Evenjos was forced to guess where, exactly, Garrett Dovanack slept.

His rotating choice of bedchambers stymied potential assassins. Evenjos found his craftiness annoying, since she could not sense life sparks as long as Ariock’s sphere of influence washed out all others. She could not read minds while disincorporated, so she was obliged to physically walk through drafty corridors in order to scan the surface thoughts of passersby, searching for any hint of the old man.

Finally, she noticed a pair of zombified Torth standing guard on either side of an ornate pair of double doors. They blinked in unison every so often. Gross. But the zombies might as well be an advertising sign that someone important slept within.

Evenjos turned to dust in order to bypass the zombified sentries. She rematerialized on the far side of the door.

His taste in decor was … different.

There were no appropriated Torth gadgets, no monitors aglow with informational displays. Garrett’s furniture was iron and stone. Heavy drapes added a secretive atmosphere, barely lit by gas lamp wall sconces. It reminded Evenjos of the Dovanack mansion, as she had seen it through glimpses into Ariock’s mind.

Garrett sat at a desk with his back to Evenjos. Pipe smoke made the air fragrant. A large, ancient-looking book lay open on his desk, illuminated by the colorfully pebbled glow of stained glass lanterns.

This must be the book of prophecies.

Evenjos relaxed her bodily coherence. She transformed to dust, eager to peek over his shoulder.

Garrett flipped the book closed. “Evenjos.” He straightened out of his slump. “Didn’t anyone tell you that it’s rude to enter without knocking first?”

Well, it had been worth a try.

Evenjos coalesced to her default shape, wearing a simple white dress. White should help her look more innocent. “Good evening, Garrett.” She perched on a corner of his agate-topped desk, so he would not have to rotate his armchair to face her.

Garrett made the book vanish with a gesture. Then he leaned back in his chair, smoking his pipe and otherwise giving Evenjos his full attention.

“I am afraid that I…” Evenjos abandoned that line of explanation. She took a deep breath, wondering how best to broach the subject. “I am in need of some advice.”

“All right.” Garrett smoked and gave her an inviting look.

It seemed he was actively resisting the urge to scan her memories.

Evenjos aimed some chagrin at herself. She had expected Garrett to behave like a professional telepathic counselor. In her time, such counselors were expensive, and they usually went straight to business. But Garrett was downplaying his telepathy, as usual. He wasn’t going to probe her mind as if she was a paying client. He was treating her like a friend.

Evenjos opened her mouth to explain. Outside, wind gusted, and rain pattered against the window panes.

Garrett gestured at the window with his pipe. “Is that Ariock weather?”

“Maybe.” Evenjos clasped her hands together.

“What did you do to him?” Garrett asked.

Evenjos felt Garrett rooting around in her memories, now that she had triggered his concern for his great-grandson. She forced herself to remain seated and let it happen. Garrett genuinely understood the vast gulf between royalty and commoners. He wanted a dynastic lineage for Ariock. He wanted the very best for his great-grandson. He had explicitly approved of a union between Evenjos and Ariock. Surely he would forgive her methodology? After all—

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

!!!

Garrett jerked to his feet, red-faced. He left his pipe smoldering on the desk. “You tricked Ariock?”

Evenjos had expected a more prosaic reaction. She stood, making herself titanic and imperious, to remind Garrett of whom he was speaking to.

The old man stormed at her and seized her upper arms. “I gave you my blessing to pursue Ariock, yes, but I didn’t expect you to toy with his feelings. Or to outright deceive him! Agh!” He absorbed more from Evenjos’s mind, and he actually dared to shake her. “You stranded Vy in the mountains? What were you thinking?”

Disdain rolled off him.

Evenjos could have ripped his hands off her. She could have ripped his arms out of their sockets. She had quite a bit more raw strength than Garrett. She could have reminded him that she was a greater Yeresunsa, and he the lesser.

Instead, she hung her head and let him shake her.

She wished she had not impersonated Vy. She was beginning to regret all of it … not just her mistake tonight, but almost every moment of her consciousness since she had been resurrected in the prison of mirrors.

It was all a mistake.

She was older than any sapient in the known universe, except for a few uncommon alien species bound to their homeworlds. She dared not fall asleep. She did not require food. She rarely remembered to eat except when she was in the company of someone she admired.

She was actually more alien than any alien.

And she truly understood, now, that no one in this era was ever going to love her unnatural nature. She was unlike any of them. She was ancient. Her true form was dust.

Ariock didn’t deserve her. And she was unsuitable for him. She could not turn back time and make herself young and pure and innocent, like him.

Nor could she bear children with her womb made of dust. There would be no dynastic lineage—no family—in her future.

She was extraneous. All she could do was imitate things. She would never have true blood or organs.

Why was she bothering?

“Stop that.” Garrett glared at her. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

Evenjos pulled free from his arthritic grasp. She was done with this farce of a therapy session. Garrett was not a professional counselor.

Anyhow, not even the best counselor in the universe could fix all the things that were broken inside her.

Evenjos gazed over Garrett’s shoulder, and confronted her own reflection in the mirror-paneled wall. False beauty. What if Evenjos decided to stop caring about what anyone else thought of her?

She would reveal the truth and face it. She was a horror.

Why not?

Evenjos allowed the illusion of youthful beauty to melt away. Her mouth was toothless from starvation. Bags under her eyes symbolized her complete inability to sleep. Patchy white hair crowned a head that had seen too much suffering.

Really, she had no right to be alive, no right to have any form whatsoever. Her true form was the dust of corpses.

Evenjos clawed bony fingers through her ugly old face, ripping it apart, breaking it into dust. She was a wretch. Even a corpselike form was too good for her. It was just an illusion to humanize the vile reality that was her unnatural existence.

“What are you doing?” Garrett snapped. “Stop!”

She was nothing.

She was a headless blight amidst beauty.…

Garrett’s grip tightened, infused with supernatural strength. His fingers dug into her bony, hag-like arms. If she were an ordinary mortal, he would have broken her bones.

“Don’t you dare disincorporate,” Garrett said. “Stay.”

Evenjos hesitated, on the verge of losing bodily cohesion. Was he threatening to lecture her?

Ugh.

Maybe she deserved a lecture, but she couldn’t bear it right now. She had let Garrett down, too. He loved his great-grandson, and she had stupidly ruined any chance for a civil relationship, never mind marriage or romance or—

“You’re a broken mess,” Garrett said, interrupting her thought-stream. “So am I.”

He kissed her corpse-mouth roughly.

Evenjos developed eyelids and blinked.

Everything about Garrett was rough. His bearded mouth, his gnarled hands, his angry mind. He was a brute.

She liked his utter lack of consideration.

Garrett wasn’t brooding over the idea of accidentally hurting her. He knew all the ways in which she was irreparably hurt and broken, and he was well aware that her body was impervious to harm.

There was a definite brokenness inside him, as well.

Evenjos sensed a raging chasm of pain and loneliness inside his mind. Garrett did not want to care about anybody except for his great-grandson. Garrett was unwilling to put effort into a relationship. He would not emotionally forsake the wife he had lost, and perhaps he could not cobble together all the bits of his soul that had shattered when his wife died. He was probably incapable of love.

Fine.

Evenjos slammed Garrett against a wall, forcing him to accept her body wrapped around his. She reverted to her illusion of being lush and young and fertile. It was all lies.

Garrett was not deceived in the slightest.

He seized Evenjos and shoved her against the wall, uncaring and brutal. When he ripped off her dress for better access, and pushed inside her, she moaned with a satisfaction she had not known it was possible to feel.