Mirror

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Eydis stood in the center of her mental realm, where reality bent to her will—well, almost. In truth, fragments of her subconscious left their fingerprints here, distorting the order she created. Endless shelves stretched beyond sight, each book glowing faintly, a reflection of her memories. Yet not all memories shone equally.

Her steps carried her to the shadowed edge of the library, a forbidden corner of her mind. She hesitated only briefly before reaching out. Pages crumbled beneath her fingers, disintegrating like ash as she touched them.

Gone. Erased. Forgotten.

She clenched her fists. She could feel it, just out of reach. What she had lost, why she was here, trapped beneath the unblinking gaze of The Eye, bound in the form of a younger self who carried secrets even she didn’t understand.

As if that weren’t enough, she was stuck sharing space with perhaps the most powerful Gifted student St. Kevin’s had ever seen.

Coincidence? No. Chance wasn’t this precise. This was deliberate, designed. Like stepping into a story already written, her role decided before she ever spoke her first word.

But none of that answered the only question that mattered.

She had a choice. She could leave.

So why…

Did she stay?

As if sensing her doubt, the timber floor beneath her feet shifted, now firm and solid, now a swirling, intangible fog. She chuckled darkly.

Even within the depths of her mind, she could feel the subtle tremor of losing her balance.

“Trust is a slippery rope, Your Majesty,” came a low voice. “Trusting a stranger who, just moments ago, had a blade pointed at your throat? Curious choice.”

“Blades, actually. Two blades,” added a second voice, sharper and more animated. “Could’ve been three if she had more limbs.”

Eydis sighed, glancing over her shoulder. The twin ravens perched upon a gnarled tree, their forms distorting at the edges, as if they weren't quite certain whether to be birds or living shadows.

“How amusing,” she said, “to hear you, Raven… and Raven, speak of trust. Shall we recount your last performance?”

“We are hurt by your suspicion,” one crooned melodramatically, fluttering its wings. “We’re here to serve you, Your Majesty, not ruffle your feathers!”

The other tilted its head, beak clacking. “Deeply wounded, in fact. Humans just can’t seem to recognise brilliance when it’s squawking in their faces. And now we’re nesting in bird puns, apparently.”

Eydis raised an eyebrow, her lips curling into an amused smile. “You confuse ‘insufferable’ for ‘brilliance.’ A common fowl mistake.”

The first raven leaned forward, lowering its voice. “Ah, but you trusted him once, didn’t you? And he—”

Envy’s hiss slithered through the mindscape as it emerged from the void. Coils of dark scales wrapped around the raven, cutting off its words.

“You’re dangerously close to getting The Deep’s treatment,” Envy purred, its forked tongue flickering. “Both of you.”

“The Deep?” the other raven squawked. “You mean that bottomless void of despair—”

“—That just so happens to contain a three-headed terror with endless energy and zero boundaries?” the first finished, trembling with exaggerated outrage. “It chases us nonstop and never shuts up! Psychological torment!”

“Oh, do stop being so melodramatic,” the other scoffed. “Gluttony’s merely a minor inconvenience!”

“Minor? MINOR?!” the first raven snapped. “It tried to play fetch with… me. As the fetch object!”

And just like that, the two launched into an increasingly dramatic squabble.

Eydis smirked as she turned on her heel. “Oh, don’t mind them, Envy. They live for the sound of their own voices. It’s just unfortunate the rest of us have to endure it.”

She raised her hand, opening a void so dark, it made the ravens look downright radiant.

“Consider it said,” the ravens mumbled, feathers drooping. “We’ll keep our beaks shut.”

“Eydis!”

Astra’s voice sliced through her mindscape. Eydis blinked and found herself back in the sunlit warmth of Astra’s greenhouse. Her book lay open and forgotten in her lap.

The greenhouse was a cathedral of glass and growing things. Condensation pearled on the glass panes overhead. It was humid, alive with the scent of earth and tropical plants.

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She looked up lazily. “Astra.”

Astra stood among her plants, one hand on a ceramic watering can, the other caressing the brittle edge of an oversized anthurium leaf. Her frown deepened as if the leaf had personally offended her.

Eydis took her time studying the other woman, the faintest smile playing on her lips. She hadn’t expected Astra to have a retreat outside of Alchymia, much less one like this.

She hadn’t expected Astra to care about plants, either.

Then again, she didn’t know much about Astra at all.

The ravens, irritatingly, had been right about that.

“Are you about to say something, or…” Eydis drawled, flipping a page of her book, “do you just enjoy savouring the sound of my name?”

As expected, Astra glared. Her eyes flashed—a glimmer of heat broke through the cold. Eydis would never admit it, not under torture or truth-binding spells, but…

She enjoyed these moments.

Small, fleeting cracks in the ice Astra so carefully sculpted around herself. Proof that beneath the frost, something still burned. Something… real.

It had been a week since Eydis bound the ravens. Four days since she’d woken up. And Astra had been brooding ever since in that distant, unreadable way only she could manage.

She hadn’t asked questions. She hadn’t turned hostile. Instead, she’d fortified herself behind her walls.

Sometimes, though, Eydis caught her unguarded: sitting motionless, silver hair aglow in the soft light through the window. Astra’s gaze would drift, fixed somewhere far beyond the glass. Or perhaps not beyond them at all. Perhaps she was trapped…

Somewhere within herself.

That, at least, was something Eydis understood.

