The storm came without warning, sealing us inside the old stone cabin with walls of wind and water. I should have been grateful for shelter. Instead, I watched my reflection in the cracked mirror blink a heartbeat after I did.
"Dorian." My voice came out steady despite the ice in my veins. "The mirror's breathing."
He looked up from where he'd been banking the fire, saw what I saw—the glass surface moving with slow, humid rhythm, like lungs made of silver and lies. Without a word, he moved to the door, pulling salt from his pack, mixing it with blood from a fresh cut on his palm.
"Runes won't hold her," I said, knowing somehow that what watched us through the glass was female, familiar, patient.
"They'll slow her." He worked with practiced efficiency, marking doorframe and windowsills with symbols older than language. "Buy us time to—"
"To what? Fight myself?"
Because that's what breathed in the mirror. Not a demon. Not a god. Me. Or a version of me that had made different choices, walked darker paths, learned appetites I'd refused to feed.
Ashara slept through it all, small form peaceful in her salt-circled cradle. Whatever stalked us seemed willing to wait, to watch, to let fear ripen before it struck.
I needed anchoring. Needed to remember which reality was mine, which body belonged to this timeline. I crossed to Dorian, pressed myself against his back, felt his muscles tense then relax as he recognized my touch.
"Aria—"
"Please." The word came out raw. "I need to feel real. Need to know I'm more than echoes and possibilities."
He turned, reading the desperation in my eyes. His hands framed my face with careful reverence, thumbs tracing cheekbones as if memorizing their shape. "You're here. You're mine. You're more than the echoes."
We came together with quiet urgency, aware of our sleeping child, aware of the thing in the mirror that watched with my eyes. Our clothes fell away like shed fears, and when skin met skin, I gasped—not from desire but from relief. This was real. This weight, this warmth, this careful friction of bodies that knew each other's geography.
He traced my scars with fingertips and lips, each touch a declaration: this mark from birthing Ashara, real. This line from fighting the shadow wolves, real. This burn from silver flame, real. All of it proof that I existed in this moment, this flesh, this choice.
When he entered me, I bit back a cry—not of pleasure but of recognition. Yes. This. Here. My body clenching around his, my breath matching his rhythm, my hands mapping the familiar territory of his shoulders, his throat, the place where his pulse beat rabbit-quick against my palm.
"Stay with me," he whispered against my neck. "Don't drift. Don't look at her. Just feel this."
I focused on sensation—the slight roughness of his palms, the heat building between us, the way he held me like I might dissolve if he loosened his grip. We moved together in desperate silence, using pleasure as anchor, release as reminder that we occupied these specific bodies in this specific moment.
When climax took me, I pressed my face into his shoulder to muffle the sound. Not from ecstasy but from the fierce joy of remaining myself despite the pull of other possibilities.
We lay tangled afterward, breathing hard, skin cooling in the storm-chilled air. Real. Present. Mine.
Then she spoke.
"You gave her my name." The voice came from the mirror—my voice but older, hungrier, shaped by choices I'd never made. "Did you think I wouldn't notice? Think I wouldn't feel it when you whispered what you refused to speak aloud?"
I turned, still pressed against Dorian, to face the mirror. My reflection had stopped pretending to copy me. She stood independent, wearing my face with terrible perfection, smiling with too many teeth.
"I gave her nothing that was yours," I said.
"Didn't you?" Mirror-Aria pressed one palm against the glass from her side. "That second name. The shadow-name. The one you thought in the space between her conception and quickening. That was mine. My calling card. My invitation."
"You're lying."
"Am I? Ask yourself—why do you think she draws versions of us like moths to flame? Why do possibilities cluster around her like hungry ghosts?" The mirror began to crack—not from impact but from the weight of withheld truth. "Because you named her for the spaces between. And I live in those spaces."
"Mama?"
Ashara's voice, small and clear. She sat up in her cradle, silver eyes wide but unafraid. Looking not at me but at the mirror, at the thing that wore my face and smiled my smile and promised futures I'd fought to prevent.
"She's coming," my daughter said simply. Not warning. Not fear. Statement of fact, delivered with the certainty of someone who'd always known this moment would arrive.
The storm stopped.
Not gradually—instantly. The howling wind cut off mid-breath. The rain ceased between one drop and the next. Even the fire froze, flames caught in amber stillness.
The mirror exploded outward in perfect silence.
And through the shower of glass that hung suspended in suddenly motionless air, my other self stepped forward. Real now. Solid. Wearing shadows like a second skin and hunger like perfume.
"Hello, little echo," she said to me. Then, turning to Ashara with a mother's smile: "Hello, daughter. I've come to teach you the names you're missing."
Time hung on a blade's edge. Glass shards decorated the air like deadly stars. And between one heartbeat and whatever came next, I understood:
The battle for Ashara's soul had never been against gods or prophecies.
It had always been against myself.
Against the versions I'd refused to become, who'd found their own ways to reach for what I'd claimed.
The other Aria extended her hand to our daughter.
And Ashara, my impossible child, began to reach back.
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