The Soul Mirror Read Free Page A

had it. When I heard you were here today . . . Oh, saints and angels, damoselle. I am so sorry.”
    His sorrow enveloped me like a fire-warmed blanket on a winter night, more welcome than any word or artifact. But I dared not accept such seductive gifts. Grief had broken my mother.
    I nodded and said nothing.
    His fingers were slow to release the leather packet. The bundle was heavy for its small size, the smooth leather warm and damp from his hand. A folded paper protruded from the flap.
    “They’ve had me into her dormitory cubicle to decode some papers. Said she was plotting with her father. But they were only notes she took in my tutorials.” His frowning gaze lingered on his hands, as if the troublesome bundle remained there. “I had no idea her father—your father—was—”
    A woman banged open her door and yelled at her daughter to come in for supper.
    Guerin glanced about uneasily. “I must get back, before—I’ve duties.”
    His imminent departure raised a fluttering panic, questions crowding and bumping to get through my constricted throat. “They’ll not tell me what happened,” I blurted. “Only that she was trying to work some enchantment that was too advanced. What was she doing? I swear on my hope of Heaven, she had no dealings with our father. And why would they bury her so quickly? Why in secret? Why in that ravine?”
    “I know little more than you.” His wide brow knotted. “She was upset that morning. Begged off my tutorial, swearing me not to report her absence. Said she had something dreadfully important to do. She asked if I still had this, and when I said I did, she pulled out that paper and scribbled your name on it—so I would be sure to get it right, she said. She could have been going anywhere. Students often cut through the ravine to avoid the door warden. But I had this awful, sick feeling about her all day. When she didn’t attend her afternoon tutorial, I went looking for her the first moment I was free.”
    He tightened his jaw and closed his eyes for a moment.
    “A small, focused explosion killed her,” he went on, “damaging her chest and her hands. But whether the fire or the impact or the magic itself did the mortal damage, I couldn’t tell. There were no particles lying around—no objects used in the spellwork—that might tell me what she was attempting. The magical residue was of a kind wholly unfamiliar to me, and once I’d summoned my superiors, I wasn’t allowed to examine her again. But my mind refuses to let it go, as it just doesn’t make—You see, your sister was a very good student, damoselle. Talented. Eager, but not rash. She should have been a first-rank adept long ago.”
    A frigid hand squeezed my heart. “Are you saying that someone else did this to her?”
    “No. The magical signature was hers alone. There was not so much as a boot print near her.” He rubbed his arms and stepped backward. “I am so sorry. So very sorry.”
    This could not be everything. Though it scalded my tongue to speak of it, I had to know. “Adept, surely you know the kind of vile sorcerers my father was involved with, and what they did to Ophelie de Marangel, to others. Lianelle wasn’t—”
    “Certainly not!” He hushed me with the words, his eyes darting at the windows and doors opened to the cooling evening. “No one was bleeding her, damoselle. Nothing I saw . . . nothing I knew of her . . . suggested she was being used for power transference. Divine grace, lady.”
    Before I could ask more, he was trotting back up the road.
    Certainly Lianelle could have made a deadly mistake. She was forever rash and always headstrong. I’d spent half my life cleaning up her messes. And a determination to prove she was more than just a traitor’s daughter could easily have led her to overreach. But someone had failed her. Failed in protecting, failed in teaching, failed in caring.
    Inexpressible fury set my whole body trembling, so that every step down the road required