Alira doesn't go looking for the mirror.
It finds her.
---
The house has settled into a rhythm since Mara's final breath in the glass. No more voices in the halls. No flickering shapes in the corner of her vision. Just creaking wood, cool air, and the slow, soft language of things learning how to heal.
Alira learns to live with silence.
Not the kind that screams.
The kind that listens.
She moves differently now. Sleeps longer. Eats without guilt. Laughs — carefully, but earnestly — when Theda burns toast or Lucien drops a jar of ink down the stairwell.
Irlenne teaches her to braid vines into lanterns.
Lucien shows her how to bind old books.
Theda watches, quiet but protective, like a wall made of stars.
The house no longer feels like a secret.
But it still has one left.
---
It starts with a ripple.
She's dusting the music room when the light bends — not violently, just enough to make the edge of her vision stutter. She turns.
The mirror on the west wall is trembling.
Just slightly.
Not cracked. Not cold.
Alive.
> "No," she whispers. "You're not the Mara one."
This one is older. Smaller. Oval-framed. Set in gilded brass etched with constellations she doesn't recognize.
The mirror pulses once.
Then shifts.
---
She sees:
A hallway of blue smoke.
A girl made of moths and moonlight.
A garden of teeth.
A piano burning without flames.
Lucien's father's study — untouched, but not undisturbed.
And then herself — not as she is, but as she could be.
> Older.
Stronger.
Unafraid.
The vision cuts off sharply, and Alira stumbles back, breath caught in her throat.
The mirror dims.
But not fully.
It's waiting.
---
She tells Irlenne that night.
They sit in the solarium, knees touching, stars spilling across the ceiling like spilled sugar. Theda sleeps in the armchair nearby, one hand still curled around a worn novel.
Irlenne listens carefully.
Then says:
> "Not all mirrors reflect the past.
Some show what might happen."
Alira frowns. "Like... prophecy?"
Irlenne shakes her head. "Like choice."
That word — choice — feels dangerous in Alira's mouth.
Like a language she was never allowed to learn.
---
Later, Lucien finds her in the study.
He's reading again — old journals, old ink, old madness.
He offers her a page without a word.
On it:
> *"The mirrors are not cursed. They are doorways shaped like memories.
They do not lie.
But they show the truth only if you're brave enough to see it."*
Signed in the corner: D. V. Merrowe.
Lucien's father.
Dead, vanished, or something worse.
Alira stares at the signature.
She asks, quietly, "Did he use the mirror too?"
Lucien nods.
> "He tried to find a future where nothing broke.
But he forgot that you can't predict pain.
You can only choose how to carry it."
---
That night, Alira returns to the west wing mirror.
Alone.
She stands before it and stares at her own reflection. The house behind her is lit by candlelight, soft and golden. Her fingers tremble, but she does not run.
> "Show me," she says.
And the mirror obeys.
---
She sees a door.
A real one.
Wooden, carved with vines. Hidden behind the ivy-covered wall in the manor's west wing. A place they've all passed, but no one's touched.
Then:
The door creaks open.
Inside — a room untouched by dust. A vault of journals. Photographs. Letters sealed in blood-red wax.
And one more mirror.
Circular.
Shimmering.
Empty.
Waiting.
---
Alira gasps.
The vision ends.
She backs away, heart pounding.
She's seen this door before. In her dreams. In half-forgotten fragments from before she came here. Before she escaped.
A voice curls in her ear like smoke.
> "You are not what they did to you.
You are what you become anyway."
Alira closes her eyes.
And she begins to walk toward the west wing.