Mirror

Mirror
Amval

The moment Ingrid walks away, my mark sears like it intends to burn all the way through my skin and kill me, bringing this whole bitter trick to a bitter end.

But I am made of sterner stuff than that. So, I take a heartbeat to catch my breath and then return to the stables. I have a job to do, after all. Mesut needs me.

Thoughts like that power me through the coming days. The rhythm of them is almost familiar. Tek needs me. Nur needs me. Cirocco and Kaloni and every single one of my siblings needs me. The same thoughts that allowed me to trudge through day after week after month in hiding.

This time, at least, there are breaks in the constant throb of being needed. Breaks that come in the form of near-nightly trips to the Gruesome Pony. There are still too many spare nobles hanging around the palace, too much sheer work to do, for even Tek to suggest going every single night. We would drown in horse shit if we did. But we go often enough.

Often enough that, when we arrive, the troubadour just grumbles and steps off the stage. A little bit of my spare pay was enough to get the naqun restrung, and I've quickly developed a repertoire of crowd-favorite songs. I know what will get them to sing and what quiets even my friends’ wildest moods. One night, Ozkan approaches me and presses a few coins into my hand.

On instinct, I start to refuse them. I may be living as a groom now, but there is a palace with my name on it, should I ever be able to use my name again.

“Oh, hush,” the bartender snaps. “You drag in double the business that worthless lout ever did. If I give you a little coin for your trouble, it’s only because I don’t intend to owe one of my customers.”

I glance at the naqun in my lap, its scratched paint and the remaining, worn strings. “All right.”

Soon, the nearest luthier knows me by sight. He even suggests a laz player that I might collaborate with some night.

I almost take him up on the offer—until my mark threatens to burn through me again at the idea of playing with someone other than Ingrid.

“Not yet,” I tell him.

Even as I settle into this life, it feels like most of what I say to people is not yet. To Ozkan, when he offers me a permanent role. To Nur, when she offers me a promotion—which should rightly go to Tek anyway. And, surprisingly often, to Cirocco when he asks me questions about myself.

He shows up perhaps half the nights we go to the Gruesome Pony. I don’t know how he knows we’re there. His window is on the opposite side of the palace. But every time he’s there, he insists on buying me a drink. And every time, I decide how much I miss my best friend is more important than the potential danger to my cover. He hasn’t discovered me yet.

I’ve spent most of my life talking to Cirocco, but we’ve never talked like we talk in the Pony. No topic is off-limits. I learn he hates the curfew in the castle and the fact that everyone else still treats it like law. He’s worried about Hova—his triplet is covering it well, but his pranks are becoming more reckless. He wishes he had royal amber eyes instead of dark ones. He reads when he can’t sleep at night.

In exchange, I tell him anything I think won’t give me away. We talk endlessly about my music. Like Grandfather, Cirocco doesn’t have a musical bone in his body, but he loves it—and he pays attention. He always asks about slight changes I’ve made in songs, improvements to my naqun. Explaining this impossible part of myself to him is surprisingly easy. And once I’ve started doing that, it’s equally easy to tell him that I hate being cold more than any other sensation, that Tek drunkenly convinced me into a squiggle of a tattoo on my arm, that I’ve come to enjoy riding Cloud, the workhorse I rode away from my would-be assassination, better than I ever liked Seksim—albeit with a few details removed.

I grew up right beside him, and somehow, there’s still so much we don’t know about each other.

“Your friends are waiting for you.” Cirocco glances over his shoulder at them one night.

I follow his gaze. The table is a little less full almost every night—those conscriptions he promised, slowly taking effect. Nur is fighting to keep her staff, so everyone knows now that you’re less likely to get the letter calling you to the front if you’re a good worker. It has made our nights out less frequent.

“Come sit with us,” I say, like I do every time he’s here.

He sighs. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” I ask for what feels like the thousandth time. “Why do you have to hide coming here at all?”

