Chapter 106: The Girls Who Were Not Daughters

The candle at the end of the hallway did not flicker. Nora walked toward it, one hand pressed to the wall where the plaster felt warm, almost alive. Darius stayed close behind her, his breath steady against her shoulder, but she did not look back. She could not. The hallway opened into a long room lined with narrow beds. White sheets. White walls. A single window at the far end let in frost light that fell across the faces of four girls sitting on the floor in a loose circle. They were young. The oldest looked sixteen. The youngest could not have been more than ten. They wore plain gray dresses and no shoes, and they were playing a card game with a deck so worn the edges had gone soft. The oldest girl looked up when Nora entered. Her hair was dark, her eyes pale blue, and there was a stillness in her face that did not belong to someone her age. "You're the one from the mirror," she said. "The mother." Nora stopped. "Yes." "We were told you'd come." The girl set her cards down. The others did not move. They watched Nora the way children watched a storm through glass--curious, unafraid, and certain they had already survived worse weather. Nora looked at the youngest girl's wrist. A thin scar circled it, faded silver, like a mark that had been filed off. She looked at the oldest girl's ankle. The same scar. The same pattern. "What are these?" Nora asked. "Placements," the oldest girl said. "We're the ones the packs didn't want. Not the heirs. The decoys. If someone came looking for the trueborn child, we were supposed to draw attention. Take the marks. Answer the wrong questions." "And the packs sent you here?" "The manor collected us." The girl's voice was flat. "It's what it does." Nora's chest tightened. She thought of Hope, asleep in Darius's arms beyond the threshold. She thought of the contract upstairs, signed with her mother's blood. "How many of you are there?" "Thirteen, now. Some left. Some didn't survive the transfer." "Transfer of what?" The oldest girl looked at the candle. Its flame did not waver. She seemed to be measuring something in the silence--how much truth Nora could hold before breaking. "The first time I saw a baby brought here alive," she said, "I was seven. She was wrapped in white fur and her skin had no mark yet. The women said she was special. They said she would open the map." Nora's pulse went cold. "What happened to her?" "She stayed in the nursery below. We heard her cry for three days. Then the crying stopped. And the women said the map had eaten well." The girl met Nora's eyes. There was no cruelty in her gaze, only a weary patience. She had delivered this news before. She knew what it did to the mothers who came asking questions. "Your daughter is not the first one they've carried through that door, Luna Ashford. She's just the first one whose mother walked in after." Nora felt Darius's hand settle at the small of her back. The warmth of his palm anchored her. She did not turn away from the girl. "Why are you telling me this?" "Because the women who run this place don't expect you to fight. They expect you to grieve. They expect you to run." The girl picked up her cards again. "But you walked through the door. So maybe you're different." Nora looked at the youngest girl's wrist one more time. The scar was clean, precise. A removal, not an accident. "How do I find the nursery?" The oldest girl didn't look up from her cards. "You can't. It finds you. But when the floor beneath your feet goes cold," she said, "you'll know you're close."