HIS WOLF WAS SILENT. Not the strained silence of an animal held in check. A different silence. Attentive. Jeanne's hand was steady in his, her fingers laced through his, and her scent was layered in ways he'd learned to read over the past weeks. The bitter almond edge of fear. Underneath, the electric brine thatmeant she was angry. And threaded through it all, the deep honeysuckle that was simply Jeanne.
It didn’t surprise him when they got below decks that the guards were in a magical sleep. He gave a half laugh that had no humor in it. The guards wouldn’t have been able to stop her. The curse or Morvenna’s magic or both had taken them out of the battle.
The corridor stretched before them lit by nothing except the golden glow that leaked from beneath the door at the far end. The glow was brighter than he remembered. Two nights ago it had been a faint seepage. Tonight it pulsed with the rhythm of a living thing, each pulse sending warmth up the corridor floor that he could feel through the soles of his boots.
"Can you resist it?"
She looked up at him. In the golden light her brown eyes had taken on an amber cast, and the scar on her collarbone was a white line against her skin. She looked nothing like the girl who'd been brought aboard in chains.
"I don't need to resist it. I'm walking toward it on purpose."
The door loomed ahead of them, old wood gone dark with age, iron hinges greened by salt air. The golden light pooled at its base like liquid. Up close, the hum was audible, a low frequency that vibrated in his back teeth and his fingertips and the place where the scar crossed his chest.
The key in Jeanne's hand was glowing. The tiny sapphire eyes in the wolf's-head bow caught the door's light and reflected it, two blue points burning in the dark corridor.
"I’ll go in first," he said.
He released her hand. The loss of contact was physical, cold rushing into the space where her warmth had been, and his wolf lunged with a snarl of protest. He overrode it. Took the key from her outstretched hand. The iron was hot, and the wolf's-head bow bit into his palm like teeth.
He fitted the key into the lock.
The mechanism turned with a sound like a bone breaking, a clean snap that echoed down the corridor. The door didn't swing open. It waited. As if whatever lived behind it wanted them to make the choice consciously.
Anatole pushed.
The door opened onto a room that shouldn't have existed in the hull of a ship. Too large. The ceiling too high. The dimensions wrong in the way that dreams were wrong, close enough to reality to be recognizable but skewed at the edges. The air was heavy and still, carrying a scent that was all the dead brides at once, six women's fragrances layered and preserved by magic so they appeared as they did on their wedding day, even though the curse had ravaged their bodies and he had buried all of them at sea.
He stepped inside.
They were there. Six women, arranged in a semicircle around a central point, each lying on a raised stone platform draped with white cloth. They looked like they might open their eyes and ask him why they had to die.
Marguerite in the center. Dark hair across the white cloth, her wedding dress a frothy confection surrounding her like a shroud. Her face was peaceful. He hated that peace because it was a lie. She hadn't died peacefully.
Celeste on Marguerite's right, in the leather trousers and linen shirt she'd been wearing the night she was brought aboard is ship. Isabeau next, then Vivienne with flowers still braided in her hair. Lucienne’s cheeks were still wet with tears the magic wouldn't let dry. And Adele.
Adele, with her hand resting on her belly. Three months along. She'd opened the door carrying hope, and the mirror had taken everything.
He dragged his gaze from the brides and looked at the far wall.
The mirror.
Tall, taller than him, framed in dark wood carved with symbols he'd never been able to identify. The glass was black. Not reflective, not transparent. Black like deep water, like the space between stars. It showed him nothing. The mirror had never shown him anything.
"What do you see?" Jeanne said from behind him.
"The brides. Preserved. The mirror on the far wall." He kept his voice steady because if he let it shake, she would hear, and she would come in before he was finished. "The mirror is dark. It's not showing me anything."
He turned to face the door. She stood at the threshold, backlit by the corridor's darkness, the golden light from the room painting her in amber and gold. The key was back in her hand. He didn't remember giving it to her. The curse must have moved it while his attention was on the brides.
She stepped across the threshold.
The room changed.
Not with theatrical fury. The change was a tightening of the air, a deepening of the stillness, as if the room had been holding its breath and was now exhaling. The golden light intensified, and the scent of the dead brides sharpened, six preserved fragrances cutting through the heavy air.
And the mirror. The black surface stirred. Movement in the glass, like something rising from deep water.
Jeanne walked toward it. Not pulled. Not dragged.
