Mirrors were never meant to be trusted at night.
Mihir had written that once in a paper on liminality in domestic ritual spaces—how reflective surfaces were treated as thresholds in many South Asian traditions. Covered during death rites. Turned to the wall during certain pujas. Smeared with ash or turmeric when a house felt wrong.
He had not expected to remember that now.
The mansion's western wing smelled different after dusk.
Oil lamps burned there perpetually, their flames fed with mustard oil mixed with something darker—camphor, maybe, or clove. The light they cast was uneven, shadows pooling in corners and stretching too long across the walls.
"This side is older," Arjun said as they walked. "Built before the house learned how to pretend."
Mihir swallowed. "Pretend what?"
Arjun glanced at him. "That it's empty."
They stopped before a tall mirror set into the wall.
It was not decorative. Mihir could tell immediately. The frame was iron, not wood, etched with fine incisions filled long ago with vermilion and ash. Protective markings. Raksha-rekha. The kind placed not to ward things out—
—but to keep something in.
"This wasn't here yesterday," Mihir said.
Arjun tilted his head slightly. "It was."
"No," Mihir insisted. "I would have noticed."
Arjun's lips curved faintly. "You notice different things now."
Mihir stepped closer to the mirror.
The glass was old, warped slightly, giving reflections a faint ripple, like an image seen through water. He saw himself first—too pale, eyes too bright, shoulders tense. The lamplight gilded the edges of his hair.
Then he saw Arjun.
Standing just behind him.
Except—
Mihir frowned.
Arjun's reflection did not align properly.
His body was there, but wrong. A fraction of a second delayed. His head angled just a little too slowly when the real Arjun moved. His eyes—
"Arjun," Mihir said quietly.
"Yes."
"Don't move."
Arjun stilled.
In the mirror, his reflection kept moving.
Its head turned fully toward Mihir's reflected face. Its mouth curved into a smile that Arjun was not wearing.
Mihir's breath left him in a rush.
"That's not—" His voice cracked. "That's not possible."
"No," Arjun agreed calmly. "It isn't."
The reflected Arjun leaned closer.
Its hand lifted—
—and pressed against the inside of the glass.
Mihir staggered back with a sharp gasp.
The real Arjun moved instantly, gripping Mihir's shoulders, turning him away from the mirror with decisive force. Mihir's back hit Arjun's chest, solid and cold and unmistakably real.
"Don't look," Arjun said sharply. "Not directly."
Mihir's heart was pounding so hard he felt dizzy. "It smiled at me."
Arjun's grip tightened.
"I know."
Mihir twisted slightly, painfully aware of how close they were—Arjun's breath near his ear, his chest pressed along Mihir's spine, his hands firm and grounding on Mihir's arms.
"That wasn't you," Mihir whispered.
"No," Arjun said. "It wasn't."
"Then what was it?"
Arjun hesitated.
That terrified Mihir more than the reflection had.
"That," Arjun said slowly, "was what the house remembers me as."
A shiver ran through Mihir.
He swallowed hard. "Why didn't it copy you properly?"
Arjun's breath ghosted across the shell of Mihir's ear.
"Because it's not meant to," he said. "It's meant to show you what doesn't belong in mirrors."
Mihir laughed weakly. "That's— that's insane."
"Yes."
Arjun did not move away.
The silence stretched, dense and intimate. Mihir became acutely aware of every point of contact—Arjun's hands, the line of his body behind him, the way his own breath kept catching and restarting.
"You said mirrors lag," Mihir murmured. "That they—slip."
"They do," Arjun said. "Around thresholds."
"Am I a threshold now?"
Arjun's hands flexed.
"Every Roy becomes one," he replied.
Mihir turned in Arjun's grip, slowly, deliberately. They were face to face now, close enough that Mihir could see the faint dark veins beneath Arjun's eyes, could feel the unnatural coolness radiating from his skin.
"Does the mirror show what you are," Mihir asked, "or what you want?"
Arjun's gaze dropped to Mihir's mouth.
"For me," he said quietly, "there's no difference."
The words landed like a touch.
Mihir's pulse spiked. "You're enjoying this," he accused again, but softer now. Less certain.
Arjun did not deny it.
"I enjoy that you see," he said. "Most don't. They look away."
"Should I?" Mihir whispered.
Arjun leaned in.
"So close that their foreheads nearly touched. So close that Mihir could feel the space between them vibrating.
"If you look away," Arjun said, "the house will choose for you."
Behind them, the mirror cracked.
Not shattered—just a thin fracture running diagonally across the glass, like a vein splitting under pressure.
Mihir flinched.
Arjun's hand slid from his shoulder to his wrist, thumb pressing into the soft underside where his pulse betrayed him.
"Easy," Arjun murmured. "It only reacts when you're afraid."
"I'm not," Mihir lied.
Arjun smiled faintly. "You are. But you're also curious."
The mirror creaked softly, glass shifting within its iron frame.
From somewhere deep in the house came a low sound—wood straining, settling, almost like a sigh.
"This mirror is used in rites," Mihir said shakily. "Isn't it? For darshan."
"Yes," Arjun replied. "To see what sees you back."
Mihir's breath hitched. "And what did it see in me?"
Arjun's eyes darkened.
"Something it wants reflected forever."
Mihir should have stepped away.
Instead, he leaned closer.
Their noses nearly brushed. Heat pooled low in Mihir's body, sharp and confusing, fear bleeding into something that felt dangerously like desire.
"You won't let it take me," Mihir said.
Arjun's hand tightened at his wrist.
"I won't let anyone else," he said.
The mirror gave a soft, final tick—the sound of a crack finishing its journey.
Arjun released him abruptly and turned the mirror to face the wall.
The room felt instantly colder.
"Don't stand in front of mirrors after sunset," Arjun said, voice steady again. "Not alone. Not with me. Not ever."
Mihir nodded, breath still uneven. "Because they lie?"
Arjun paused.
"No," he said. "Because sometimes they tell the truth too early."
As they left the western wing, Mihir glanced back once.
For just a second, he thought he saw movement in the glass—
A smile.
Waiting.