I curtsied and swiftly departed. I felt his gaze as he watched me walk the stone path and slip beyond the iron gate. But I didn’t dare glance behind to meet it.

I sensed he was coercing me, lying to me. A game among nobles.

And I was beginning to think he knew I was lying, too.

17

“You have to stay for Seven Wraiths!” Deacon begged me after dinner.

Night had just stained the windows, and I was anxious, waiting for Phelan to return from his council meeting. Suspicions of the duke and his fabricated dream continued to roam in my thoughts; I wondered if I should say something to Phelan.

“Maybe tomorrow night, Deacon,” I said, carrying my plate into the kitchen.

Deacon intercepted me. “Please, Miss Neven!”

“Seven Wraiths sounds like a frightening game,” I said in a teasing lilt. But my upbringing inevitably reared; all those times my father had told me how harmful the game was. That I should never play it.

“It isn’t too scary,” he insisted. “I promise. My grandmama plays, and she doesn’t get scared.”

“Deacon? Where are those plates?” Mrs. Stirling called from the kitchen.

“Please,” the boy pleaded.

“All right, but just one round,” I said, and let him take my plate. “I still need to get home tonight.”

“You should stay the night here, Miss Neven! I saw Mr. Vesper had a room prepared for you!” Deacon chirped before he slipped into the kitchen.

At last, I thought, weary of all the precautions I had to take in order to arrive at my mother’s unnoticed. Weary, and yet something else pulsed within me, similar to the feeling I experienced before a new moon unfolded.

I stepped into the drawing room.

Mrs. Stirling had already stoked a fire in the hearth and lit the candelabras. The chamber was a dance of shadows, light, and the flash of golden trim, and I looked at the grand mirror hanging on the wall. As if it had set a hook in me, I walked to stand before it.

My reflection stared back at me. A face I had nearly forgotten. A face that felt like a stranger’s now, as if a girl I had never met stood on the other side of the glass, watching me as I watched her.

You’re not trying hard enough, said the girl in the mirror, touching a stray thread of copper hair. You’ve been passive here, Clem. Do you expect this family’s secrets to rise and meet you on their own volition?