Chapter 700: The Door in the Mirror

Didi woke with frost climbing her ankles, standing barefoot on the ballroom floor of Silverwood Keep at midnight. A warm voice was calling her little crown, soft as a grandfather bending low over a sleeping cradle.

"Little crown, your room is aired, your bed is made, the lamps have burned for you since before you were born."

The great mirror no longer showed the ballroom, only a corridor of black glass ending in a lit doorway. Her breath hung in white feathers, her bare toes leaving a frosted trail across the boards well behind her.

’I know this voice, but I have never heard it in my life.’

"Come home, Didi," the stranger said, patient as a man who could wait a thousand years, "nobody here will ask you to be anything but welcome."

Her eyes answered before she did, amber cracking into gold as her feet slid a step nearer. In the glass her reflection lifted a hand toward the doorway, while her real hand hung still.

Something hooked her around the waist and hauled her backward so hard the frost skated away.

Hajin dragged her against his chest in a nightshirt buttoned wrong, gold Chain wrapped tight around his left forearm. He bared his teeth at the mirror like a street dog guarding a bone he did not even want.

"Nope, absolutely not, you are not walking into a mirror tonight," he barked, then twisted to look down at her, "Didi, are you awake?"

"I was sleepwalking professionally," Didi said, driving an elbow into his ribs with all her royal dignity.

"Ow, that was very professional, I’ll give you that."

"Put me down, you idiot, I have perfectly functioning legs."

He did not put her down at all, his arm trembling against her stomach in a fine, stubborn shiver. She kept her mouth shut and her feet exactly where they were, refusing to be the one who noticed.

’He is terrified, I refuse to be the one who says so.’

"I’m not shaking," he muttered into her hair, "it’s just cold in here."

"Then your teeth are chattering for fun," she said, pretending to inspect the mirror’s frame.

Neither of them moved away from the other, his nightshirt warm against her frost-bitten bare shoulder blades. Behind the glass the warm voice sighed like a host watching a guest refuse the first dish.

"Aria, what is the mirror doing?" he snapped at the dark.

"Opening a door to a place nine thousand cradles below this keep," Aria said, flickering into view as a cyan panel, "I regret that I have no polite way to phrase it."

Only weeks ago the whole household walked out of the Furnace King’s ashes, Hajin’s Sun-Chain lit like a dawn. Every girl in the keep finally slept through the night, then a mirror opened its mouth and ruined everything.

[Host scan]

[Hajin]

[Lineage mark answering]

[Source: below]

Nobody in the ballroom needed that panel translated, because every one of them felt the floor tilt toward the glass.

High above the stair, Hans’s old bell swung hard, its iron tongue striking again and again. Not one note reached the hall, each sound dying a finger’s width from the dented metal.

Silence rolled down the staircase after it, thick as wet wool soaked in winter water.

"That island floated in the northern sky when we went to bed," Didi whispered.

He jerked his chin at the dark sky, "Now there’s a bite out of it, still chewing."

A guard burst through the doors with his mouth wide open, purple from shouting, producing no sound. The hush swallowed his cry mid-syllable, closing like a mouth, as he clawed at his own throat.

Hajin swung the Chain toward the doors, "Everybody back, away from the stairs!"

Gold light from the Chain pushed the hush back at once, its edges curling like paper held to a candle. The guard dragged in one huge breath, croaked a humiliated cough, then flashed a shaky thumbs-up from the ground there.

’He’s alive, because the silence was only tasting him.’

Footfalls thundered down every corridor as the whole household poured into the ballroom, half-dressed and fully armed. Juna arrived first, tail bristling, her daggers already out as she sniffed the mirror like an insult.

"That thing reeks of sweet milk and old blood," she growled, wrinkling her nose.

"Nice of you to join us, Wolfie," came the dry reply, eyes never leaving the glass.

Juna’s ears flicked back, "I was sharpening my daggers, some of us actually prepare for midnight."

Loccy padded in behind her with a blanket around her shoulders and half a bun in her fist.

"Is the mirror a bad guest?" she asked, squinting at the corridor of black glass.

Vella drawled, knotting her robe at the waist, "A lovely mirror, in a murderous sort of way."

Ferra shouldered through the doorway with a wrench in her hand, scowling at the gold-lit frame.

"If that glass breaks I am not sweeping it, I want that on record, in writing, today."

"Noted," Miri said gently, as though she were truly writing it down in the air with one finger.

