Chapter 4 Two Who Came Back

I could not move.

The crowd was still shouting around us. Someone was crying. Someone was laughing. But the only thing I could hear was his voice, saying the same words again and again in my head.

You are not the only one who came back.

"How?" I whispered. My lips felt cold. "How is that possible?"

Kael looked over my shoulder, and his face changed. The sad look was gone. The cold king was back.

"Not here," he said quietly. "Damian has men in this hall. Your stepmother is watching us right now. Do not turn around."

I did not turn around, but I could feel her eyes on my back like two hot needles.

"Then when?" I asked.

"Tonight. At midnight. In the garden behind your house, by the old stone bench."

I stared at him. "How do you know about the stone bench?"

Something moved in his silver eyes. "I know many things about you, Mira. More than I should."

Before I could ask what he meant, he stepped closer and bent his head a little, like a king saying a polite goodbye to a lady. But what he said was not polite at all.

"Listen to me. Do not drink anything in that house tonight. Not water. Not wine. Not tea."

My heart stopped.

Tea.

Nobody knew about the tea. Nobody except me and the women who made it. For eighteen years, a warm cup came to my room every night, and for eighteen years I drank it and said thank you.

How could he know?

He stepped back before I could find my voice. Then he spoke loudly enough for the people near us to hear.

"Congratulations, Miss Calder. The whole kingdom will be watching you now."

He turned and walked away. The crowd stepped back for him like water around a stone, and then he was gone.

I stood there with ash still on my fingers and a thousand questions in my chest.

The next hour went by in a blur. The priest wanted to write my name in the temple book. Old women wanted to touch my wrist. Young girls who had laughed at me that morning now looked at me like I was made of fire. I smiled and nodded at all of them, but my mind was somewhere else.

Then my father took my arm. His grip was too tight.

"We are going home," he said. "Now."

The carriage ride was the quietest of my life.

My father sat by the window and stared outside. He did not look at me once. His face was grey, like a man who had lost a bet he was sure he would win.

Lady Corinne sat across from me with her hands folded in her lap. She was smiling again. It was her best smile, the one she used at parties and funerals. It never reached her eyes.

Seraphine sat beside her mother, very pale. Her gold gown looked too bright for her now. The flowers in her hair had started to wilt. She kept touching her chest, right where her silver light had died.

Halfway home, she finally spoke.

"What did you do to me?" she whispered.

I looked at her. In my first life, she held my hand at my wedding and cried pretty tears. Two years later, she laughed while I coughed blood into a white cloth.

"Nothing that was not already mine," I said softly.

Her eyes went wide. Lady Corinne put a hand on her knee, and Seraphine closed her mouth at once.

"You must be so tired, darling," Corinne said to me in a voice as sweet as honey. "Such a big day. When we get home, you should rest. I will have something warm sent up to your room."

Something warm.

I smiled at her. "Thank you, Mother. You always take such good care of me."

Her smile did not move, but one of her fingers twitched.

Calder house looked the same as always. It had tall grey walls, a long gravel road and a garden full of white roses that my real mother planted before I was born. The servants stood in a line at the door as our carriage came in.

When I stepped down, nobody said a word.

Yesterday they called me the poor girl. The empty girl. The one with no magic. Now they would not even meet my eyes. A young maid dropped a basket of apples when I walked past her, and they rolled across the floor. I bent down and picked one up for her.

She looked at me like I had handed her a snake.

I went up the stairs to my room at the very top of the house. It was the smallest room, with one window, a narrow bed and a wooden chest at the foot of it. Seraphine had three rooms on the second floor. I had this. For years I told myself it did not matter.

I closed the door and sat on the bed, and for the first time all day, my hands began to shake.

I had done it. I had broken the crystal, broken the contract and broken Damian's smile.

But now I had a new problem, and it was tall, with silver eyes.

In my first life, Kael Draven was only a shadow at my funeral. He stood at the back, far from everyone, in a long black coat. I remember thinking it was strange that a king had come to bury a girl nobody cared about. I remember he was the only one who did not leave early.

And now he said he came back too.

Why? Why would a king turn back time for me? We were strangers. Or were we?

I looked out the window. The sun was going down, painting the garden orange and red. Midnight was still hours away.

I would not sleep. I would not eat. And I would not drink one drop of anything in this house.

My face and hands were still dirty with ash and temple dust. I got up and walked down the hall to the small washroom at the end. I washed my face in cold water and scrubbed my hands until the last of the grey was gone. For a moment, I looked at myself in the old mirror.

My eyes looked different. There was a little gold in them now that was never there before.

I went back to my room and opened the door.

Then I froze.

On my bed, right in the middle of my white pillow, sat a small cup of tea.

Steam rose from it in a thin line. It was still warm.

I had only been gone a few minutes, and I had not heard a single footstep in the hall.

The sweet smell of the tea reached me, and the old seal on my chest began to burn, slowly, like a sleeping fire that had just been woken.

Then, behind me, I heard a small sound.

Click.

Someone had locked my door from the outside.