Page 117 of Hunted

Instead, I step to the artefact and grip the black cloth, pausing only long enough to measure her from the corner of my eye. She is alert, wary, intrigued, and despite herself she has drifted closer, bringing with her that faint herbal-metallic shift in her scent that is beginning to work its way beneath my tongue and skin.

Good.

I would rather she see this fully.

I draw the coverings away. The cloth slides soundlessly to the floor, and the glass catches the room at once, fracturing it into impossible depth.

It is not ordinary glass, not even in the broadest supernatural sense. Its surface appears dark at first glance, smoked and crystalline, threaded within by vein-like streaks of deep red-black that glimmer only when the light strikes them at certain angles. Its edges are irregular, as though it was once part of something larger, violently broken and refitted into this frame without ever truly consenting to shape.

Eira steps in front of it and sucks in a breath as her eyes go wide. For one heartbeat, she looks neither dangerous nor clever nor defiant.

Only astonished.

Her gaze rises, catches mine, and she gasps again.

‘I can see your reflection.’

‘Yes.’

The word leaves me quietly, but it judders through me with more force than if I had raised my voice.

There is a strange impact in being seen this way. Not merely by her eyes, but through glass that should refuse me and does not, through a surface that returns me whole and places my image beside hers as though such a thing is natural.

I cannot remember the last time another person looked at me through a mirror.

Perhaps not since I was human.

To stand here now, reflected and witnessed while Eira Cross stares at me with astonishment instead of fear, feels less like a parlour trick and more like something denied so long I no longer had language for missing it.

‘How… how is that possible?’

I step closer, slow enough not to startle her, though I feel the tension in her shoulders. That taut, vivid awareness she carries around me now, as if her body has accepted what her mind still refuses.

‘This relic is called Heartshard Glass.’

Her gaze flicks to me, then back to the dark, veined surface, suspicion and wonder warring in equal measure.

‘It was crafted for one purpose,’ I continue. ‘To reveal what common reflection cannot. True form. True presence. Bonds, in certain circumstances. It is less a mirror than an instrument. It abhors vanity. It does not flatter. It witnesses.’

As I speak, I begin unbuttoning my shirt with measured movements, perhaps delaying the inevitable.

The room alters with the movement, the air tightening as her attention splits. I see it happen in the Glass before I look at her directly. Her eyes follow my face as I speak, then drop, despite herself, to the hand easing each button free.

Her pulse ticks faster.

‘So… it’s like mirror, mirror on the wall, but with fewer riddles and more existential dread?’

‘An unflattering comparison,’ I say dryly. ‘But not wholly inaccurate. This one is older, rarer, and considerably less theatrical. It speaks no riddles. It simply shows truths people are rarely prepared to see.’

Her scent shifts as her throat moves. Not enough to overwhelm grief or stress, but enough that I catch the warm, dark edge of arousal threading through both.

I continue as if I do not notice.

‘The Heartshard Glass has passed through courts, vaults, sanctuaries and battlefields. Kings tried to hoard it. Priests tried to bury it. Men less disciplined than I killed for the privilege of standing before it. Most misunderstood what it was for.’

‘Which is?’ she asks, the question huskier than before.

I unfasten another button and let my shirt fall looser at my chest. ‘Discernment. Verification. Memory. It shows what power distorts and glamour conceals.’