Chapter 172

Abby

Imogen brought a mirror on the first morning.

A small one, with a cracked tortoiseshell back, the kind of thing that lives at the bottom of an old woman’s handbag. She propped it against the side of the bowl so that I could see my own face over the water, and sat down opposite me on the mat with her knees creaking, and looked at me.

“Eyes,” she said.

“What about them?”

“That’s what they’ll watch. Not your hands. Nobody in that hall will know what to look for in your hands.” She tapped the edge of the mirror with one finger. “But every one of them has heard about the Luna of Moonhaven’s eyes going silver in her own hall. Thorne will have seen to that. So they’ll watch your eyes. And if they see it once, even once, it won’t matter what you say afterward. They’ll have seen it for themselves.”

Her wrist was still wrapped where the red wool had cut it. She hadn’t mentioned it, and I hadn’t asked.

“Light the bowl,” she said.

I li