Page 32 of Her Blind Deception (The Dark Reflection #2)

Chapter Thirty-Two

I eyed my reflection in the mirror across the room, my hand going to my hair, pinching at my cheeks, then to my collar. I was nervous. Nervous to face the court, to see them all assembled after all that had happened. Wars and slaughters and the upending of an entire religion’s hierarchy. And this was since they’d called for me to be arrested after what I’d done in Sentinel’s Tower. Draven caught my hand.

‘Stop fiddling,’ he said. ‘You’re beautiful.’ As he would, because I was.

‘I need to be more than that,’ I muttered.

He pressed my hand to his lips. ‘You are far, far more than that.’

I met his eyes, offered a faint smile. Because for once, he didn’t seem to be mocking me.

‘Sit and eat something,’ he said, releasing my hand, crossing the room to where a tea tray sat abandoned. ‘You ate nothing at breakfast.’

I didn’t sit, but I accepted the tea when he handed me a cup. It had just the right amount of cream and sugar, exactly as I liked it. ‘I’m just nervous.’

‘I swore to you once that no harm would come to you, and I meant it.’ He plucked a tulip from the bunch in a vase on the table nearby. He’d given them to me earlier, as though he brought me flowers every day.

‘Why is it always tulips?’ I asked as I watched him twirl the flower in his fingers. ‘It was a tulip on our wedding day too.’

He tucked the flower into my hair, then returned to the tea tray and started putting food onto a plate. ‘You had a bunch of them on your windowsill.’

I stared at him blankly. ‘When? The ones Linus sent me when I was in the infirmary?’

He gave me a funny look. ‘I sent you tulips when you were in the infirmary.’

The world tilted. Realigned. The bunch of flowers delivered to my bedside the morning after he’d come to see me. I’d always assumed they were from Linus. ‘Then which ones were you talking about?’

‘The room I rented you when I gave you the mirror. You had a vase of red tulips on your windowsill.’

Dimly, I remembered back. Boxes of new clothes on the bed, my newly enchanted mirror above the mantelpiece. Dressing in preparation to audition for the palace. The flowers I’d bought from a woman in the street to brighten the grubby room in the rundown inn.

‘Oh,’ I said. Why had he noticed that? Why had he remembered that ?

The door to the parlour burst open, and Lester stormed in, sword drawn, shirt untucked, missing the breastplate and helmet palace guards usually wore.

‘We have a problem,’ he said.

‘What problem?’ Draven said from behind me.

Lester’s eyes flicked to me, then away. ‘A wyvern has just landed in the palace grounds.’

I didn’t know what a wyvern was, but everything about the way he said it turned my blood cold.

‘A wyvern? Is it a messenger?’

‘No,’ Lester said. ‘A girl.’

Oh no.

‘A few of ours were there when she landed, so she’s out of sight, but there are a few witnesses we might have to deal with if she is who I think she is.’

‘And who do you think she is?’ Draven’s voice was deadly calm.

‘Princess Gwinellyn,’ was the simple reply, words shot like bullets. It felt as though the bottom fell out of my stomach.

‘That’s impossible,’ I choked.

When Lester’s gaze landed on me again, there was violence in it. ‘She’s in the tower. Come and see for yourself.’

‘I will. Keep this contained,’ Draven’s voice answered, and Lester nodded curtly, before charging back out of the room, tucking his shirt in as he went.

Silence fell.

Heavy. Impermeable. So solid it felt like a weight on top of my chest.

‘That’s not right.’ I was trembling. ‘He must be… mistaken,’ I mumbled, not quite able to bring myself to look at Draven but straining to work out whether he had moved in the room, whether he was even now approaching me with soundless footsteps. The silence was becoming loaded. Dangerous.

‘Shame on me, to be fooled twice.’

The words were so quiet they seemed to creep just under the silence rather than break through it. Finally, I looked at him. His eyes were locked on me, the welling tide of rage reflected in their depths. He was so still, like a predator poised in waiting, ready to strike.

I swallowed down my panic. ‘That can’t be right.’

‘I’ve always enjoyed watching you squirm.’ He took a few slow steps towards me, and I shuffled back, my mind darting towards an escape. ‘But I’ve no room left to swallow anymore of your lies.’

The backs of my legs hit the armchair and I stumbled, falling into it. My heart was pounding like those few steps had been a sprint. ‘I didn’t—’

‘Shh,’ he hushed, leaning over me, his is hair falling into his eyes as he put a finger to my lips. ‘You speak to answer questions now.’ His gaze dropped to my lips and he ran a thumb over them. ‘Without any pretty deceptions on your lips this time.’

‘Draven, it isn’t—’

‘Shh,’ he whispered again, as he ran his fingers from my lips to take hold of my chin. ‘The way you say my name is what got us into this mess in the first place.’ He straightened and I shrank into the chair, remembering Lord Boccius, the sounds he’d made as he’d been eaten alive.

‘What did you do to the apple? I felt the moment the bargain was fulfilled. You must have given it to her.’ He folded his arms, studied me intently. ‘Baba Yaga,’ he said finally with a slight shake of his head. ‘Did you go to her, or did she find you?’

