Although Brand had hired a gardener, Seri decided to tend the lilies herself. She liked gardening. It gave her something to pour her energy into, a welcome distraction. If I can get something to grow, she thought, everything will be all right. I’ll be all right. She’d thought so as even a child and it still held true today.

She wore her old dress in the garden, to work. It was nice to have a dress to wear when she wanted to get dirty and still have clean gowns to change into afterwards. She wore the forest green dress or midnight blue dress around the castle during the day and saved the ruby red one at night. That was the fanciest of the dresses he’d bought her, made of velvet rather than wool. She suspected he liked the color on her. She was the only one of the girls to have a red dress.

Brand didn’t ask her to his private room much anymore. Instead, he asked Ida, who was getting near her three months, or else Lotte, who had been here longer than Seri. It was a relief to be able to withdraw peacefully into her chamber at night without speaking to him. But it wasn’t as if Seri could avoid Brand completely. It was still his tower.

He watched her. A lot. Today, for instance, when she was gardening, he sat on a chair only a few feet away, paging through one of his books. He wasn’t really reading, though. She could feel his eyes on her the whole time, like a cat watching a bird.

“You like to garden,” he remarked.

She sighed and stood up. “And you like to watch me work.”

“I’m studying,” he said.

“Not from this book,” she said, and took it out of his hand.

It was a bold thing to do, but he said nothing. Seri glanced over the pages and saw, as usual, few words, but painstakingly detailed drawings. The subject of the drawings disturbed her. It was eyes—human eyes—nothing but eyes, floating in paired rows along the page. There were marks and numbers beside them.

“What is this?” she asked.

“My studies,” he said, taking the book back from her. “Do you think it’s easy to create illusions? Humans are not easy to fool. Mess up a single detail, and even men with no magic will see that something is wrong.”

“So, when you create the illusions, you draw inspiration from these books?”

“I draw inspiration from real life. The illustrations help me understand the different pieces.”

Seri studied Brand’s face more closely. He’d taken on the guise of a young scholar, pale and gaunt, with sunken cheeks. But there were other marks of individuality in the face. A crooked nose, a slight overbite, spots of acne on the chin. This could be a real person.

Seri blinked. All the faces he’d worn so far had been men. Could he conjure women as well?

“Do you make illusions of us?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said. “Want to see?”

And before, she could answer, he cast his illusion.

Seri jumped. He did not project the illusion onto himself, as he normally did, but sent it out, so that a woman appeared right in front of Seri. The woman smiled, with a slight spark in her eyes, and silently walked around Seri. She paused once, and looked at Brand from behind her long neck, a serene smile playing on her lips. The woman seemed solid, real… and familiar.

“Rilla,” Brand said. “Calm and graceful. Easy to get right.”

He flicked his wrist and Berta appeared, biting her lip and wringing her hands, before folding her arms across her chest. Seri felt the hairs along her arm stand up. The resemblance was uncanny, and not just the facial features, but the facial tics, the body language.

“Berta was trickier,” Brand said, standing up. “She had this constant nervous energy humming from under her skin. Always seemed to be moving. Now Katherine—” A dark-haired beauty with a cat-like smile danced and swayed. “—she was fun. She actually posed for me, which made it easier to capture her movements, but harder to capture her essence. Whereas Helga—” A dull-looking girl with a frown blinked at Seri. “—I just never really figured out.”

“Stop,” Seri said.

The girls had begun to make a crowd. They continued to dance and blink and squirm, doing the same gesture over and over. And sometimes they laughed or moved their lips to talk, but they never made a sound. They were like dolls come to life, perfect in every detail and going through all the motions of life—but not alive. Not real.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Brand swished his hand and the illusions disappeared.

“You don’t like them?” He sounded disappointed. “I think they’re good.”

“Do you do this with all the girls?” she asked, and her voice came out shaky.

“Yes.”

“And with me?”

“I’m working on yours,” he said. “I have your motions down, but not your expression. I can show you once I finish—”

“I don’t want to see it.” Seri balled her hands into fists. “I don’t want to be part of your collection.”

Brand’s eyes grew hard. “I’m sorry,” he said, in a voice that sounded far from apologetic, “but that’s not up to you. I create what I want to create.”

“But why? What’s the purpose of this?”

“Purpose? There is no purpose. I just like to do it.” Brand sat back down. “Illusions, I’ll admit, are not a popular form of magic. They require a good deal of skill and do not inspire much awe. But I like creating them. I’m good at it, and I intend to get better. One day, I may even fool you.” He smiled.

