Fifteen years had passed since Rowena's death.
The clinic in Verlaine had become a hospital—a sprawling complex of stone buildings and herb gardens, with a staff of over a hundred healers, nurses, and volunteers. It was known throughout the kingdom as a place where anyone could receive care, regardless of their wealth or station. The nobles called it Rowena's Folly. The common people called it the House of Mercy.
Celestine de Montfort-Veyne—for she had taken Kaelan's name when she married, though she had never stopped thinking of herself as simply Celestine—stood at the window of her office, looking out at the garden below. The oak tree under which Rowena and Garrick were buried was now massive, its branches spreading wide, providing shade for the patients who sat on the benches beneath it.
She was thirty-four years old now. Her dark hair was streaked with the first hints of gray, and there were lines around her eyes from years of squinting at wounds and reading medical texts by candlelight. But her hands were still steady, her eyes still sharp, and the echoes that had plagued her as a child had long since become a gentle hum in the back of her mind.
She had learned to live with them. To use them. To let them guide her hands when she healed and her words when she counseled.
"Mother."
Celestine turned. Her daughter, Elara, stood in the doorway—a girl of fourteen with her father's dark hair and her grandmother's green eyes. She was small for her age, but she carried herself with a stillness that reminded Celestine painfully of herself at that age.
"What is it?" Celestine asked.
"There's a visitor. From Ashford." Elara's voice was quiet, careful. "She says she knew Rowena. She says she needs to see you."
Celestine's heart beat faster. Visitors from Ashford were rare since Duke Armand's death. Seraphina still ruled, but she was old now, and she rarely traveled. "Who is she?"
"I don't know her name. But she has a sword. And a scar on her face. And she looks like she's seen things."
Celestine smoothed her apron and walked to the door. "Take me to her."
---
The visitor was waiting in the main hall of the hospital—a woman in her late fifties, with iron-gray hair cropped short and a face that had weathered more storms than most. She wore simple traveling clothes, a sword at her hip, and a cloak stained with road dust. Her eyes were the color of winter ice—pale blue, sharp, and tired.
Celestine stopped when she saw the woman's face. The scar on her cheek was unmistakable.
"Seraphina?" she said, incredulous. "Duchess Seraphina?"
The woman smiled—a thin, weary smile. "I haven't been called that in years. I abdicated, remember? My niece rules Ashford now. I'm just an old woman who likes to travel."
"But—why are you here? Why didn't you send word?"
Seraphina's smile faded. "Because what I have to tell you can't be written in a letter. And because I didn't know if you would believe me unless I said it to your face."
Celestine led her to a small private room and closed the door. Elara followed, silent and watchful.
"What is it?" Celestine asked.
Seraphina sat down heavily, as if the weight of years had finally caught up with her. "You know about the mirrors. About Caspian. About Rowena's nine lives."
"I know what she told me. And what the echoes have shown me."
"Then you know that the ancients were fading. That the first mirror was dying. That the space between was supposed to go still." Seraphina looked up at her. "It's not still, Celestine. Something woke it."
Celestine felt the echoes in her chest stir—a low hum that had been quiet for years, now rising in pitch.
"What do you mean, something woke it?"
"Three weeks ago, a mirror appeared in the throne room of Ashford. Just like before. Same frame, same silver-black metal, same spirals. But this one is different. This one is not cold. It's warm. And when you look into it, you don't see your own reflection. You see..." Seraphina hesitated. "You see a woman. A woman with three faces."
Celestine's blood ran cold.
"Rowena?" she whispered.
"I don't know. Maybe. Maybe something else. But the mirror is humming, Celestine. It's humming, and it's waiting, and I don't know for what. Or for whom."
Elara stepped forward, her green eyes wide. "Mother, the echoes—they've been louder lately. The children in my class—the sensitive ones—they've all been complaining about nightmares. About a woman calling to them. About a door that's opening."
Celestine looked at her daughter, then at Seraphina.
"Show me the mirror," she said.
---
They left for Ashford the next morning.
Celestine brought Elara with her—not because she wanted to, but because the girl refused to be left behind. "I'm sensitive too, Mother," Elara had said, her chin lifted in defiance. "If the mirror is calling to us, I need to be there. You can't protect me by keeping me away."
