Mira Ashwood's POV
Mira was on her hands and knees scrubbing the scratches off the floor when the door opened.
She didn't have water. She didn't have a cloth. She was using the rough edge of her blanket and sheer desperation, rubbing at Lena's words until her arms ached, because if a guard saw that message if Shade saw it she didn't know what would happen, but she knew it wouldn't be good.
She looked up.
It wasn't the stone-faced guard from last night.
This one was younger. Maybe nineteen, maybe twenty. He had an honest face the kind that hadn't yet learned how to be dishonest and he was carrying a tray with both hands like he was trying very hard not to spill it. He looked at Mira on the floor with wide eyes, then at the blanket in her hands, then back at her.
"I brought breakfast," he said carefully.
"Great." Mira stood up and shoved the blanket behind her with her foot. "Put it on the table."
He stepped inside and set the tray down. Oatmeal. A cup of something hot and dark that smelled like coffee but probably wasn't. A small dish of honey. She hated that it smelled good. It felt disloyal to her anger to be hungry.
The guard didn't leave.
She looked at him. "What?"
"I'm Kael." He said it like it explained something. When she didn't respond, he added, "I'll be your assigned guard. Morning shift."
"I don't need a guard. I need a door without a lock."
Kael looked at the floor. "I know this isn't I mean, I understand if you're angry."
"Do you." It wasn't a question.
"Yes." He met her eyes, and something in his expression was so genuinely uncomfortable that it almost surprised her. Most of Shade's wolves she'd seen so far had the emotional range of furniture. This one looked like he actually felt bad. "I know how it looks."
"It looks like I'm a prisoner."
"You're not a prisoner."
"The door locks from the outside."
"That's yes. Technically. But the King doesn't think of you as"
"He called me a Healer-Slave." She said it flat and clean, like laying down a card. "Those were his exact words. So whatever he thinks of me, I have a pretty good idea of what it is."
Kael closed his mouth. His jaw shifted like he was rearranging words inside it, trying to find a combination that worked. She recognized the look. It was the look of someone who had been asked to defend something that couldn't be defended and knew it.
She sat down and pulled the tray toward her. If she was going to be furious, she was going to be furious while eating.
"Sit down if you're staying," she said.
He hesitated, then sat on the edge of the bed. He kept his back straight and his hands on his knees, the posture of someone who'd been told how to sit in a room with important people and wasn't sure if this counted.
For a minute, neither of them spoke. Mira ate. The oatmeal was better than she wanted it to be.
"How long have you worked for him?" she finally asked.
"Four years."
"And in four years, has he ever locked someone in a windowless room and called them a slave?"
Kael was quiet for a moment. "Not exactly like this."
"What does not exactly mean?"
"It means" He stopped. Started again. "The King isn't evil."
"Everyone who works for an evil person says that."
"He's cursed." Kael leaned forward slightly, his elbows on his knees, like the words were too heavy to say from a distance. "You know about the death-echoes. You've seen what they do to him."
"I've seen what they do to him," Mira agreed. "I've also seen what he does to other people. Those aren't the same thing."
"He saved my life." The words came out quietly, without drama, and that was what made them land. "Four years ago I was sixteen and alone and the pack I was born into threw me out because I wasn't strong enough to be useful. I was sleeping in a ditch two miles from the Mistwood when his wolves found me." He looked at his hands. "He didn't have to take me in. Nobody would have noticed if he hadn't."
Mira looked at him over the rim of her coffee cup.
She believed him. That was the frustrating part. She believed every word of it, and it still didn't change anything, because good things a person had done somewhere else at some other time didn't cancel out what was happening right now, in this room, to her.
"I'm glad he helped you," she said. "I mean that. But Kael he has other girls in this castle. Mirror-Touched wolves like me. He's keeping them here, using their power, and when they" She stopped. She hadn't told anyone about Lena's message yet. She wasn't sure she should. "Something happens to them when they run out. Do you know what?"
Something shifted in Kael's face. Quick and complicated, like a shadow passing over water.
"Where did you hear that?" he asked.
"Answer my question first."
He stood up abruptly. "I should go. I'll come back for the tray."
"Kael."
He stopped at the door.
"Whatever you know," Mira said, "you're carrying it like it weighs something. That means it matters to you. And if it matters to you, then you already know something is wrong here." She held his gaze. "I'm not asking you to betray him. I'm asking you to tell me the truth."
Kael stood very still. His hand was on the door frame, and she watched his knuckles go pale.
"There was a girl before you," he said quietly. He wasn't looking at her anymore, he was looking somewhere else, somewhere she couldn't follow. "Her name was Petra. Mirror-Touched. She was here for almost a year." A pause. "About three months ago, she stopped being able to quiet the King's voices. The power just dried up. He didn't hurt her," he added quickly. "He would never he's not that kind of monster. But she changed. She became..." He searched for the word. "Empty. Like someone had scooped out everything that made her herself. She couldn't remember her family's names. She couldn't remember her own age. She just sat and stared and nothing got through."
The oatmeal turned to stone in Mira's stomach.
"Where is she now?" she asked.
"The King sent her to a healer in the east. He pays for her care." He finally looked at Mira. "He felt terrible about it. He still does. He didn't know it would happen that way, and when he figures out what's causing it, he"
A scream cut through the castle walls.
Sharp. Female. Somewhere above them, up high, and then cut off so suddenly the silence after was worse than the sound.
Mira was on her feet before she knew she was moving. "That was one of the girls."
Kael had gone completely pale. He was already out the door, then stopped, caught between leaving and the standing order to keep her locked in.
"Go," Mira said. "I'll stay. Go find out what happened."
He ran.
The door swung shut behind him.
Mira counted to three, then crossed the room in four steps and pressed on the door.
It hadn't locked.
In his panic, Kael had forgotten to lock it.
She stood there with her hand on the unlatched door, the whole hallway on the other side, dark and open and leading somewhere.
Toward the scream.
Toward the west tower.
Toward the mirror.
She thought about Petra, empty-eyed, unable to remember her own name.
She thought about the fresh seventh tally mark she hadn't scratched but had somehow scratched anyway.
She thought about the new moon, and how she didn't know how many days away it was.
Mira opened the door and stepped into the hall.