Page 33 of Her Dark Reflection

‘I’m pregnant.’ The words fell out of her mouth like stones, hard and cold and weighted, reverberating in the stillness as they clattered to the floor.

‘Oh.’ I sat heavily on her bed and stared at the curls of woodgrain in the floorboards as my excitement fled. ‘To who?’

‘Does it matter?’ she snapped.

‘That depends.’

‘On how rich he is? Rich enough to insist on paying for me to see a surgeon.’

‘You’ve told him?’

She was silent for so long a time that I thought she wouldn’t answer. ‘He knows.’

There was so much in those two words. I could hear the resignation, the disappointment. Whoever he was, what had she been expecting of him? Every suvoir had its legends of maisera being swept into marriage by a wealthy client, but they were legends for a reason. It rarely happened. She was a fool if she thought a child would make it any more likely.

A small voice in my head sniggered at the irony ofmecalling Senafae a fool for thinking she could convince a nobleman to marry her.

‘Don’t go to one of those butchers in the Trough,’ I said, my stomach curling with the memory of a girl at the Winking Nymphwho’d sought that solution. Madame Luzel had been unsympathetic when any of her girls found themselves ‘in the family way’. Her policies were straight forward and indifferent: every maisera must manage their birth control. There was no place for babies in her establishment. I had been fifteen when I saw exactly what that looked like in practice. I had still been a maid at that point, cleaning the suvoir to earn my keep until I completed my training. I hadn’t known the girl in person, only her laundry. She seemed to love all things shiny, even sequined her underclothes. Her sheets had been so bloody that I’d vomited when I pulled them out of the laundry bag. Madame had insisted I couldn’t throw them away, that I had to remove the stains.

After that, there’d been no more spangled underclothes.

‘Don’t see that I have much of a choice.’ She glanced at me, and her eyes were as hard as her voice.

I touched a hand to her shoulder again. ‘Why don’t you go to Baba Yaga?’

She jerked away from me with a cynical laugh. ‘I’d have better luck in the Trough.’

‘I know someone who’s been to see her, Sen. She came back whole, unharmed. Which is more than I can say for those who’ve gone to a surgeon.’

Senafae stood abruptly. ‘I don’t need your fairy stories. I’ll sort this out myself, thank you. Go back to your fancy new apartment and leave me alone.’ Her tone was so bitter I could almost taste it.

‘Why are you getting angry with me? I’m trying to help you.’

‘By telling me to go into the Yawn? I don’t need that kind of help.’ She made for the door but paused on the threshold. ‘I wish I’d never told you.’

‘I’m not going to tell anyone else.’

‘How would I know that? It’s not like you’ve ever trusted me with your secrets. I know nothing about you. I certainly know nothing weighty enough to ensure your silence.’

‘Senafae—’

‘Enjoy your new life.’ With that, she stormed out and slammed the door behind her.

I continued to sit on her bed, dumbstruck. Her anger had been so strange, so out of nowhere. There seemed to be so much resentment in it. Though why she resented me, I couldn’t fathom. I wasn’t the one who’d landed her in such a mess. And how had she wound up pregnant in the first place? The tonics we took were almost failsafe. Had she forgotten a dose?

With a sigh, I stood up and returned to my packing with less gusto than before. When a footman arrived to lug my trunk up to my new apartment, I was ready and waiting. I took one last look at the tiny room, the two single beds, the rickety wardrobe still hanging with Senafae’s clothes, and felt a strange, sinking feeling, like I was losing something I hadn’t realised I’d wanted to keep. I shook the feeling off and followed the footman through the servant’s quarters, pausing at the dining room where the other maisera were gathered for lunch. I scanned them, attracting a few glances as I did, but Senafae wasn’t there. It wasn’t until I’d moved on that I realised Vanaria wasn’t either.

And it wasn’t until the footman was heaving my trunk through the doorway of my new rooms that I began to wonder at Senafae’s timeline. We had been in the palace for less than a month.

When had Senafae fallen pregnant?

And how long had she known?

Therewasadoorin the suite that was locked. I had rattled the latch, stuck pins in the keyhole, and peered into the crack of darkness beneath it, but I couldn’t fathom where it led. Was it a storage closet? Another room? It was in a small antechamber attached to my bedroom whose purpose I had assumed was as a sort of gallery displaying landscape paintings, a marble bust and a few fusty old portraits that I was going to have moved at the first opportunity. But then I found the door, tucked away behind a heavy curtain.

I decided it was probably a storage room and resigned myself to asking for a key to it in the morning. But it was that door I thought of when I heard scuffling noises coming from the antechamber later that night, when I was sitting at my new dressing table brushing my hair for bed. I stood and went to the entrance of the antechamber and peered into the gloom, lit faintly by a small light weave dangling from a bracket on the wall.

There was a low thump, then the click of a latch, and suddenly that hidden door swung open. The room echoed with my shriek as someone stepped through, batting at the curtain to clear it from his path.

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