A moon hangs over my head, waning from full into dark. The inverse of Ragne’s. The mark of Eiswald.
I see a bloody, malignant teardrop below my right eye, veins branching from it and blazing all over me, to the pearls at my ankles, to my belly button, to dozens of other pinpoints. When I press my finger to the end of one in my arm, Ifeela bump, a knot that wasn’t there, waiting to burst through the skin.
In the mirror, the veins swell with every heartbeat, glowing brighter scarlet. Rubies and pearls erupt from my spine, my eyes, my scars, swallowing me in gemstones, until there is nothing left.
Nothing but my greed.
It’s a reflection, the coward in me insists, just the reflection—just the mirror and the poison, nothing more.
I don’t know if it is real, but what matters is that it is true.
Tears spill from my eyes, and in the mirror, they look like pearls.
There is noPrinzessin. No Marthe. NoPfennigeist. No matter how many cards I lay between myself and the rest of the world, no matter how many lies I tell, how many lives I steal, it will never be enough. I will never escape the ghost in the mirror.
I will never escape her, because I am haunted by myself.
I see myself for what I am: a scared girl, alone in a cruel world, abandoned by family and friend, who would rather turn herself to bloodstained stone than let anyone get close enough to leave another scar.
A girl who would rather die than serve anyone ever again. Even myself.
And it is killing me.
The tears burn as they roll down my face. I can’t look any longer.
Ragne isn’t back yet. How long has it been? She said hours. Maybe something happened to her. Maybe I can’t wait. Adalbrecht is trying to kill me. How long until he’s at my door?
I can’t stay here. I need—I need help.
All my options come with a price. All I can do is choose which one to pay.
I can’t do this myself. Not anymore.
I need help.
I need to get out.
It’s a long, tortured process changing out of the dress (as I see the hands that spun the thread that . . . you get the idea), and it involves running into a lot of things. I think I lose at least ten minutes to staring at a tapestry. By the time I’ve changed into a plain dress and a cloak, the sun is gone and a sickle moon is slicing through the seam of the dark, deep sky.
I am almost completely delirious now. I see wheels in the stars, I see eyes in the walls, and maybe that’s the truth of them but it makes no sense to me.
I choose to take the servant passage down, because at this rate, I’ll get stuck on the trellises, staring at the dead roses until I freeze to death. Ghosts and memories watch me go, and I could swear the stairs are winding me in a spiral, but—I’ve gone this way a thousand times. Iknow what I’m doing.
Ihaveto know what I’m doing.
But when I fumble out of the exit at the bottom of the stairs, I realize I should have taken my chances with the roses.
The night is bitterly cold, the frost thicker here at the base of the waterfall, where layers of frozen mist have built up. And the narrow path that cuts behind the curtain of water is now carpeted in ice.
I stand there a moment, wondering if my breath’s coming in short, harsh gasps from the stairs, or because the Augur’s Tears are getting close to my heart.
I need help. And I can’t stay here.
I step out onto the icy path.
Yssar, the Low God himself, watches me from below the surface of his river, I see that truth. I’ve no idea what he makes of it as I choose each step like a drunken surgeon trying to sew a wound, trying to ignore the eons of history, the trysts and murders and everyday people passing along the track before and after me.
I should have known it for a fool’s errand. I barely make it halfway across before I slip.
