“Perhaps,” Cosima said. “But it still needs to be said. Now go.”
So I went.
I kept my hand over the wren as I walked, and Cosima’s warning circled in my mind. By the time I reached Juno’s chamber, my palm was damp against the silver.
Her door was already open.
She stood beside the basin with one hand on the rim and her attention fixed on the water.
“Cosima showed you the page,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Then she understands.”
Juno didn’t elaborate. When she looked at me, the lines around her mouth had deepened since morning.
“Wrist.”
I set the green book on the nearest chair, rolled up my sleeve, and held out my arm.
The Mark hadn’t settled since the dining hall. The lines were finer now, brighter at the turns, as if some careful hand had sharpened them while I wasn’t looking.
Juno didn’t touch me.
She crossed to the cabinet beside the basin, opened a lower drawer, and removed a small silver mirror, no larger than her palm. Its back was scratched and darkened with age.
She gave it to me.
“Look.”
I gazed into it.
The mirror showed my Mark instead of my face.
Or space around it.
Three faint lines extended from it.
One cold and pale.
One green-gold at the edge.
One dark as wet stone.
They reached only a little way.
I closed my hand around the mirror before my fingers started shaking badly enough for Juno to see.
She saw anyway.
“Those are not completed bonds,” she said.
“Iknow.”
“Do you?”
“I know they aren’t complete, I don’t know what that means.”
