Chapter 84. What the Mirror Wants

It rained soft that night—the kind of rain that leaves the city shiny without pretending to wash anything clean. We slept in our sequester, bodies angled toward each other like the ends of a bow. We woke to bells that didn’t warn so much as remind. Trials have schedules. Fear respects a clock, if you force it.

Word of the Regent’s decree had run ahead of us like a thief. On the Gray Road, I passed two herders from the eastern edge, their boots still caked with their own pastures. They didn’t speak, but the way they looked at me carried the weight of empty corrals and foals penned under someone else’s sky.

Orla kept pace at my shoulder, jaw tight enough to crack a tooth. “Bread is war,” she muttered.

“And we just lost a field of it,” I said. The brand ached—not the burn of magic, but the throb of knowing that war meant hungrier mouths when the siege came again.

Kael’s hand brushed mine in passing, a promise he couldn’t feed anyone with yet.

The Mirror Co