"She's not here," comes a voice as I wake, strong, male and thankfully familiar. I sigh, knots in my shoulders loosening.
"Where is she?" I whisper, turning from my awkward position sprawled half-off the bed.
"Downstairs, far down. I think in the dungeon. It's harder to locate her in the dark," he told me, the deep voice apologetic and frustrated.
"It will take her several minutes to get up here, even if she left now. We have some time." Anticipation lay behind and over his words.
I stagger to my feet, and across to the vanity.
"We do," I breathe, picking up the tarnished hand-mirror on the table, turning it over from its embellished silver back to the glass surface, so I can see him. She must have left him in the dark again. I wonder what he did to make her angry after she shocked me into unconsciousness. Dark hair frames his face, swept back in two loose wings to a short ponytail. The planes of his face are stern, harsh, and his eyes are intense and brooding. He has been trapped for so long in the mirror, seeing through the glass, seeing what she allows him to see from a featureless room, just large enough for him to stand. Light comes from the window, which for him looks out of the mirror onto the world. If he displeases her, my step-mother turns his mirror face down when she finishes consulting him, and leaves him alone in the dark for a time. If he has done well, she rewards him by leaving him in my room.
We pretend hate.
To her, he criticizes my face, my form, my insipid stupidity. He commands her to bring him more beautiful women, who have wit and conversation. I tremble when she orders me to please him. She thinks it's from fear, and she's right. The fear is from the thought she might discover me. I'm not as dull as I pretend. Behind my flat eyes churns hatred and rebellion.
And for this, for my time with the mirror, eagerness.
"Now," he orders. "Now."
Cradling the mirror in my arms, stroking the embellished edges, I carried him to the narrow bed. Propping the mirror up on at the foot takes me a few moments of mounding the covers the right way, and I fuss a little too much over it, trying to draw out the anticipation.