“Could you read them?”
“Not at first. I poured through every page, feeling the power caught in paper and ink, desperate to make sense of it. And then I found my mother’s handwriting on the back cover—she’d evidently started translating the book. She’d transcribed three Words, and I said them aloud and the mirror room opened, just as it did today.”
“So you think your mother—and Caiden’s—both went into the mirror room?”
“I do. Caiden’s mother went missing without explanation for thirteen days before turning up in the forgotten temple. My mother disappeared for ten, and then decided to go sailing.” There was a grim edge to his voice. “Where else could they have gone?”
“And you think the visions they saw in the last mirror—”
“Led to their deaths.” He met her eyes, his jaw a hard line.
“How long did you go missing?”
“Five days.” He looked back into the fire.
“What did you tell your father?”
“I told him the truth. Caiden too.”
She understood what he wasn’t saying. “They didn’t believe you.”
Wen jerked up from his chair and paced over to the window, every line in his body taut.
Talia followed.
“I told them everything. What I’d seen in the mirrors. What I suspected had happened to our mothers. I even convinced them to come up to the library, to look in the mirrors with me. I spoke the Words, the room appeared, I led them inside.”
“Then why—”
“They couldn’t see it,” said Wen roughly. He turned to Talia. “The Ruen-Dahr seems to choose the people it lets in on its secrets. I don’t understand why. It chose me, and evidently my mother and Caiden’s, but not him or my father. They thought I was making it up. Mocking them both. Making light of the dead and my father’s suffering. They were furious. I’d told them before that I’d heard voices from the tower room, whispers of music from the sea, but they never believed me—they thought I was going mad. This just made it worse. Much worse.”
Talia put her hand on Wen’s arm. He shut his eyes, leaning against the wall.
“Is that when you told them you didn’t want to go to University after all?” Talia asked softly.
He opened his eyes again, staring at her, tracing every line of her face. “Yes.”
“Why, Wen?”
“I stayed to change my fate.”
Understanding dawned on her. “You saw something in the mirror that made you stay.”
He looked back out the window.
“What did you see?”
He didn’t answer. Somehow, she hadn’t expected him to. “It hasn’t killed you,” she said. “Whatever you saw, it hasn’t killed you. Maybe it was a fluke, what happened to the Baronesses. Maybe they misinterpreted the things they saw—”
“It hasn’t happened yet.” He went over to the fire and stood staring into the flames. “What I saw hasn’t happened yet.”
This time, Talia didn’t follow. She watched him, pondering this new depth to his character she hadn’t even guessed at before.
“What are you going to do?” Wen said, without looking at her. “About the things you saw in the mirror.”
She blinked and saw her mother, reaching out to her, desperate and screaming. Take me back to the light! Take me back to the light!
“I don’t know.”
He caught her eye, and she knew he could see she was lying.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
SHE CAME DOWN FROM THE LIBRARY ALONE.
Now she was certain.
She wouldn’t leave her mother for Rahn to torment. She couldn’t. She was going to save her. Set her free.
How, she didn’t quite know yet. But that had to be what the Waves were calling her to do, and the mirrors proved she would make it that far. Beyond that—
She knew one thing: She couldn’t tell Wen what she’d seen, couldn’t tell him the plans forming slowly in her mind.
He would try and stop her.
And she was afraid she’d let him. Because Rahn had been looking for her, and if the goddess ever found her—
“Talia?”
She jerked around. Caiden stood there in his shirtsleeves, hair wet from a bath.
His face relaxed at the sight of her, and he laid a hand on her arm. “I’m so glad to see you. Are you feeling better?”
She blinked at him in confusion before she remembered Wen saying something about explaining their two-day absence with illness. “Oh, um … yes. Much better.” She smiled thinly.
He smiled back, the lamp in the hall glimmering on his smooth skin. He slid his arm around her waist and she breathed him in, soap and ink and cedar. “The mare missed you,” he said softly. “I took her out yesterday, but she didn’t run as well for me. What do you think you’ll name her?”
Talia was suddenly hyperaware of her heartbeat, pulsing harder where Caiden’s skin touched her own. She wanted to forget everything and melt into him, but the images she’d seen in the mirror were too recent. Too real. “Ahdairon,” she said quietly. “After the wind goddess.”
He laughed a little into her hair. “Fitting.”
And then he was kissing her forehead, her cheek, her—
“Stealing your brother’s betrothed is not exactly honorable, Caiden,” came a sudden voice. “I wouldn’t have thought it your style.”
Caiden jolted away from her, and Talia turned to see Blaive dressed for dinner. Her curls glinted in the lamplight. The neckline of her blush-pink gown was cut low, showing off her pale shoulders, her perfect collarbones, the emerald glittering on her breast.
“What do you want, Blaive?” Caiden demanded.
Talia sagged back against her bedroom door. She hadn’t meant to let him kiss her. It wasn’t fair to Wen, or herself, or Caiden either.
“Your father would never approve, you know,” said Blaive, not quailing under his gaze.
“Of what?” said Caiden.
A humorless smile touched Blaive’s face. “Of her.”
Talia bristled. “There’s nothing—”
“Nothing going on? No kissing in the hall when you think no one’s looking, no purchasing of extravagant horses, no making a mockery of your future with Wen? Don’t you dare claim there’s nothing going on.”
“You have no right to address me like that.”
“I have every right, Miss Dahl-Saida.” Blaive shifted her glance to Caiden, though she kept talking to Talia. “I am Caiden’s oldest friend. His dearest friend. It’s you who has no right.” Her curls trembled around her temples. “My father’s growing old, as well as yours. I’ll inherit soon. I won’t be able to manage everything myself.”
Caiden stared at her. “Blaive—”
“I wouldn’t need to stay there,” she continued, cutting him off. “I’ll only need to hire a competent steward, and visit once or twice a year, to make sure they’re handling it properly.” Her green eyes caught his brown ones, and Talia felt something rippling between them, a connection that was broken now, and mostly forgotten, but had once been strong.
His face grew taut, sharpening the angle of his jaw.