Longing. For what, she couldn’t say. But in that shared ache, she understood more about Astra than she ever cared to admit.

Astra didn’t deflect. She didn’t snap back, nor did she dismiss Eydis entirely. Instead, she set the watering can aside and crossed the room. She took a seat across from Eydis at the arched pergola.

“You seem content talking to yourself,” Astra said, her voice quiet but carrying a strange intimacy in the stillness of the greenhouse.

Eydis smirked, her gaze fixed stubbornly on the pages of her book. “I didn’t realise you found my company so enthralling. Or…” Her voice dipped. “Is this your way of asking for my attention?”

Astra didn’t rise to the bait, not entirely. “Maybe I was curious if there’s anything…” She paused, as though weighing whether to continue. “…real behind all of it.”

The word hit harder than it should have. Real.

Eydis’s grip on the book tightened. Just for a moment, the ever-present smile wavered. And she recognised it. That same curiosity… she felt it, too.

Because Astra wasn’t the only one asking that question.

And so, Eydis did what she always did best.

She tilted her head slightly, her expression unchanged, her eyes still on the words she wasn’t reading. “A mystery to keep you up at night,” she teased. “I’m flattered.”

Astra sighed, the sound more resigned than irritated, and rose from her seat with the same grace she carried in everything she did. “Never mind.”

She turned as if to leave, but before she could take another step, Eydis’s hand shot out. Her fingers curled gently around Astra’s wrist, halting her. It was instinct, a reflex she didn’t even understand until it was already done.

Amber eyes met crimson for the first time that day.

In the silence that followed, the truth struck her: it wasn’t Astra who had been avoiding her.

It was her.

She had been retreating, withdrawing into the depth of her own mind. She had been searching—grasping at shadows in hopes of finding something solid, something real to anchor her spiralling thoughts. But even in her mindscape, everything writhed beyond reach.

All lead back to a single truth. An inexplicable urge to trust someone again, to let someone in.

But the familiars she spoke to, the only “others” she’d allowed into her world, were nothing more than shadows of herself. Conversations with them felt like arguing with her own doubts. As if she were trapped in an endless dialogue with her own reflection.

Then it hit her. For the first time, Eydis let herself feel the weight of it.

Princess Eydis had spent years hiding in the quiet corners of her library, turning page after page, chasing meaning in a world that seemed endlessly gray. There was always more to learn, more to become.

She could be better. She would be better.

As Queen Eydis, there had been no time for such self-indulgence. Ambition had consumed her. Duty had demanded every piece of her.

But now, all she had was time.

Endless. Suffocating. Time.

Time that forced her to confront the truth she had run from for so long.

She was lonely.

Astra didn’t pull her wrist away. She stood there, her icy edges softened, her gaze gentler.

Eydis felt the tension in her chest ease just slightly.

“What is it?” Astra’s voice was quiet. There was no bite, no sarcasm. Just a question.

That sounded like concern.

Eydis blinked, her lashes fluttering as she closed her book with deliberate finality. The teasing smirk she’d so often worn like a shield slipped away. Her voice, when it came, was softer than Astra had likely ever heard it.

“What is it that you want to know, Astra?”

Astra’s eyes widened. Eydis could feel the faint rhythm of her pulse beneath her fingertips, quickened and alive. Her own thumb lingered for a moment longer than she intended, tracing the warmth of Astra’s skin.

“Are you Pr—” Astra started, then stopped abruptly. Her crimson eyes burned as if searching for something, or someone, she needed to find. “What’s your name?” she tried again.

Eydis raised an eyebrow, puzzled. “My name is Eydis.” She paused, their gazes locking. Then, with a sigh, she added, “Just Eydis.”

Astra’s breath hitched, “Just… Eydis?”

A ghost of a smile flickered across Eydis’s lips, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “If you’re so curious, you could always address me as Your Majesty. It would be accurate, after all.”

Astra pulled her wrist free, her initial shock dissolving into irritation. “You’re deflecting again.”

Eydis’s smile faded, her tone shifting to something heavier, something that drew Astra’s full attention. “On the contrary, my dear roommate,” she said. “My name doesn’t matter, Astra. What matters is who I am.”

Astra leaned closer. “Then who are you?”

Eydis’s amber eyes searched Astra’s face. She felt the faint pull of Astra’s intensity, like a current dragging her closer. That same look. It had burned between them before on that storm-drenched night.

For a moment, she considered saying nothing, letting the silence speak for her. But there it was again, that fragility in Astra’s voice, barely concealed beneath her sharpness. It wasn’t anger, not entirely. It was pain, perhaps even yearning.

What are you really searching for, Astra? What do you want?

“What matters is my title.” Eydis exhaled and spoke the words she hadn’t thought to admit aloud. “I am the Queen of Shadows.”

Astra’s lips parted, an immediate protest escaping. “There’s no such thing as the Qu—”

But then she stopped.

Her breath caught. Her fingers curled slightly, as if trying to hold onto something slipping through her grasp.

Eydis saw it. Felt it.

This time, she didn’t hide behind sharp words or a careless smile. She let her mask fall away entirely.

For the second time, she chose to trust her instinct.

If someone had placed Astra in her path, then fine. Let them think she was following the script.

But the truth was simpler than that.

She was choosing. Choosing to stay. Choosing to trust. Maybe, in some quiet, unspoken way… she already did.

“Of course there isn’t. This world…” Eydis closed her eyes. “Was never meant for me.”