But the blanket over her mind grew heavier and heavier now, blanking out all reasonable consideration. Dora sat herself on the edge of the bed and pressed her face into her hands, trying to force away a sudden dizziness.
I am trapped, Dora thought. She needed air. She wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else.
But... no. That was not it at all. This crushing weight on her chest was far more insidious and far more impossible to solve.
I want to be someone else, Dora thought.
The truth of the realisation sank into her gently, like most everything else in the world always did. This time, she felt quietly smothered—trapped in a dream with herself, unable to escape.
Dora wavered on the edge of the bed, as the hopeless dizziness grew deeper. If she could have laid down on the pillows and simply disappeared, she was sure in that moment that she would have done it.
For years, Dora had not bothered to wonder why it was she had been singled out—why she had been cursed, instead of anyone else in the world. It had always seemed irrelevant, insubstantial, irreversible. But today, she felt the unfairness of it all like a corset laced too tightly.
What might Dora have been, if she had not lost that half of her soul? Would Auntie Frances have loved her more, if she could smile properly? Surely, Dora would have fallen in love more fully, with some man who loved her back exactly the same. She would not have needed to wear iron scissors around her neck, nor to hide from suitors for their own safety.
She would not now be going back to Lockheed all alone, to be safely forgotten in the country once more.
“I must not think this way,” Dora whispered aloud. The words broke the uncanny silence in the room. They made the situation feel more real, more stable. The sound of her own voice, Dora thought, would help her focus again.
She sucked in a few deep breaths, and began to count in French.
“Un, deux, trois...” Tears trickled down her face, and she blinked them away in confusion. “...quatre, cinq, six...” The sound of her aunt’s voice hissed in her ear again, accusing her of being a puppet. “...sept, huit, neuf...”
Dora wiped unsteadily at her eyes. The mirror that stood upon the vanity in the corner drew her gaze, and she pressed her lips together. Before she knew it, Dora had gotten to her feet and crossed the distance to that mirror, leaning in towards it. She stared intently into its silvery surface, reaching out for Elias.
His wards pressed back against her almost instantly, tingling against her skin with warning. Dora leaned her mind against them only gently. I will not continue until it becomes dangerous, she thought. Only until he has realised that someone is trying to find him.
Ah, but even then, what will he do? A small, doubtful voice whispered from the bottom of her mind. Of what importance was it to Elias if Dora ended up in the country? He was dealing with far greater matters, to be sure. He had an entire plague to worry about. And, well—perhaps it was true that Dora had tried very hard to help him with that. But in the end, she had not helped all that much, had she?
Perhaps I would have been able to help better, if I were not split in two. Dora could not stop the thought from bubbling up. It distracted the image of Elias that she had fixed in her mind, making it waver uncertainly.
The silver in the vanity mirror rippled as Dora grappled with her intentions. Slowly, it began to stain itself black. At first, Dora wondered if Elias had dismissed his wards—but the image that appeared in the darkness of the mirror was not his.
It was hers.
The Dora in the mirror was sitting at a pianoforte, wearing a gown of such fine white satin that it made her glow like moonlight. Her rust-red tresses were far longer than Dora was used to; her hair was braided elegantly down her back, with shining pearls worked into every twist.
The other Dora was crying. Really, she was sobbing—the sheer violence of emotion in her expression took the real Dora aback. But still, the other Dora played the pianoforte in front of her with a careful precision, unable or unwilling to break her performance.
“I don’t understand,” Dora whispered, as she stared at her own mirror image. “What is this?”
The other Dora’s fingers slipped on the keys of the piano. She glanced up in shock, tears still wet upon her face.
Her left eye was grey.
“I don’t understand,” whispered the other Dora. “What is this?”
Footsteps sounded nearby. The real Dora whirled, and saw a finely-carved door, with its edges gilded in gold. The door was of far higher quality than even those in Lady Hayworth’s residence—as Dora looked more closely, she saw that the carvings upon it were of nymphs and satyrs, joyfully leading children by the hands in a sort of wild dance.
The door opened. Through it walked Lord Hollowvale, with his eyes of pale blue and his many layers of expensive jackets—limping only slightly with the use of a long, silver cane.
Dora met his gaze with horror.
It did not matter that Dora was only scrying and not actually there in-person. Lord Hollowvale looked at her, in the same clear way that Elias might have done. The marquess frowned at her curiously. “Why have you ceased your piano practice?” he asked Dora. “And whatever are you wearing?”
Lord Hollowvale’s eyes shifted towards the other Dora, who was still at the piano, and he became even more confused.
“Oh, now that is interesting,” the faerie mused. He said it with the same sentiment with which one might remark on a particularly pretty ribbon, or a rug of exotic origin.
Dora reached instinctively towards her chest, where the iron scissors ought to have been. But the
