I lie gasping on the stone, the compass biting deeper into my palm with every tremor. Blood slicks the rim and threads down my wrist, warm against the cold that has settled in my bones. Its light feels like a memory of light—thin as breath on glass. Smaller now. A broken star cupped in a shaking hand.
My reflection tilts her head. The same face. That steady gaze. She looks at me as if she has already counted me and found me lacking. The smile is honed to a point, cleaner than before.
The floor loosens. The stone loses interest in holding me up; it softens, folds, pours away into shadow. The corridor breathes in and keeps breathing, pulling itself tight around a new shape: cracked marble settling beneath my knees, slick with a thin, sour glow seeping from the seams. Beyond it, a chamber gathers itself with no walls and too many corners. At the far end, a figure kneels.
My mother.
Her scarf hangs loose and colorless. Her hands press flat to the ground, fingers splayed as though she is catching herself from falling straight through. Her head is bowed. Her lips form the shape of a plea the air refuses to carry. She looks smaller than I remember, as if memory has been flattering her all along. I see my name touch her mouth, and silence is all that reaches me.
The reflection doesn't touch me, yet her presence rests warm against my neck. "Look at her," she whispers. "Bowed. Ashamed. Begging for what she never gave you." A breath-soft pause. "Wouldn't it be sweet to see her crawl?"
The words land like a bruise. I swallow against the ache arriving behind my teeth and fail. The compass shivers; my fingers clamp down. Pain is useful. It narrows the room to the shape of my hand and the small, stubborn throb within it.
"My dear stray," he purrs, distance bending to carry his warmth, "you are owed more than the theater of her remorse." He sounds like a man admiring a wine he already knows he'll enjoy—playful at the edges. "All those years she rehearsed silence… and now she has the gall to ask you for mercy."
Her shoulders shake. Damp prints bloom on the marble beneath her palms. It's as if she's learned even her weight can't anchor her here. The sour glow licks her knuckles. She does not look up.
I want to be better than this. I want to be someone not pulled by the wish to wound. But something hungry turns over in me, and I hate the sound it makes.
Memory rises uninvited: the day she sent me away. The carriage door yawning; her scarf scratching my throat; the off-white sky; her mouth shaping encouragement while the weight in my chest crushed her words. You'll be fine. You'll be safe. Letters will come. Be good. Be brave. She held me too hard and too briefly, like someone clutching a bird too tight, then letting it go before it could bite.
"She prepared herself to live without you," the reflection murmurs, pacing until her thumb finds the tender place and presses. "Boarding schools. Blank holidays. Goodbyes practiced until they came easy. She learned to lose you the way others learn to pray."
Iron touches my tongue. "No," I say—or think I do. In this chamber my voice breaks before it finishes. "She sent me to live."
"To live," the reflection echoes, gently amused by the kindness of the word. "Yes. Anywhere but with her. Anywhere but close enough to make her account for you." Her chin tips toward the kneeling figure. "And did you? Live? Or did you learn to survive until surviving was all you knew—waiting for her silence to tell you who to be?"
The words go straight through me. My chest tightens as if she has reached in and pinched my lungs closed. A cold heat moves under my skin.
The compass flickers like something drowning. I look at the little star in my bloody palm—defenseless as anything else I've held. Shame pricks: have I carried it only to play her game? Survived just to prove her silence right? I clutch it anyway. Harder.
"My little flame," he says, rich with private amusement, "you do not owe her devotion because she could not stomach love. Your ache is not a dowry she earned. It's a debt she left you to pay."
A sound rips out of me, ugly and raw, half sob, half laugh. It startles me more than it should.
He doesn't step closer, yet the air is full of him. "I could give you what she never dared," he murmurs, smooth, indulgent. "Not safety—no, that was her coward's gospel. Something sharper. Redress." Each word slow, silk over a blade. "Imagine her silence split, secrets spilled on the floor. Imagine her crown shattered in your hand." A soft, certain laugh. "Call it justice. Call it vengeance. The word doesn't matter. Only the yes."
I tilt toward him before I catch myself. No should be a fortress. It arrives like breath balanced on a blade.
My mother lifts her head. In this light her face is a map with the wrong places bright. Her mouth makes my name and I cannot hear it. She reaches and finds nothing. The gesture is so unpractised I believe—for the first time—the reflection might be right: she never meant to reach at all.