Page 21 of Her Dark Reflection

‘I don’t know,’ Senafae giggled, ‘she might be hiding a wild party girl coiled up in that tight bun. With the right amount of—’ she shut her mouth as we summited the staircase and found the lady herself pacing towards us, her heavy keys jingling with every step. We bobbed our heads demurely at her as we crept past. Her eyes bulged as she took us in, clearly dismayed by our scanty clothes.

‘At least she knows I’m definitely not hiding any cutlery,’ I whispered, but rather than eliciting the laugh I’d hoped for, Senafae sobered.

‘Let’s hurry. I’m starving,’ she mumbled, lengthening her stride until she was a pace ahead of me and I was scurrying to catch up.

We were forced to attend a handful of rehearsal sessions over the next few days, though how anyone thought we were thick enough to forget how to stand still and look pretty was beyond me. Our evenings were often our own, with the occasional event thrown in. We attended a wine tasting and a card night, but the king wasn’t at either of those, and I spent the time trying to charm while simultaneously dodging all advances. I contemplated trying to fashion an opportunity to encounter him, but it was a terrible idea. It would reek of desperation. But in the meantime, the apple and the mirror featured always at the back of my mind, like a pair of lit fuses burning towards an explosion.

It didn’t help that every morning Mrs Corkill inspected our rooms when she checked us over for signs of bad health. I worked to be tidier than I’d ever been in my life, keeping my clothes orderly and every surface wiped and neat, trying my best not to give her a reason to look any closer. After all, she already thought me a thief. She hardly needed an excuse to go through my belongings. Every day that she didn’t felt like an unlikely stroke of luck, and every day I didn’t make any headway in my purpose for being there it felt like I’d wasted that luck.

But the Armistice Ball shone ahead of me, promising a distinct opportunity. There was no way the king would miss it.

Afrowntuggedatmy mouth as I scrutinised my face in the mirror of the dressing table. When I had imagined myself at the Armistice Ball, it had not been dressed like this. Every inch of visible skin was painted white, from the neck of my gown all the way to the top of my forehead. My hair had been drenched in a druthi potion that turned it stark ivory, which I vehemently refused at first. But Senafae had managed to convince me to allow it by promising the potion would only strip the lustre from my hair for a few days after.

‘It’s like swoon,’ she’d said. ‘A little every now and again isn’t a problem. It’s when you reapply it too often that you run into trouble.’

I’d heard too many stories about regular users who’d had to cut out enchantments suddenly for one reason or another to be anything other than wary. I also had other reasons for my reluctance. I’d screwed my eyes up tight when they had applied the hair potion, my heart pounding as I feared what might happen when the magic of my glamour met the magic in the bottle, but when I’d opened them it was to find my hair stark white but otherwise unharmed.

Now, it was piled atop my head in a twist that exactly mimicked Senafae’s, Vanaria’s, and the hair of every other girl in eyesight. We were a sea of white paint and white fabric, a tide of women rendered almost identical by the team of maids who had spent the better part of the day painting and arranging us.

My face felt tight and itchy with the paint, and I was already anticipating the moment I could scrape it off me, a fact that aggravated me to no end. I had been eagerly dreaming of dancing and flirting at the ball, of ogling the assembled nobility and trussing myself up as though I was one of them.

But this? I would never be mistaken for a member of the nobility like this. Perhaps that was the point.

At least our gowns were beautiful. The fabric shimmered and flowed and clung toeverything, accentuating curves in a way that was sure to scandalise any guest that hadn’t known what to expect. They’d have to be incredibly sheltered or stupid not to have expected to be scandalised, though. This was, after all, why tickets to the Armistice Ball were so coveted.

I eyed Senafae as she stretched her willowy limbs. I hated being reduced to just another maisera, almost identical to every other in the room, but I could see how the white rendered us otherworldly and exotically beautiful, the paint possessing a subtle iridescence that caught the light, leaving us glittering like a field of fresh snow.

She caught me looking and flashed me a grin. ‘Winter?’

‘Maybe. I can’t imagine the Great Hall decorated in paper snowflakes.’ I eyed myself in the mirror again, contemplating the whirling silver pattern that climbed the white paint of my hands, wrists, and forearms, then the tiny horns poking out from my hair. ‘I think we might be snow sprites.’ A legend of Yaakandale, snow sprites were said to inhabit the soaring mountain ranges. Some stories said they lived in the deep crevasses in the ice and tricked their prey close enough to fall, others said they convinced travellers to lie with them and sucked the heat from their body as they did, until all that was left was a frozen corpse.

‘I hope not,’ Senafae replied, screwing up her nose. ‘That will attract a certain type.’

‘Your attention please,’ Mrs Corkill’s voice called, and the room fell quiet. ‘I would like to remind you of your role tonight. You are performers first and foremost. Keep to your podiums for the early portion of the evening. Once the fire-eaters have entered, you can move about the crowd, but there will be ladies present. Please limit any bawdy behaviour to the private rooms.’ As usual, her face was pinched with distaste, and I wondered what had made her such a prude.

‘Fire-eaters?’ I whispered to Senafae. She waggled her eyebrows.

‘Please gather yourselves and follow me,’ the housekeeper finished, and without waiting for us to ‘gather ourselves,’ she turned and left the room at a sharp pace. There was a bustle about me as other girls clamoured to give final, harried looks at the mirror, swiping at stray hairs and fiddling with low necklines before falling into Mrs Corkill’s wake.

Senafae grabbed my hand. ‘Come on,’ she said in a voice hushed with excitement as she tugged me along.

We must have been quite the sight as we streamed through the palace like a giggling avalanche, sweeping gazes along with us as we passed servants in the halls, leaving some frozen in place and staring after us. There were people everywhere. Footmen and maids and hall boys raced around in a chaos of preparation while valets and coachmen tried in vain to garner help for some errand or other, their foreign liveries heralding the arrival of the first guests.

Mrs Corkill turned abruptly before we entered the Great Hall, causing Elovissa to walk directly into her. Mrs Corkill shook the girl off.

‘Pleasetry and remember that you are representing your king and your country tonight.’ She stared directly at Elovissa as she said this, and the girl seemed to shrivel and shrink. ‘The Great Hall is not a suvoir, and these guests are not tavern dwellers. Remember where you are at all times. Comport yourselves with dignity.’

I wanted to roll my eyes. Dignity, indeed. I imagined she had been kept far, far away from planning the Armistice Ball. It felt like everything within a hundred-yard radius of her lost all its energy and lustre.

With a final scour of her hard gaze, she opened a small service door and allowed us to pass by.

The scene in the Great Hall was dazzling. Hundreds of enormous mirrors had been stationed around the room, strung from walls, or propped up on stands. Crystal chandeliers dripped from the ceiling like elaborate icicles, and the light from hundreds of slender candles bounced from the surfaces of the mirrors below. The effect was of a huge, sparkling space of unfixed limits, where masked guests drenched in furs and silks and finery stepped in and out of sight as they moved, as though they were blinking in and out of existence.

The sight of so many mirrors sent unease tiptoeing down my spine. So far, I’d seen nothing to suggest there was a single flaw in the glamour but staring into my enchanted mirror every night and seeing my real face was beginning to result in an instant of fear every time I caught sight of a regular mirror, as though one might someday betray me.

Senafae squeezed my hand. ‘Good luck,’ she whispered, her face aglow.

I squeezed back. ‘I suppose I’ll see you after the fire-eaters.’

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