“I have something for you,” he said with a smile, drawing away from me.

Intrigued, I listened as he reached for something in his pocket, how it crinkled in his hands like parchment.

“What is it?” I asked warily.

He set something long and square in my palms, hidden beneath paper and twine. There was a hint of joy in his voice when he told me, “Open it later.”

44

I opened it later that night, when I was alone in my bedchamber. I pulled away the parchment and twine, and for a moment I merely stared at what rested within. And then I touched it, hesitantly, as if it might bring me pain to remember.

A sketchbook full of empty pages. Three sticks of sharpened charcoal.

I slowly began to draw again.

It didn’t take long until I craved to draw a portrait of myself. My skill was raw, nothing as it had once been when I’d surrendered it for a stone heart, but whenever I had a spare moment, I was in my room, drawing. Eager to regain what I had lost.

Eventually, I had a mirror brought into my bedchamber.

I arranged myself before it, sketchbook open to a fresh page, charcoal ready in hand, the window drapes parted to welcome winter sunshine.

I studied my face in the mirror and began to render it on paper. But with each glance from the paper to the glass . . . I realized that I was drawing someone I didn’t recognize. A girl with gleaming teeth and fallen stars in her long, red hair. A girl with cold, determined eyes.

My hand shook.

I stopped and set down the charcoal, staring at my reflection. Mazarine’s words rose to memory. Your true reflection will always shine brightly upon a mirror.

Perhaps one day I would draw what was reflected. Perhaps one day, I’d be ready to acknowledge what truly dwelled on the other side of the glass. What I was becoming. But it was not that day, and I closed my sketchbook with a snap.

I rose and turned away from the mirror.

Acknowledgments