8. Mirrors in the Dark #2
Three months later, after the bans were read and two formal calls were made each week, with her mother eavesdropping from the same chair and from behind the same book, they were married.
A handful of hours after that, they’d consummated the marriage.
After that, everything had fallen apart.
She’d grown cold and distant and avoided him as often as she could.
She refused to go into public with him, and the ton had begun to whisper that he’d married a ghost. He’d begun to feel like a ghost and had been almost relieved when she’d come to him demanding to be freed.
He couldn’t divorce her, so he’d let her go in the only way he could.
New name.
New lodgings.
New purpose.
From duchess to potions mistress for her.
From duke to guardian for him.
It hadn’t felt like a disguise, though, for either one of them. It had felt like shedding unnecessary and ill-fitting layers.
A knock on the door.
“Who is it?”
“Bentley, Your Grace. You have visitors.”
Bran opened the curtains then checked his reflection. He was more Bran now, but the glamour swept back up his body as the light from the window reflected off the looking glass. The glamour was fully in place when he unlocked and opened the door.
Behind a dour-looking Bentley, Apollo grinned, and the Royal Alchemist, Temple Grant, Marquess of Fordham, scowled.
“What are you doing here?” Bran’s question more for the marquess than the one who’d killed him yesterday.
“That’s not a very warm welcome for your savior,” Apollo said. “Or for my cousin.” He swung an arm around the other man’s shoulder, earning a scowl. “What? Do you prefer brother?”
“I will tear your arm right out of its socket,” Grant warned.
Apollo did not seem to care. He kept his arm firmly in place around the other man’s shoulder.
“They refused to wait outside,” Bentley said.
“That’s fine. You may leave us.”
The butler strode off and Bran invited the other men into the room, shut the door again, locked it.
“What’s the marquess doing here?” Bran asked.
“I know he’s a bore, but he could be a help, too,” Apollo said. “He can see through glamours.”
“Fuck.” Bran looked to the Royal Alchemist, found his steely gaze riveted on Bran’s face.
Grant strode a slow circle around Bran. “What in the hell? You look like… But you can’t be…” He stopped right in front of Bran. “Take off the glamour.”
“I cannot.”
“He’s not lying,” Apollo said, flopping into the chair behind Bran’s desk.
“The resemblance is uncanny.” Grant leaned closer, almost nose to nose with Bran.
“No resemblance.” Apollo opened the top center drawer of the desk, poked around inside it. “That is Bran.”
“He’s dead.”
Laughing, Apollo said, “He was yesterday, but not before then.” He opened another drawer.
“Get away from there.” Bran hefted him from the seat and tossed him toward a small sofa across the room.
Apollo stretched out across it and folded his hands behind his head, kicked his feet up on the opposite arm. “I received your letter. It’s working. The glamour is fading?”
“Yes, but I can’t control it.”
“That’s no good. Before you couldn’t control it, or rather, it controlled you, but you could keep your secret and now—”
“I’m fucked.”
“You said it, not me.”
“What is going on here?” Grant demanded.
“I wouldn’t have brought him,” Apollo said, “but he was at the shop when your note arrived, and he’s terribly nosy. Do you want me to kill you again?”
“Kill?” Grant barked.
“No.” Bran definitely did not want to die again. Then, turning to the marquess, he said, “How can you see through glamours?”
Grant shrugged. “I was born this way. How is Bran a duke?”
“I wasn’t damn well born this way.” But then, he had been born into a line of succession, no matter how far down it.
“That does not answer my question,” Grant said.
“It’s a long story, and I do not feel like telling it.”
“Does Lady Guinevere know?”
“She will soon,” Apollo said. “Oh! Look! There it goes. No doubt she’ll know soon enough.”
Bran turned to the mirror. Half his face glamoured, the other half him. Damn.
“You know,” Apollo drawled, “perhaps this is a sign. You should just tell her.”
“That I’ve been lying to her for four years?”
“Four years!” Grant groped for a chair. “I need to sit down.”
“Yes, tell her about that,” Apollo said.
