"She would have given you to the dark," the reflection says, tone tender as a needle. "Not for duty. Not for love. For one more breath." A brittle chuckle. "But she lacked the courage. She failed, and so the burden fell to you. Her unfinished prayer."
The words hollow me. The compass flutters weakly, refusing to let silence settle. Then memory flashes like a fish below water: her hurried hand scratching a diamond in a ledger's margin—Not yours. Not mine. There is another way. Gone again, but the spark remains.
Another way. Hope stands up inside me on weak knees.
"Do not cling to scraps," he says, laughter brushing the edges of the quiet. "Another way through what? That scribble outweighs what I can make of you? No. Sparks die. With me… you burn."
The warmth of him is worse than cruelty. I want to lean into it; let it steady me. The shape of yes forms in me. My ribs strain to contain it. The compass trembles—faint as a bird's heartbeat. I want to crush it. I want to keep it. Both urges shake me until I don't know which is mine.
I could lay it down. I could stop the bleeding. I could watch her kneel and let her silence be her own prison. My knees bend, eager to collapse. The word hovers, heavy on my tongue.
"Say it," the reflection breathes, close enough to stir a strand of my hair. "Say yes and let her pay the price she meant for you."
"You have been so good," he croons, stuffed with mock affection. "So dutiful to a silence that never chose you. What mercy is left but cruelty? You've tasted her silence; it binds you. Her ruin could be your freedom—if you let it."
Mercy caves my chest. I am dizzy with cruelty dressed as grace, grace dressed as cruelty.
My mother's mouth shapes a word that might be please. It might be forgive. It might be my name disguising both. Her hands press harder into the marble. Her eyes stay down. Her silences were the only truths she ever gave me, and each one was a choice. I hear what they were saying now: I was never meant to be answered.
"I loved her," I say—or think it. The thought hurts the way cold hurts skin. "I love—"
"What?" the reflection asks, kindly as a knife. "What did you love? Her lessons? Her leaving? How she taught you to swallow your words whole?"
The chamber holds its breath.
"She gave you the compass because she wouldn't give you her life," he says, silk threaded with steel. "She pressed a relic into your hand and called it wisdom. An heirloom of emptiness—mother to child, overflowing with nothing. Give me the weight and ache, little flame. I'll forge them into something worthy. A crown sharp enough to rule."
The sour glow finds new seams and creeps under me like it wishes to memorize my shape. The taste in my mouth turns to coin. The compass beats once. Again. Not steady. Perhaps it never was. Stubborn, though. It refuses to die just because it is small.
The reflection hears it and smiles with tenderness that makes me want to scream. "It wants to finish you," she murmurs. "Let it. Walk where it tugs. Lie where it points. What are you without a purpose someone else gave you?"
I choke on the question. My lungs burn as if I've swallowed ash.
"I know what you are," he says, delighted, certain. "My echo, if you choose. My heir, if you wish. Not hers. She had her chance and taught you to love a leash." The pause lingers, savoring. "I would teach you to love… freedom."
The word slips in so easily I barely feel the cut. Freedom: a shape of ruin and of power, both fitted to the heart. It would be good to be finished. Good to be something final and gleaming. The hunger inside me sits up, attentive.
"Try it," he coos, mock-innocent. "Just say yes. See how it feels."
My mouth opens—
—and the diamond flares behind my eyes, memory making its own light. Slanted, hurried, hidden: Not yours. Not mine. There is another way.
"What way?" I ask, hoarse. The chamber startles to hear me.
"Sweet thing," he hums, gentle as a hand on a bruise, "you are standing in a room I built for your needs. There is no other way. There is me. Or the thing that eats you. Or her, kneeling to a god of fear. Choose your altar."
My mother shudders. The scarf trembles at her throat like something that wants to be removed and knows it won't be.
"Choose," my reflection says softly, lovingly, as if laying a cool palm on my fevered brow. "Enough wandering in the dark. You're tired. There is an end in him."