Academy coat, one arm around a girl who was wearing his other coat over her shoulders.
Calista.
My oldest friend.
Her eyes went to my bare left hand and she turned the colour of milk.
"Surprise," Caspar said, and lifted his mage-light high, the bright flame he was famous for.
"We came early to take you to Lauremont."
Behind me, in the workroom, the ring clicked against the table.
His flame jumped once.
Then it went out, and the whole street fell dark.
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