‘I went to her.’ The admission sprang from me as I realised that I couldn’t lie my way through this. He wouldn’t believe a word I said now. My survival instincts began to wake.

‘Of course you did,’ he muttered. ‘I’m sure that suvoir of yours was rife with stories of ways to end pregnancies. The only place Baba Yaga would ever be talked about as anything other than a force of evil. And she would have jumped at the chance to help you hoodwink me. What I don’t see, Rhiandra, is why all this for some girl you barely know? Is it guilt for the father? Or do you just enjoy double-crossing me?’

Gathering my courage, I pushed out of the chair and climbed to my feet until we were standing a breath apart, and I was wishing I was taller so I could look him squarely in the eye instead of craning my neck. ‘She didn’t deserve to die,’ I said with conviction. ‘She’s just a girl.’

‘I warned you that the steps to power are paved with blood.’

‘I was the girl sacrificed to feed the greed of those around me.’ The words were strong, sure. ‘I won’t become that sort of monster.’

‘Then you’ve learned nothing.’ He shook his head again, and for a moment it seemed like he was almost going to laugh. ‘So this is where the road ends. Everything I’ve done, all the years I’ve worked, the blood I’ve shed, the planning and waiting, and it’s all come down to you and me.’

‘I never wanted this.’

His throat bobbed, as though he were swallowing something down. When he spoke, his voice was rough. ‘Nevertheless, it’s what you’ve got. And everything has a price.’ Without warning, he spun away from me and crossed the room. He was out of the door before I had a chance to collect myself and wonder where he was going.

Before I realised where he was going.

I lurched after him, almost running to the door to call ‘Draven!’ But he was already out of sight. Plunging into the hallway, I chased the winding walls, trying to catch him, trying to beat him to the door of my apartment. But when I reached it, that door was already ajar, still swinging on its hinges as though someone had wrenched it open. I almost barrelled over the guard to dart through the receiving room, the furniture still, waiting, like it was holding its breath as I charged past. I tore through the public hearing chamber and the morning room, into the private dining room where he had pressed me bare-breasted against the window while he’d been planning to bring the kingdom down around me.

When I reached the bedchamber, I cried out to try and stop him. ‘Draven! Wait! Don’t!’

But he already had the cabinet open. He shot me one look, standing there holding one of the cabinet’s resident liquor bottles in his hand like a club, as he slammed the divider up, revealing the magic mirror. ‘A deal is a deal,’ he said.

I threw myself at him, my hands scrambling for his arm, just as he swung the bottle at the glass.

It hit with a calamitous smash! and a burst of light filled the room as the glass shattered, flying through the air, some of it cutting the skin of my useless hands where they clung to his arm. Pain ripped through my face, tearing a scream from my throat, knocking my legs from under me, and I dropped to my knees. It felt like my skin was being torn apart. I clutched my face in my hands, rocking back and forth, screaming, until suddenly, the pain was gone.

I sucked in a few shuddering, gasping breaths, still clutching my face like I was waiting for the pain to begin again, touching my skin, expecting rivers of blood or something physical to explain the agony. But my skin was dry and cool.

And scarred.

There they were, right beneath my fingertips. Uneven ridges of scar tissue where once there had been smooth cheek.

‘No, no, no,’ I began to babble, touching at my face, feeling the edges of what the glamour had been hiding only moments ago. Gone. The glamour was gone. And this was what I was left with.

I looked up through the cracks in my fingers to see that depraved man looking down at me, the rage draining from his face, something heinous replacing it. Regret? Pity ?

‘Don’t,’ I snarled, cringing away from him. ‘Don’t look at me, you bastard.’

Silence. Then, ‘Rhiandra—’

‘Get away from me. You don’t get to see me like this. You’ve brought me low enough—you’ve no right to see my face like this. You’ve no right to see my scars.’

Something seemed to be dawning in his expression as he watched me, something beyond the pity. ‘The face I gave you was a glamour,’ he said slowly.

‘I know,’ I snapped, my voice thick. Gone. A glamour that was gone. The woman I’d been pretending to be, that beautiful, regal queen, gone. Now I was just a scarred maisera, another victim of cruelty to line the streets of this city. And every shred of power I’d held over Draven, the dominion over his desire for me, was ashes.

Now he would destroy me.

‘A glamour tricks the senses,’ he continued, his words measured, deliberate, like he was trying to explain something to a child.

I felt him draw closer, bending low, and I cringed away, turning my entire face from him, fury and despair warring within me. Fury might see me tear his own face from him. Despair would send me skulking into the night to hide away. I didn’t yet know which would win. ‘And now you’ve robbed me of my trick and everything you wanted in me.’ A bitter bark of humourless laughter escaped me. ‘Makes this all so much easier, doesn’t it? Now that I look like this, you won’t think twice about hurting me. Now you’ll be free of me.’

‘I can’t glamour myself, you little fool.’

I froze. ‘What?’

I felt his hand on my shoulder, tugging me into facing him. ‘I’ve never seen your glamoured face,’ he said, impatiently pulling my hands away. ‘I’ve only ever seen your scars.’