Chapter 32 What Mirror Never Told
Dahila’s POV
THROW BACK
I had learned early not to trust mirrors.
They were cruel things—flat, honest, merciless. They showed you exactly what the world saw and nothing of what it refused to look deeper to find. Growing up, mirrors became my quiet enemies, reflecting back the same truths people delighted in throwing at me with sharpened tongues.
Ugly.
Plain.
Unwanted.
I remembered the first time I understood what those words meant. I must have been eight or nine, still small enough to believe that love came automatically, like air. I had stood in the courtyard of my stepfather’s house, my hands dusty from helping in the kitchens, watching Sienna twirl in a dress so pale it looked spun from moonlight.
She was everything I wasn’t.
Golden hair that caught the sun. Skin untouched by labor. A smile that made people soften without realizing it. Servants rushed to fix her hem, to praise her laugh, to tell her how beautiful she was.
No one looked at me.
Except her.
“You’re standing in my light,” Sienna said sweetly, though her eyes were sharp. “Move.”
I moved.
I always did.
Sienna had perfected cruelty the way others perfected music. She never raised her voice, never dirtied her hands. She didn’t need to. All she had to do was tilt her head, lower her tone, and let her words sink in slowly, like poison disguised as honey.
“Why do you bother dressing up?” she once asked, watching me struggle into a borrowed gown for a village festival. “Silk won’t fix your face.”
I laughed then. A soft, obedient sound. I learned quickly that pretending not to care hurt less than fighting back and losing anyway.
The elders never intervened. My stepfather pretended not to see. And my mother—gods, my mother—had already faded into silence long before she ever left this world. I was alone in a house full of people, invisible until I became inconvenient.
It only got worse when I shifted.
Or rather—when I didn’t.
Every girl my age discovered her mate like a miracle. Sparks. Heat. That pull in the chest everyone spoke about in reverent tones. I waited. And waited.
When Kael found me, I thought the waiting was over.
I was wrong.
He didn’t look at me the way the others looked at their mates—with awe, with wonder, with that fierce, protective pride. His gaze skimmed over me like I was something unfortunate he had stepped in.
“This has to be a mistake,” he said flatly.
The bond burned anyway.
I tried. Gods, I tried. I smiled when he ignored me. I stayed quiet when he spoke over me. I told myself love could grow where attraction didn’t.
But Kael never stopped resenting me.
“Do you know what they say about us?” he snapped one night, pacing the room like a caged animal. “They laugh. They ask how I ended up with you.”
I flinched. “I didn’t choose this either.”
That earned me a bitter laugh. “At least don’t pretend you’re the victim.”
I was.
But I stopped saying it out loud.
The night everything shattered is etched into my bones. The night I ran.
The moon was high, cold and bright, casting silver over the forest as I fled barefoot, my lungs burning, my chest aching with a pain that had nothing to do with the bond snapping apart. I didn’t know where I was going. I only knew I couldn’t stay.
That was the night Dagnoth found me.
I hadn’t known his name then. I only knew the way the forest seemed to hold its breath when he stepped into view. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dark eyes that studied me not with judgment—but concern.
“Easy,” he said gently, hands raised. “You’re bleeding.”
I looked down, surprised to find scratches along my arms, blood beading where branches had torn into me. I hadn’t even felt it.
“I don’t need help,” I said automatically.
He knelt anyway, tearing a strip from his sleeve with practiced ease. His touch was careful, respectful. When he wrapped my arm, his fingers were warm.
“You’re running from something,” he said, not accusing. Observing.
“Yes.”
He glanced up then, his gaze steady. “From someone?”
My silence was answer enough.
For a long moment, he just looked at me. Not through me. Not past me. At me.
“You know,” he said quietly, “you’re beautiful.”
I laughed.
The sound came out broken, ugly with disbelief. “You don’t have to lie.”
“I don’t,” he replied simply.
No one had ever said it like that before. Not as a compliment. Not as a weapon. Just… a fact.
The bond between us sparked faintly—recognition brushing against my senses like a whisper. Something important. Something dangerous.
I panicked.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said quickly, stepping back. “You should go.”
His brow furrowed. “And leave you alone in the forest?”
“I’m used to being alone.”
That hurt him. I saw it.
“I’ll find you again,” he said after a pause. “When you’re ready.”
I waited.
I waited for days. Weeks. Months.
He never came.
The pain of that absence lodged deeper than all the others combined. Not because he owed me anything—but because, for one night, I had believed someone saw me. Truly saw me. And then… nothing.
Life forced me forward anyway. It always did.
Now, standing in the palace corridors years later, with silk under my fingers and crowns around me, I sometimes wondered which version of myself was real. The girl who flinched under Sienna’s gaze. The mate who endured Kael’s contempt. Or the woman who stood toe-to-toe with a king and refused to bow.
Dagnoth had told me I was beautiful.
The world had spent a lifetime telling me otherwise.
Some nights, that contradiction still tore me apart.
And some nights—like this one—I wondered if the ache in my chest wasn’t just old wounds reopening… but the quiet fear that the only man who ever truly saw me had chosen not to look for me when it mattered most.
That truth hurt more than any mirror ever could.