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I moved as little as I could manage, studied a single elaborate cobweb that made beautiful scrollwork between two arms of the chandelier above me. My head was turned toward the false mirror, watching the door, wondering if one of the doormen might appear, or the imp who watched the beasts in the basement, but the house was strangely still.
All except for a soft, faint, rhythmic brushing from the other side of the wall.
A viewer.
I waited. I was alone, still, open to their gaze, but sullied and soiled too.
The sound continued. Not a brushing. No gasps. A scratching?
"I know you're there," I said.
I would not speak.
Not a scratching. Tapping. Tapping on the glass.
I frowned—
Show no emotion.
—and rolled toward the wall.
"Who is it?"
"Evanthia."
I sat up, not naked but wrapped in a silk robe, fine and soft and smelling of the sea air.
The mirror cleared, and I gasped at the sight of Conall's face smiling brightly at me. "Evanthia!"
No.
"Help!" I cried, drawing in on myself, turning my head to the closed, quiet door. "Conall, help me!"
"Evanthia, come here!"
"I—" I looked at the door again. There would be a man in the hall—he always came to me last, he liked me stretched—who would hear Conall's shouting.
"Théa," Asterion called, and I stared at the mirror once more, the minotaur there taking up the whole frame with his broad shoulders, his horns gleaming with gold. "Théa, come through."
I rose from the bed and lurched toward the mirror, an uncomfortable hollow in my core and all the embarrassing evidence of my use on my thighs.
"Come through, dear one," Laszlo coaxed, and the mirror was larger now, to my waist.
"I can't," I said, watching the door to my room through the reflection, as if Laszlo were only standing behind me.
But no, he was in the hall of the castle, his bedroom door open behind him.
"Come through, Evanthia. You'll be safe here."
I reached for the glass and sobbed as it was solid beneath my hand.
"Break it, Evie," Conall said, the meadow glowing behind him. "Break it and come through."
I searched around me and found a small, golden statue of a woman holding an apple, the snake wrapped around her arm. I had seen the statue before in Laszlo's—
No, in this room.
Or—
