Page 9 of Her Dark Reflection

He tilted his head and offered a vicious smile. ‘And yet, here you are.’

I sighed with frustration and turned for the door again. He was taking up too much space in this too-small room and I was ready to be out of it.

He didn’t follow me into the street, and when I glanced up at the grimy window of my room, I didn’t see his face, so I assumed he was trusting me to undertake the selection alone. A flutter of nerves awoke in my stomach at the realisation. Draven seemed confident that I would be among those selected for the palace. Whether he had a hand in more than just my glamour to ensure that, I didn’t know.

I entered the Snow White behind a small group of young women. From their ample jewellery and lack of restrictive stays currently squeezing my curves into submission, I guessed them to be maisera. Warm air woven with the chatter of a well-attended lunch service enveloped me as soon as I set foot inside. The madam the maisera had followed into the building approached a man standing by the bar who was clad in the purple and gold livery of the palace. They spoke briefly before he gestured to a door in a shadowy corner of the room, away from the crowded tables. When the gaggle of women headed for that door, I followed them.

The room we entered was stark white, full of daylight streaming in from several large windows puncturing the wall. No kind lighting to hide any flaws. A few dozen women were milling around the room, throwing calculating looks at one another as they waited. Several of them glanced my way as I entered, their faces twisting with a mixture of loathing, awe, and dejection. I absorbed the reactions with some satisfaction; I must be beautiful to provoke such responses.

A trio of men from the palace stood at the front of the room muttering to one another, their eyes roving over the gathered women. The largest of the men stepped forward. He was dressed as a soldier and his armour gleamed in the bright room. And it should be gleaming, given that Brimordia had enjoyed a century of peace. He surely had little else to do other than polish it.

‘Line up in rows, the first starting here. Wait silently while we assess you.’ His voice boomed out across the room, silencing the chattering maisera, who began jostling to assemble. I crossed my arms as I watched the activity. Well, that’s a fine how-do-you-do, I thought. No hello, no thank you for coming. Just shut up and line up.

I joined the end of a line and my neighbour, a slender girl with a face like that of a doll, pursed her lips at the sight of me before switching to a different spot. The trio of men began to peruse the offerings, occasionally pausing by one girl or another to request that they turn around or to ask questions, and bypassing others completely. Aside from the soldier, there was a squat man in a clerk’s hat taking notes with an eagle-feather quill and a tall, bony man with sallow skin and a haughty countenance who I took to be the king’s chamberlain. He wore an expression of distaste, often wrinkling his hooked nose at whichever girl he happened to be viewing and giving little more than a curt nod in response to anything said to him.

When his eyes fell on me, he skipped two girls entirely to stand before me, flicking his hand irritably at the clerk who trotted to catch up.

‘Name?’ the clerk asked.

‘Rhiandra Beaufort.’ I replied, using my new surname, picked from my favourite bottle of perfume. Discarding Tiercelin—the name my mother had insisted I use—was something I did with no regret.

He made a note on his scroll, his quill jerking about as he scribbled. ‘Turn please.’

I gritted my teeth at the humiliation of it but complied, slowly turning, feeling their eyes creeping over me as I did.

‘Can you sing?’ The chamberlain spoke this time, his voice nasally, his words clipped.

‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘And I can play the lute.’

‘Dance?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hmm.’ He glanced at the clerk’s notes, murmuring something to him before moving on.

The clerk checked my identity papers, then reached into a satchel slung around his shoulders and withdrew a coin. ‘Be waiting here for collection at dusk. Show this to gain entrance to the palace.’ He gave me the coin and hurried after the chamberlain. I turned the coin in my fingers, realising it was some sort of token with an imprint of the royal crest—a three-headed serpent, each head topped with a set of horns—on a copper disk. I let out a sigh, feeling a tension leave my shoulders, like the muscles had been strung taut ever since I had crossed the street and they were only now slackening. The token was warm in my palm, and I clenched it tight. This was my ticket to a new life.

Several glares followed me as I left, my pace quick, hurrying to escape that room. I wouldn’t have put it past any of those girls to knock me out and steal my token. I would have done it. Hungry people do desperate things.

My room was empty when I returned to it, and there was no sign Draven had ever been there. Was he so confident in my selection that he didn’t even wait around to confirm it? A cold dose of loneliness washed over me as I realised I had been hoping he would be waiting so I would have someone to share my excitement and nerves with. With a pang of regret, I thought of the girls at the Winking Nymph.

I began to gather my meagre belongings, preparing them to pack into the small chest waiting under my bed. Spreading a soft blanket on the bed in readiness, I turned to pluck the mirror, my most treasured and most loathed possession, off the wall and noticed the glistening red apple perched on the mantlepiece below. It begged to be eaten. The mere sight of it stoked a hunger in me as I imagined the sweet smell, the crisp flesh, the cool juice against my tongue. Shaking off the feeling, I picked it up warily, almost expecting it to spark when I touched it, but it behaved like any regular apple.

Beneath it was a note scrawled in slanted, spikey lettering:

I’ve kept my end. Now it’s your turn.

The ruined girl that hid beneath my glowing skin and gleaming hair looked back at me from the mirror, her future clutched in her hand. Dark magic clutched in her hand.

Treasonclutched in her hand.

If I was caught in possession of such an object, if I was found trying to hand it to the king, if someone recognised it for what it was, the consequences would be severe.

I tucked my hand into the slit in my dress and slipped the apple into the pouch I wore strung over my petticoat. Best not to get caught, then.

Irubbedmyhandstogether, my breath misting the air as I stomped my feet against the cold. Brimordian winters were mild compared to those weathered in Yaakendale, the mountainous kingdom to the south, but the temperature still dropped below freezing occasionally. This felt like one such night, though my judgement may have been skewed by the fact that I had already been waiting by the road for almost an hour. I watched a pair of soil smearers traipse slowly down the street, their feet sinking into each puddle without concern, their arms linked as they walked with their faces turned towards the sky. The ecstasy in their expressions and the filth coating the skirts of their white priestess robes made me clench my jaw. I hoped they wouldn’t drop to their knees and begin bathing themselves in mud right there and then. I hated the sight, the way they begged for Aether’s blessing with a fervour that seemed almost lascivious.

‘If they were going to be this late, at least they could have let us wait somewhere warm.’ There were a dozen girls waiting with me, and this comment came from the one closest to me. I looked over at her and caught her eye. She was blond-haired and green-eyed, with a round face and lips that were a little blue with cold, and I realised she was the same girl who had been next to me in the line at the selection earlier, the one who had moved away.

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