Page 72 of Her Dark Reflection

I turned and leaned against the side table, my lips pinched tightly as I studied her. ‘Do you know what I think you need?’ I asked. ‘I think you need to have a little fun. A little adventure. You always look so sad.’

She ducked her head. ‘I know I’m nothing like you. You’re so brave and strong.’

‘You don’t need to be anything like me,’ I muttered to myself, before crossing the room and pulling a chair close to her. ‘Everything has been so dour and gloomy around here, with us all dressed in black and the court in mourning. I’m tired of it.’ I produced a tiny snuff box from within my skirts and shook it in the air. ‘I have an idea for a way to spice things up a little around here.’

To her credit, she wasn’t just a guileless lamb being led to the slaughter. She frowned. ‘What’s that?’

I opened the lid and sat the box before her. The bluish powder within glistened. ‘Have you ever tried swoon?’

‘I’ve never heard of it.’

Of course she hadn’t, being locked away behind the palace walls. She hadn’t seen the hovels full of hollow-eyed addicts in the Trough, their skin tight against their bones. The drug was wonderful; it made people bright-eyed and healthy and euphoric, and if they had enough, it gifted visions and scraps of magic. I’d seen someone on swoon shatter a glass with only their mind. But it was easy to get hooked on. And once someone was hooked, they had to keep taking it, or it sucked the life out of them. Magic was corrosive.

But I was only going to give her a little.

‘It’s an adventure in a box. Wouldn’t you like to escape all that grief and doubt you carry around with you all the time?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘The physicians have always told me I have to be careful with what I put in my body.’

‘And yet they have you on that foul-smelling tincture that makes you drowsy and stupid. You need to stop letting your fits define you, Gwinellyn, or you will always be the timid, fragile creature everyone tells you that you are.’ I licked my finger and dipped it in the swoon. It sent up a little puff of dust that smelt like sage and jasmine. She chewed on a fingernail as I withdrew my powder-coated finger and held it out to her.

‘What do I do with it?’ Her tone was hesitant, but there was a flicker of curiosity in her eyes, which surprised me. I thought it would take a whole lot more pushing to get her to agree. I lifted my finger to my mouth and rubbed the bitter-tasting powder into my gums, bracing myself for the heady rush of euphoria that swept through me, the energy that suddenly crackled through my body.

I blinked slowly and let out a soft, smiling sigh. ‘Your turn.’

She mimicked me exactly, licking her finger and dipping it into the box. She wavered for only a moment once she withdrew it, but took a deep breath, met my eyes, and stuck her finger in her mouth. Her eyes widened, her pupils dilated, and colour flushed her cheeks.

‘Oh,’ she breathed.

‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ I purred. ‘Have some more.’

By the time she’d dipped her finger in the powder three or four times more, she was limp with ecstasy and her pupils had almost completely swallowed her irises as her gaze roamed the room, finding delight in the fringe of a curtain or a swirl of mortar. She didn’t seem to notice I’d taken no more after that initial dip, and the small dose of the drug left me with a lurching stomach and a pounding headache as it wore off.

As the moon rose, I hauled Gwinellyn up from where she was kneeling over a fruit bowl, running her fingers over apples and oranges and persimmons as though they were made of precious stones.

‘Come on,’ I said as I hauled her to her feet. ‘It’s time to go.’

‘Oh no,’ she cried, slumping back down to the ground. ‘No, I can’t. Have you seen this one?’ She held up a persimmon with a brown blotch marring its waxy skin. ‘It’s all wrong. No one will eat it. It will be all alone if I leave it.’

‘For fall’s sake, bring it with you then,’ I snapped, slinging her arm around my shoulders and dragging her back to her feet. I dragged, cajoled, and ordered her through the apartments into the bedchamber, finding the door behind a curtain in the wardrobe that led down the narrow staircase. She asked where we were going once or twice, but she was easily distracted by the way the light glinted on a window or a puff of dust curling in the air. When we emerged at the bottom of the staircase, the room beyond was dark and still. The portraits I had hated still hung on the walls, their gazes disapproving as we moved through the antechamber with only slivers of moonlight to guide us.

Dust sheets covered the furniture, and the bed was stripped of its covers to stand bare and strangely vulnerable. For a moment, as I stood in this apartment clutching a drugged princess by the hand, I suddenly felt the desperate wish that I could turn back time, go back to these rooms and make different choices, choices that wouldn’t have ended in this night.

But I couldn’t go back. And I had to get Gwinellyn out of the palace.

She was growing increasingly drowsy. Her head lolled to the side, and she sagged against me, causing me to struggle under her weight, but I managed to get her out the doors of my old apartment and into the gardens where Cotus was waiting in the dark.

‘She’s completely dipped. How much did you give her?’ he asked as he took Gwinellyn’s other arm.

‘Enough that you won’t have to dose her again before you get out of Lee Helse. Did you manage to find what I asked for?’

‘Yeah. Don’t know how she’s supposed to believe you want her dead if you’re packing her supplies.’

‘You don’t tell her they are for her. Just stock your cabin and leave her nearby. We can’t leave her out there with nothing.’ I could see the silhouette of a horse snorting and pawing at the ground ahead, jostling the small wagon latched behind it.

‘It’s going to take more than some food and cold weather gear to help her survive the Yawn,’ he said as we drew closer.

The horse danced away from us, shaking its head and snorting at the puffing figures hobbling towards it in the dark. Cotus dropped Gwinellyn to catch the horse’s reins, and I stumbled against her sudden weight. ‘Remember, stop for some swoon blooms once you’re in the Yawn and make sure she knows what you’re doing. I’m willing to bet that she’ll go looking for them now that she’s had a taste of it.’

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