Rumi and Nari dropped in through a side window together, rift-knives out, both blinking up at the glowing arch overhead. Eirwen followed with a folded scroll under one arm, Miri behind her carrying a lamp and a very calm face.

"I told you this keep was haunted," Rumi said.

"You told me it was drafty," Nari whispered back, ears flat.

"I have drafted opening terms," Eirwen said, unrolling the scroll toward the mirror, "in case our host respects a dowry."

"Nobody touch anything," Miri said, lifting her lamp, "until we know what it wants."

"Teach is right, nobody touches the glass," he said, pointing a finger around the room at each of them.

"Then why are you standing closest to it, Hajin?" Loccy asked, genuinely curious.

"Somebody has to stand closest, Bun, it was my turn."

Eirwen lifted her scroll to eye level, "Do we ask whether we are expected, or simply assume it?"

"Assume it, Madam Fiancee, the guy already knows our shoe sizes," he muttered.

Ash trundled in last, rubbing one eye, then crunched a mouthful of frost straight off Didi’s ankle. He swallowed, burped a small puff of cold mist, and looked at the mirror with enormous suspicion.

"Dada, the shiny wall is talking funny," Ash announced, pointing a sticky claw.

"I know, I’m handling it," Hajin said, tugging a blanket over the little guardian’s shoulders.

He counted heads a second time, lips moving, like a shepherd before a storm.

"Everyone’s here," he muttered, "everyone’s here, nobody’s in the mirror."

Vella slipped a shawl around Didi’s shoulders without a word, tucking it under her chin like an older sister.

"Frost-lipped princesses catch colds, sweetheart, I refuse to nurse one at midnight," she murmured.

"I am not a patient," she said, clutching the shawl closer.

Her hand found his sleeve without her permission, twisting the cloth as the frost crawled slower up her legs. He covered her fingers with his own, warm as a forge, then pretended to study the mirror very hard.

"How long has it been calling you?" he asked quietly.

"Three nights," Didi admitted, "I thought it was only a dream."

"Next time wake me, I’ll sit on your bed until sunrise if that’s what it takes."

"You will do no such thing, you snore like a landslide."

The corridor of glass rippled, then peeled open like a flower, the doorway swelling into a wide arch. Beyond it hung an upside-down ocean of black water, drowned ships dripping from it like fat tallow candles.

Under that sky, a city of spires grew downward, every window lit gold above a bottomless field of stars.

"That is not a basement," Ferra said slowly, lowering the wrench, "that is a whole country down there."

"Correct, I would classify it as the Underworld, regrettably well populated," Aria said.

’Somebody made a bed for me before I was born, I hate that I want to see it.’

Didi shrugged out of his grip at last, stepping toward the arch as the frost crept up past her calves. Her chin stayed high, her lips turned blue, her voice pitched to carry the way a princess’s was trained to.

"It knows my room, it knows my name," she said, "who is in there?"

"Don’t touch the glass, it’ll—" he started, lunging after her with one hand outstretched.

"It is already touching me," Didi said, "I am not afraid... I am merely cold."

Nyra stood under the lintel in a crooked sleeping robe, Halfmoon already gripped tight in both steady hands. Her gold-edged horns caught the mirror light, glinting like coins, with no trace of sleep in her face.

"That voice smells like my horns," she said flatly.

Nobody answered for a long, long moment, because nobody knew what to do with a sentence like that. Hajin looked from Nyra to Didi, then back, the colour draining from his face in a slow tide.

"Kid, what do you mean, it smells like your horns?"

"I mean exactly that... I just don’t know yet what it means," Nyra said, knuckles white on the haft.

The warm voice came again from the corridor, delighted as a grandfather at a wedding, "Bring them all, little crown, I have set a place for every one of them."

"She’s not going anywhere without her own say, and neither is anyone else in this house," Hajin said.

Cessy and Lucan reached the hall in dressing gowns, one gripping a dagger, the other holding a candle. Down the mirror’s long corridor, the lit doorway now showed a brass knocker shaped like a snapping mouth.

Cessy’s whole body went still, the dagger lowering slowly as the colour left her lips.

"That is my family’s front door," she whispered.

"He has always known where we sleep," Lucan said quietly, the candle not trembling once.

Hajin exhaled hard, hooked the Chain over his shoulder, then held his free hand out to Didi, silently. She took it at once, announcing it was only to stop the floorboards freezing, while nobody dared argue.