Seri rubbed her arms. “I don’t like you creating this… this false image of me.”

“Most men create false images of women. The difference is you can see mine. All my memories squeezed into a single illusion…” His eyes went distant, and he sighed. “Of course, real women change. That’s why I never go back to see them again. One reason, anyway.”

* * *

Brand wore illusions like the richest of men wore clothes, changing them multiple times a day, according to mood and function. During the day, he favored older, wise-looking men, or scholarly faces, when he was reading. Every now and then, he’d wear the face of a teenage boy, a sign he was feeling more playful.

At dinner, he had a series of “handsome men” that he brought out, typically between the ages of twenty and forty, with hair ranging in colors from black to silver. He had men with beards and men without, men who were broad-figured and men who were slender, men who had foreign look and men who were home-grown. In spite of the great diversity faces, Seri started to find them rather tiresome.

Instead, she paid attention to what remained the same. His voice, for example. All his art was focused on what the eyes might see, but he could not control sound. The voice Brand used was probably his own. It was not a particularly remarkable voice—not deep, nor high, nor nasally—but it was articulate and energetic, and the more emotional he got, the quicker he spoke. When he spoke slowly, it was a warning of danger.

She also noticed that, whatever disguise he wore, his height remained the same, about 5’8”, or about four inches taller than her. This, she guessed, was his real height.

The third thing that never changed—and this was the hardest thing to recognize—was his body language. The way he tilted his head, how his eyes roamed, the tapping of his fingers, how he clicked his tongue against his teeth. The way he carried himself. Granted, as an old man, he would affect slower, more ponderous movements—but only when he stopped to think about it. Get him talking and he’d move quicker, add expressive flourishes, hold his head high with jaunty confidence.

Seri guessed that he was in his mid-twenties and in good health. He was too energetic to be older than thirty, and moreover, there was something about him that was not quite secure. He drew confidence from his actions, not from deep within, a mark of a younger man. Seri also guessed, that if she were to see his face, it would not be hideous or deformed or very much remarkable.

“It’s not really much to go on, is it?” Lotte said. “Five-foot eight man of twenty-five years with an ordinary face—if he ever chooses to wear it. We don’t even know his hair color. How will your uncle ever find him?”

Brand was playing a card game with Ida, leaving Seri and Lotte free to conspire over their escape. Seri was weeding her lilies while Lotte attempted to sketch Brand’s various faces. They looked crude and far from accurate.

“We have more information than we think,” Seri said. “We know he’s from a powerful family.”

“But which one?” Lotte asked.

“I don’t know. Who specializes in illusions? Anyone?”

Lotte shrugged.

“He can do bindings—which anyone can do—and truth spells, which I also think are fairly ordinary. But the dragon transformation curse seems like it could be a family signature spell.”

“Transformations seem notoriously difficult,” Lotte admitted. “If the spell is real. Do you think that he’s making it up, tricking us?”

“I don’t know,” Seri said. “He put some sort of curse on us, I know that much.”

She could still feel it, sitting in her stomach, like an egg about to hatch.

“What else do we know?” Lotte asked, looking over her list.

“Not a lot that’s useful.” Most of what Seri had learn had to do with preferences and tastes. That he preferred silver to gold, sweet wines to dry, board games to dice. Hardly useful in helping her family track him down and save her.

And more and more, it dawned on her someone would have to track him down. As powerful as her uncle was, breaking through an ordinary sorcerer’s tower was terribly difficult. But Brand’s castle, she guessed, was an ancestry tower, infused with magic from previous generations. She did not know what spells they contained, but they’d be strong and tied to his bloodline. And Brand, while probably inexperienced, was at least competent. There was a reason he was never attacked.

It would be easier for her uncle to confront Brand when he was out roaming the world, as it were. But the disguises he wore, these illusions, were an excellent form of protection. How could her uncle find him? No one even knew what he looked like.

This was why she was trying to piece together his portrait, frustrating though it was. Any detail she could root out might be important. The more she could learn, the more clues she could hand to her rescuers.

“How do we get this list to them?” Lotte asked. “Do we tie it to a bird’s leg and send it over the wall?”

“The bird wouldn’t know where to take it.” Seri chewed her lip. “I hate to say it, but the best chance we have is if one of us gets out. That girl who escapes can deliver a message to the other girls’ families. Then we can be rescued.”

“Do you think he actually keeps his promise?” Lotte asked.

“I don’t know,” Seri said.

You would, if you agree to the truth spell, a voice in her head chided her, but she pushed that thought away. She did not need a truth spell. She could puzzle him out on her own.