Chapter 32. Mark and Mirror

Volamed didn’t sleep; it inhaled slower. The canals gleamed like veins under thin skin, carrying light instead of blood. From the terrace where she left the Garden’s echo, Lora followed Rael through the narrow corridor that curled upward toward his tower. Each step seemed to argue with gravity before agreeing to it. The moons hung close enough to touch if she dared reach from the top window. She didn’t. She’d learned the price of touching things that spoke back.

The tower smelled of glass cooled too quickly—sharp, clean, a hint of lightning left over. Rell closed the lower door and stayed below; he’d learned how to read the weather in her shoulders. Upstairs, Rael gestured toward a curved wall lined with mirrors in iron frames. They weren’t decorative—more like instruments tuned to silence. A basin sat beneath the central pane, water still, waiting.

“Mirrors help the marks remember their borders,” Rael said, quiet enough that the words didn’t startle the air. “They don’t