“My parents wouldn’t have approved.” He exhales slowly. “And that means my brother wouldn’t have either.”

Denial bubbles behind my lips—but it’s empty. Mother and Father would have thought that the Pony was a, well, gruesome reminder of what happened to our kingdom. They wouldn’t have forbidden Cirocco, just asked in their quiet way why he really felt he needed to come here, and that would have been enough. I would have fallen in line, until there was so much pressure that Cirocco couldn’t have kept coming.

“They’re dead,” I say instead.

“The rest of my family isn’t.” Cirocco pays my tab and leaves me alone with a mirror, showing just how much I let my actions be dictated by those closest to me.

My parents had my best interests at heart—but clearly, they weren’t always right.

That night, I split off from the group and take the long way home. I have a slightly later shift, a gift of Tek’s new promotion, and I’m not quite ready to go to sleep yet. Instead, I find a chair in the empty market, clearly for a nearby stall. Sticky fruit juice stains the arm, but I sit down in it anyway. A warm evening breeze coasts through, and I look out over the quiet town.

King Gavin put a “governor” of sorts in our palace, one of his soldiers who ruled with an iron fist. This town didn’t exactly die, but the campaign to take over almost destroyed it. When we returned to the palace, we took a boat, came up through the back, past nothing but quiet caves.

If we had come this way, is this what we would have seen? A ghost town, packed to bursting with the memories of a once-happy kingdom? Now, I only have to wait until morning to see it come alive again, but the scars remain. To my left, the cobblestones are charred and broken. Who died in that fire? How many people have we lost?

I did everything they even suggested asking because I was supposed to heal those scars. Mother needs me. Father needs me. Lightning Cape needs me.

My mark burns as I remember the night outside Kaloni’s coronation, when Ingrid asked me what I would do as Alpha and everyone else’s plans danced through my head. My family is brilliant, worthy of emulating—but what am I? Father was right when he said Lightning Cape needs a strong leader to survive this. He was that leader, and so was Mother. I was so lost in being exactly what they wanted of me that I forgot to ever wonder if I was strong, or just a copy of their strength.

I strum the naqun, somber notes drifting off into the quiet night. Nur offered me the promotion I insisted she give Tek because she saw the way the other grooms responded to me. They listen. It’s easy to get them to do that—much easier than controlling seven unruly siblings while Dun’s Crossing soldiers march by our hiding spot. But Tek is the one who, upon being given the position, started making changes. The later shifts were his idea. There’s so much work that it makes more sense to stagger us. The nobles almost never come in all at once.

But now that we’re staggered, it’s much harder to work in pairs. Working separately would be much more efficient, like I mentioned in my very first week. I’ve thought that a few times and never said a word to him about it.

When I return to the bunkhouse, I will. Or perhaps in the morning.

What would I do if I were Alpha?

For the first time, with no one but the open air to judge me, ideas flood through my mind. Ideas I always had, tumbling through my mind at night. But ideas I kept quiet because no one else had them first.

I close the door on them, for now. I’m not Alpha, and I never will be. Once I can show my face again, though, I’ll advise Kaloni. Then, I’ll need them.

For now, I need to focus on making it safe to show my face. All attempts to prove cousin Yakup is behind this have failed. Not proven him innocent, just failed to prove him guilty. Lord Faruk has been going very similarly. He’s so dismissive on his visits to the stables that I can barely have half a conversation with him.

Without access to the palace, there is nothing I can do. But the only way I can access the palace is—

Ingrid.

Just thinking her name hurts. I curl painfully around my naqun and breathe through my nose.

It has been nearly two weeks since our fight. Since I told her to leave. Since she ignored everything I said and insisted on a betrayal so deep, it is truly impossible.

And I miss her like someone pulled one of my arms off.

When I’m not thinking about what I should be doing, how I should be acting, that is ridiculously obvious. Even if I should defend my family, I need her.

Which means I need to find a way to get her back.