“No.” Bran leaned against his desk. “You’re going to get rid of it fully. Why else come all the way to Mayfair? And why bring him?” He nodded toward Grant.
“You know,” Grant mused, “if I’d ever seen you in the glamour as the duke, I would have known immediately you were also Bran. I would have seen right through you.”
“I didn’t know that, did I?” Bran snapped. “Either add something constructive or leave.”
Grant stroked his jaw. “Diana has been reading about comets and meteoric stones of late. They glow when they rain down but are dull rocks once they hit Earth. Scientists posit, and she agrees—”
Apollo groaned. “Posit. Prepared to be bored, Bran.”
“—that these stones possess or used to possess the properties of light and fire.” Grant continued as if his brother-in-law had not said a word. “We were able to obtain a specimen.”
Apollo groaned again. “Specimen.”
“And,” Grant said, “we were fascinated to discover large traces of iron in the rock.” He shrugged.
“Are you suggesting,” Bran said, “that your connection to iron grants you, also, a celestial connection to light?” Sounded as far-fetched as a curse.
“No idea. There are no answers. If Diana’s theory were true, it would mean that transcendents could see through glamours, since their talents focus entirely on light. But they cannot. As far as I know.”
“If you were to make an attempt to banish a glamour—”
“And I never have.”
“—what would you do?”
“Take a hammer to it,” Apollo offered. “My brother-in-law lacks finesse.”
“Finesse?” Bran tilted his head. “Like killing a man?”
“I really would like to know what that conversation is all about,” Grant said, and when no one offered to elucidate, he added, “If I had to put an entirely ill-informed supposition into the air, I might…” He rolled his hand at the wrist, as if it could pull ideas from his brain. “Take away the glamour’s light source.”
“Done that,” Bran said.
“Really done that,” Apollo added.
“It’s heat source?” Grant asked.
“Oh, there’s an idea.” Apollo sat upright. “Let’s plunge him into a tub filled with ice.
“And kill me again?”
Apollo shrugged. “Worked last time.”
“Not entirely.”
“I think, perhaps, you have to wait,” Grant said.
“If whatever you did yesterday has begun to work, be patient. Let it finish whatever it’s doing.
It could be like the coals of a fire. From the outside, all you see are black, dusty rocks, but break them open, and they’re glowing embers, eating away at themselves from the inside. ”
“Lovely image,” Bran muttered. He rounded his desk and flopped into his chair, spearing Grant with a gaze he hoped showed through whatever bits of the glamour were left about his face. “You cannot tell your wife. About me.”
“I tell my wife everything.”
“Think of it as an order direct from the queen. She’s commanded me to protect Guin, and I cannot do that if Guin kills me. Do you understand?”
Grant’s hard jaw suggested he did and didn’t like it. But he nodded and made for the door. “Bloody royalty always mucking about in everyone’s lives.” He swung around before leaving. “What are you going to do? When she’s safe and your glamour is under control? Are you going to keep lying to her?”
Yes, but also… “No. I’m going to kill off Braxton.
Let some other poor fellow take the title.
Or let it go fallow. I just want to be myself.
” And if Guin were free from a husband, she could take a lover without feeling guilty.
She could choose Bran, and Bran could find a way to give in that wouldn’t give him away.
Apollo stood. “You killed off her bodyguard, and now you’ll kill off her husband, but neither of them will be dead?”
“I’ll return as Bran and take back my position with her.” She’d be happier to have Bran back than she would be to see her husband go. He wouldn’t be able to kiss her, but… perhaps if he waited long enough, she’d not be able to tell that she’d kissed Bran’s lips before.
“Sounds complicated,” Grant grumbled. “And if my wife ever asks me outright—”
“I cannot believe you brought him here,” Bran said to Apollo. “He’s going to ruin everything.”
“I know. He’s a saint. It’s sickening. I’ll get rid of him.” Apollo pushed Grant out the door.
Grant said from the hallway, “I’ll keep my mouth shut. For now.”
That was something.
Apollo slapped the doorframe twice then sauntered off.
Bran got up and locked the door again, pulled the curtains closed, and stood before the mirror in the dark.