Chapter 102: Until It Stops Moving

Mara’s training ended not long after Marek and Rhovan left the corridor.

Once Venielle had finished with the mirrors, Mara returned to the small room she had been using inside the institute. Marek followed her inside, while Rhovan tried to come with them.

"Outside," Marek said.

Rhovan stopped at the doorway. "I can be discreet."

"I know. She doesn’t need you in the room for this."

Rhovan glanced at Mara, then stepped into the corridor and pulled the door shut behind him.

Mara sat on the floor beside the bed and watched Marek open his notebook. "You’re going to ask me a lot of questions, aren’t you?"

"Yes, but only about choices that concern you."

Marek sat across from her and started with the simplest questions. Did she want to stay with Lady Venielle? Yes. Did she want to continue training? Another yes, immediate enough that he did not bother asking whether she was certain.

The first pause came when he asked whether she wanted to go to the House of Gemini someday.

"Eventually," Mara said. "I want to know what they know."

"About your Mark?"

"About the dream."

Marek’s expression tightened before he could stop it.

Mara noticed. "There. That."

"What?"

"That face you make when you’ve already decided you don’t like the answer."

Marek ignored her and opened to a clean page. "Rhovan only knows fragments. Venielle told you more than that?"

Mara looked down at her hands. "More than she told us before. The Pisces Astrant was named Ilyara Senti."

That part Marek had not heard from Rhovan, and his pen immediately moved across the page.

"Lady Venielle said Ilyara was extremely advanced, but the surviving records describe her level using an older system she doesn’t trust enough to convert into a current Cycle. She could build dreams, maintain them, invite other people inside them, and force herself awake if something entered that wasn’t supposed to be there."

Marek stopped writing.

Mara continued. "But this one was different. For thirteen nights, every time she slept, she returned to the same place. She tried changing it and couldn’t. She tried forcing herself awake and couldn’t do that either. It only released her when the dream ended."

Marek had already heard pieces from Rhovan, but pieces were different from knowing how they fit together. "And the beginning was the sky?"

"Thirteen constellations," Mara said. "One with no House beneath it."

"Ophiuchus."

"Probably."

Marek looked at her, pen hovering.

She raised an eyebrow. "You’re the one who taught me not to call something certain when it isn’t. You don’t get to stop now."

He added probably to the note.

Mara continued. "Then there was a world that reached the end of a leap year... and another day came after it."

Marek wrote Earth.

"Probably Earth."

He changed it.

She smiled slightly and continued before he could complain. "After that came the mirrors. A girl stood between two of them. One said the other answer was false. The second said the first was false. Then both changed."

"To true."

Mara nodded. "Both of them."

That part was no longer new, but hearing Mara say it still made Marek stop writing.

"Some translations call the girl the True One. Another says the One True Twice. Lady Venielle thinks that one sounds like someone trying to start a religion."

"She is correct."

"I knew you’d say that."

Marek tapped the pen against the notebook’s page. "What happens after the mirrors agree?"

"That’s where the surviving versions stop agreeing with each other. A House without a door. Water flowing upward. Twelve voices arguing while a thirteenth doesn’t speak. Places that stop staying in the same place. Lady Venielle said every House that preserved a copy interprets those images differently."

That interested him more than any title attached to Mara. Different records meant different incentives, and different incentives meant someone would eventually decide their interpretation mattered more than everyone else’s.

"Does the girl die?"

"No."

"Taken?"

"No clear answer."

"Does she become some kind of ruler or religious figure?"

Mara gave him a flat look. "No."

Something in his chest loosened. "Then why does the House of Gemini care?"

"Because the paired mirrors reacted to me the same way before Lady Venielle told me any of this. Both accepted me."

That still did not prove a prophecy. It proved that an old House mechanism had responded to Mara in a way Venielle considered extraordinary, which was already enough to create problems.

"Do you believe the dream is about you?"

Mara took her time before answering. "I believe the mirrors did something. And I also believe the description of Earth is too close to ignore. I don’t know what the rest means."

Marek gave a small nod, reminded again that Mara was much sharper than he sometimes gave her credit for.

Mara narrowed her eyes. "Don’t start grading my answers."

"I wasn’t."

"You were thinking about it."

Marek let the accusation pass.

Mara leaned back against the side of the bed. "I want to know what it means before other people start using it to tell me what I am."

That answer settled more of Marek’s resistance than anything Venielle had said.

"Do you want me to take you away from here?" he asked.

"No."

"What if the Twelve Houses arrive?"

"Still no."

"What if the House of Gemini starts asking for you directly?"

That made her pause, but only because the question deserved one. "If I change my mind, I’ll tell you."

Marek studied her for a moment. "Safe contact stays your choice. Immediate danger is different. Nobody gets to override your answer by calling it training, prophecy, or House business."

"Yes."

"If Lady Venielle changes the terms, you decide whether the new terms are acceptable. If somebody uses the dream as an order, you say no. If someone claims the House of Gemini has authority over you, ask them exactly what gives them that authority."

Mara smiled. "Mom taught me that last one."

"Good."

From beyond the closed door came Rhovan’s voice. "I heard that approval."

Marek turned toward it. "Stop listening."

"I am several meters away."

"Your existence is loud."

Mara laughed, and some of the pressure in the room finally gave way. Marek waited until the laughter died down before asking the question he cared about most.

"Are you choosing this because you’re afraid of disappointing that woman?"

Mara shook her head.

"Mom?"

"Also no."

Marek hesitated before the last one. "Me?"

Mara watched him for a moment before answering. "Especially no."

Marek’s mouth tightened slightly. "Good."

Mara noticed. "You didn’t like that answer."

"I did."

"You really didn’t."

Marek let her have that one.

Mara reached forward and took his hand. "I’m choosing this because I want to understand why those mirrors knew anything about me before I knew anything about them."

He looked down at their hands. Her fingers were longer than he remembered from before Day 367, another change he had somehow missed while he was busy trying to keep everything around her from going wrong.

"When I was seven, you let go of my bicycle," Mara said.

Marek looked up. "You crashed."

"Yes. Then the next day, you refused to let go even when I told you I could ride. I fell again because you were still holding the seat."

He had forgotten the second part.

Mara squeezed his hand. "You don’t have to hold everything until it stops moving."

The words landed harder because they came from her, rather than from Venielle or some damaged Pisces record. Marek looked away, staring at the covered window for a long time.

"For a second," he finally said, "I thought you sounded like Mom."

"I know," Mara said with a small smile. "That should worry you."

Marek decided not to answer.

When Marek finally left the room, Rhovan was leaning against the opposite wall with an expression that made it obvious he had been listening.

Rhovan took one look at Marek. "How did it go?"

"She wants to stay," Marek said.

Rhovan waited.

Marek closed the notebook. Saying the rest felt stranger than it should have, perhaps because he was finally admitting that protecting Mara and deciding for Mara were not the same thing.

"And I’m going to let her."

Rhovan did not smile, congratulate him, or turn the admission into one of his usual performances. He only nodded.

For some reason, that made the answer easier to keep.