Celestine had wanted to argue, but she heard Rowena's voice in her head: You're not alone, Celestine. And you never will be.
So Elara came.
They rode hard, covering in two days a journey that normally took three. The autumn landscape blurred past them—fields of harvested grain, forests turning gold and red, villages where people waved at the two women in healers' robes.
On the second night, they camped by a river. Elara sat by the fire, staring into the flames, her face troubled.
"Mother," she said, "what if the woman in the mirror really is Rowena? What if she's come back?"
Celestine stirred the fire, sending sparks into the dark sky. "I don't know. Rowena died peacefully. She was ready. She wasn't supposed to come back."
"Maybe she didn't choose to come back. Maybe something brought her."
Celestine thought about the echoes, about the space between, about the bridge that Rowena had built inside her heart. "If something brought her back against her will, then we need to find out what. And we need to stop it."
Elara nodded slowly. "I'm scared, Mother."
"So am I." Celestine reached across the fire and took her daughter's hand. "But Rowena taught me that fear is not a reason to stop. It's a reason to move faster."
Elara smiled—a small, fragile smile. "She sounds like she was amazing."
"She was." Celestine's eyes glistened. "She was the most amazing person I ever knew. And I will spend the rest of my life trying to be half the healer she was."
They sat in silence, watching the stars appear one by one.
---
They arrived in Ashford on the third day.
The city had changed since Celestine's last visit. New buildings had risen, old ones had been renovated, and the streets were cleaner than she remembered. But the palace was the same—gray stone, tall towers, banners flying in the autumn wind.
The new duchess, Elara Ashworth (named, coincidentally or not, after Celestine's grandmother), was a young woman of twenty-five with her great-aunt Seraphina's sharp eyes and her father's gentle smile. She greeted Celestine and Elara in the throne room—the same throne room where Rowena had spoken to the first mirror.
"The mirror is in the east wing," Duchess Elara said, leading them through the corridors. "We moved it there after it appeared. Too many people were coming to gawk at it. And some of them..." She hesitated. "Some of them looked into it and couldn't look away. We had to physically pull them back."
"Did they see the woman with three faces?" Celestine asked.
"Some did. Others saw different things. Their dead mothers. Their lost children. Their greatest fears. The mirror shows you what you need to see—or what it wants you to see. I'm not sure which."
They stopped before a heavy oak door, guarded by two soldiers in Ashworth colors.
"The mirror is inside," Duchess Elara said. "I won't go in with you. The last time I looked at it, I saw my father. He's been dead for ten years. I don't want to see him again."
Celestine nodded. "Stay here. Elara—my Elara—you stay too."
"But Mother—"
"Please." Celestine's voice was firm. "Let me look first. If it's safe, you can come in. But I need to know what we're dealing with."
Elara hesitated, then nodded.
Celestine pushed open the door and walked into the room.
---
The mirror was smaller than she had expected.
It was perhaps the size of a shield, mounted on a wooden stand in the center of the room. Its frame was silver-black, carved with spirals that seemed to move in the corner of her eye. Its surface was not dark or blue or silver. It was clear, like still water, and in its reflection, Celestine saw not herself, but the room behind her—the door, the walls, the dust motes dancing in the light.
And then she saw the woman.
She stepped out of the reflection, not like a person stepping through a doorway, but like a thought becoming real. One moment she was just an image in the glass; the next, she was standing in the room, solid and warm and alive.
She was young—maybe thirty, maybe forty, it was hard to tell. Her hair was silver-white, her eyes the color of twilight, her face lined with age and wisdom and something that looked like love. She was not beautiful in the way of paintings or poetry. She was beautiful in the way of mountains—ancient, enduring, full of secrets.
But there was something wrong with her. Her body flickered at the edges, like a candle flame in a draft. And her eyes—her eyes held a pain that Celestine recognized.
She had seen that pain before. In Rowena's eyes, in the last years of her life.
The weight of too many memories.
"Celestine," the woman said. Her voice was soft, familiar. "You've grown."
"Who are you?" Celestine whispered.
"I am what Rowena became. I am the bridge. I am the space between. I am the echo of every life that ever was and every life that ever will be." The woman smiled, and for a moment, Celestine saw Rowena's face beneath the silver-white hair. "And I am dying, Celestine. Again. But this time, I need your help."