The fire had burnt low; its flames were reduced to glowing embers that cast long, dancing shadows across the stone walls. The room was quiet, the fortress settling into the deep silence of the northern night. Outside my window, the stars were bright, scattered across the sky like diamonds on black velvet, cold and distant and utterly indifferent to the lives that had been lost and saved beneath them.
I sat before the mirror, the same mirror I had faced on my first night in Frosthold, when I had been a stranger, an outsider, a woman whose place had not yet been earned. The glass was polished metal, old and scarred, its surface reflecting the firelight in soft, wavering patterns. I had avoided it for weeks, unable to bear the sight of the pale, uncertain woman who stared back at me.
But tonight, I did not look away.
