Rise Of The Mirror King

Chapter 10: Acceptance

I woke before dawn, but the room felt wrong before I even opened my eyes.

No hum. No complaint about how long I'd slept, no warning that I was late for something Symon would've cared about, and I didn't.

Just silence.

I lay there a while, listening for it anyway.

Three days since the cemetery. Three days I'd barely noticed, between the accusations, the vacation notice, Vax crying on the back steps. I'd told myself it was exhaustion — his or mine, whatever exhaustion even meant for something stretched across two bodies.

Three days was a long time to call it that.

But three days was a long time for exhaustion.

I sat up.

"Grey."

The screen flickered into place beside the bed.

"Yes, Lord Symon."

"I haven't heard him in three days."

"I'm aware."

"You could've said something."

"You never asked."

I rubbed a hand down my face. Fair enough. I hadn't asked, because some part of me hadn't wanted the answer.

I asked now.

"What's happening to him?"

A pause — longer than Grey's usual pauses, which had started to mean something over the past few weeks.

"Nothing is happening to him, Lord Symon."

"Then why can't I hear him?"

"Because there is no longer a him to hear."

I went still.

"Explain that."

"When you first arrived in Odbeara, your soul and Symon's had not yet fully merged. The two of you experienced each other as separate — two minds occupying one body, communicating across the gap between you. That gap has been closing since the day you arrived. As of this morning, it has closed completely."

"So he's gone."

"He was never a separate person to lose. There was one soul from the beginning, splitting the way light splits through broken glass — and the two halves have finally settled back into a single, whole beam. You were never two people sharing space. You were one person remembering himself in pieces."

I sat with that.

Outside, the estate was starting to wake — a door somewhere below, the distant clatter of the kitchens. Ordinary sounds. I couldn't remember the last time ordinary sounds had felt so strange.

"So all of it," I said slowly. "The killing. The way my body just — knows things. The way I felt about Lucifero before I even understood why."

"Yours."

"I used to tell myself that was him."

"I'm aware."

"That's not a comfort, Grey."

"I wasn't attempting comfort. You asked for the truth."

I laughed — short, humorless, more breath than sound.

There was no door left to shut anymore. No corner of myself I could point to and say, that's not me, that's the noble, that's the killer, that's the boy who hated Lucifero before I even had a reason. It had all been mine the entire time. I'd just been given a few weeks of pretending otherwise.

I thought about Vax, crying on the back steps, asking me which one I was.

I hadn't had an answer for her then.

I had one now. I just wasn't sure I liked it.

I got dressed and went downstairs before I could talk myself out of it.

Father was already in his study, a stack of papers in front of him that he wasn't really reading. He looked up when I stepped through the door, and something in his face braced, as if he expected round two of three nights ago.

"Symon."

"I want to talk about the guild."

His eyebrows lifted, just slightly. "I thought you'd made your position clear."

"I had." I stayed in the doorway. "I'm changing it."

He set the papers down slowly, giving me the same look he'd given me the night I walked into this house for the first time — like he was checking whether the person in front of him matched the one he remembered.

"What changed?"

I thought about telling him the truth. That there was no more Symon to argue with him about it, no more Simon to hide behind either — just one person now, standing in his study, finally out of places to put the blame.

I didn't say any of that.

"I'm tired of being someone people whisper about in hallways," I said instead. "If I'm going to carry this name, I'd rather carry it somewhere I can actually be useful. The Blazing Sun."

Father studied me for a long moment.

"You understand what you're agreeing to."

"No," I admitted. "Not really."

Something almost like approval flickered across his face.

"Good," he said. "At least you're honest about that much."

He rose, crossed the room, and for the first time since I'd arrived home, he clasped my shoulder without any argument riding underneath it.

"I'll send word to Vance today."

I nodded, and only once I'd turned to leave that the full weight of it settled in my chest.

No more voices in my head to argue with.

No more excuses left to hide behind.

Just me, walking into a guild I knew nothing about, carrying a name that wasn't fully mine and had never fully been anyone else's either.

Arc two started tomorrow.

I had no idea if I was ready for it.