Page 73 of The Other Side of the Mirror

My eyes darted to the doorway, but everyone else was still two floors below, eating and planning. So I sat down at the piano, flexing my fingers in a long-forgotten memory. The quiet of the room was suddenly overwhelming as I lowered a finger onto a key. Before I could think too hard about it, my fingers began to move. Music flowed out of me, a melancholy valse ringing from the instrument—one I hadn’t realized my brain remembered. But where I faltered, muscle memory sent my fingers moving across the cool ivory keys.

I closed my eyes as the final notes faded, my fingers still arched in the shape of the final chord when a familiar awareness made me look up. Bash stood there, eyes wide, looking like he had stopped mid-step through the doorway. There was a dipping feeling in my chest at the sight of him. I jerked back, my hands falling to my sides as the piano bench skidded back with a screech.

“No, don’t…” Bash stammered. “You don’t have to stop on my account. That was beautiful.”

My mouth suddenly dry, I looked down at the keys, unable to meet his eyes.

“Thank you,” I muttered. “I haven’t played in a while.”

Since myparents were murdered and our piano had burnt to ash, I didn’t add. But when I glanced up, the look in his eyes seemed like he knew what I hadn’t voiced.

I could feel his gaze on me, even as I looked anywhere but at him. And I wondered, as the silence stretched, if he felt as scared as I did. Finally, I met his eyes. He hadn’t moved from the doorway, his hands dangling at his sides, looking like he had something to say but couldn’t find the words to do so.

Bash squared his shoulders as he took a hesitant step toward me. “We should talk about what happened last night.”

My heart gave an unwelcome twist.Don’t, it seemed to plead.

Because maybe it was better to pretend nothing happened, as we had this morning. The last person I had attempted to commit to had put me in chains and tried to…No, I couldn’t make this any more than it already was between us. Even if he was my so-called soulmate—because I had heard that once before.

No part of me was ready to let someone in. Not yet. Even if some part of me screamed that I already had, long before I met Aviel.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I said coldly, seeing his throat bob from the hurt he was failing to hide. “I needed someone, and you were there. Let’s not pretend it was anything more than that.”

I didn’t miss his flinch at my words, nor the way he steeled his jaw against whatever he wanted to say in response. A flicker of hurt lingered on his face, but I stubbornly ignored the echoing pang in my chest. I couldn’t bring myself to assuage his feelings. Even as I wavered at the way his face fell, the tightness in the downward turn of his lips, the sight of his sadness hitting me like a blow.

My cheeks burned. And I wondered if he knew how full of it I was…that I knewexactlywho he was to me but refused to accept it. That instead, I would resort to the worst sort of self-sabotage rather than let myself be fooled again. Even if, deep down, I knew I could trust him.

“If that’s what you want,” Bash said, casual in a way I knew was calculated. A muscle worked in his jaw, fighting against the words he wouldn’t voice.

Good. I wasn’t ready to hear it.

And maybe he knew that I wasn’t ready for more, let alone ananimabond. Not after my trust had been so brutally broken. Not when I wasn’t ready to risk my heart.

Even if something inside me whispered that I had left it in Imyr all along.

My throat closed, and I turned my back on him, unable to think with his eyes on me.

“I’ll let you have some space,” Bash said tightly. “If you need anything, you know where to find me.”

He strode out of the room, and I sank onto the piano bench, determinedly disregarding the guilt that tore into me. But no more music deigned to come to mind as I stretched my fingers over the black and white keys. Something about their dichotomy brought a flare of magic to my hands—dark, wispy tendrils playing a dissonant chord. I let out a sigh as the cool night stretched around me.

After so many years without magic, one would think I wouldn’t have missed it. But I had, desperately. The power, the completeness, the calm. The extension of my own true self flowing around me. It was a part of me and always had been.

When I stood up, I realized that it had started raining. In the deepening shadows of the room, I wrapped my magic around me until I was nearly invisible, as though enveloped in a cloak of night.

Suddenly I was back in that hallway, listening to Aviel discuss how he had tricked me, how he woulduseme?—

My breakfast lurched up my throat. I barely made it to the nearest window before I heaved up most of what Bash had so carefully fed me.

Wiping my face with the back of my hand, I set off to find a bathroom to rinse out my mouth, darting out of the room on shaky legs.

Mercifully, no one was in the hallway, and I quickly found a bathroom attached to an office two doors down. I took a deep drink from the faucet, swishing the water back and forth in my mouth, then spitting it out until I could no longer taste the bile. Lifting my head, I clutched the sides of the cool quartz sink and stared at myself in the mirror.

I hadn’t bothered to turn on the light when I came in, but even in the shadows I could see the sallowness of my skin, my features pinched from the lack of sun and days of being drugged. There were dark circles under my eyes despite having finally slept through the night while wrapped in Bash’s arms.

A passing image of the disappointment on his face flickered across my mind. I closed my eyes as if that would make it go away. They flew open when I heard footsteps coming closer.

I was about to gather myself and walk out when I saw Bash and Rivan hurry into the office through the crack in the bathroom door. Something made me pause, my stomach twisting painfully.

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