Chapter 134: The Other Side of the Mirror

Mara’s breath fogged the glass while her brother stood beside her coffin.

For several seconds, she did not notice the white room around her anymore. She saw only Marek on the other side of the mirror, standing beneath the damaged roof of a church courtyard with his shoulders lowered and his face thinner than she remembered from the night before.

Alive people were not supposed to watch their own funerals.

That thought should have made everything feel impossible. Instead, Mara’s attention caught on the photograph beside the coffin.

"Oh, come on."

Venielle stood several steps behind her. "What?"

"He used that one."

The photograph had been taken beside their apartment window when Mara was thirteen. Her hair had been tied badly, one sleeve of her gray jacket had been shoved toward her elbow, and she had refused to smile because Marek had taken too long to press the camera button.

Out of every picture he could have chosen, he had somehow found the one she hated.

For the first ten minutes, being angry about that helped.

It helped when people began filling the uneven rows of plastic chairs. It helped when Nadia placed noodles near the photograph and Kellan left a bottle of water beside them. It even helped when Mara noticed Rafe’s folded map among the flowers and wondered why someone she barely knew had thought to leave something that suited him rather than her.

Then, the funeral worker asked if anyone wanted to speak, and Marek stood.

Mara’s fingers stopped against the mirror.

His voice reached her clearly through the mirror. For the first few sentences, Mara kept finding things to complain about. She insisted the old water dispenser really did taste like pipes, and when he brought up being twenty-three minutes late picking her up from school, she immediately muttered that he had somehow made himself sound less annoying than he actually was.

When Marek told everyone she had called him the worst brother in Linden, Mara wiped beneath one eye.

"You were..." she whispered under her breath.

Nobody on Earth heard any of her corrections.

Then, Marek stopped speaking for a moment.

"I... I found you."

Mara’s mouth closed.

He spoke about finding her alive, complaining and carrying noodles, and how relieved he had been that Venielle was stronger than him even though he found that irritating. His fingers tightened against the stand before he admitted that he still believed listening to her had been right.

Then, his voice broke.

"I just don’t know what to do with the part of me that wishes I had ignored you."

Mara pressed both palms against the glass. "No."

Marek could not hear her.

"I... I wish I had been a worse brother that day."

"Stop."

She hit the mirror with the heel of one hand, not hard enough to crack it but hard enough to hurt.

Venielle remained where she was.

On the other side, Marek wished aloud that he had dragged Mara away while she screamed at him. He wished she had hated him for it. He wished Amara had come back and yelled at both of them until the whole thing became ordinary again.

Mara’s face tightened until she could barely see through the tears gathering in her eyes.

"You listened because I asked you to," she said. "T-That wasn’t wrong."

Marek left the front and walked toward the coffin.

When he placed the two emergency noodle packets beside her photograph, Mara struck the mirror again. "I’m here! Kuya Marek, I’m right here!"

Nothing crossed.

He tucked the folded note between the packets.

"I didn’t eat both."

Mara covered her mouth.

"You said you’d know."

"I know," she whispered. "I know."

No answer came from Earth.

The woman standing near the far wall looked away first.

Mara noticed her.

For one confused second, grief simply stopped because her mind could not fit the woman into the room.

Pale Gemini robes. No visible insignia. Paired Marks across both palms.

The same face that had stepped through the mirrors in the courtyard.

The same woman who had fought Venielle, reached into Mara’s reflection, and closed her hand around whatever had made the world disappear.

Mara turned so quickly that her shoulder struck the glass, but the pain did not come through her. "You."

The woman did not move.

Mara looked at Venielle. "Why is she here?"

Venielle’s expression did not change, which was enough answer.

Mara stared between them. The blood on Venielle’s sleeve was gone now, but Mara remembered exactly where it had spread after the woman dragged her through the mirrors. She remembered Venielle shouting. She remembered the silver fracture crossing her reflected chest.

Then, she understood enough to become furious. "That fight was fake?"

"No," Venielle said.

"Don’t do that." Mara’s voice rose. "Don’t answer like Marek when he wants to be technically correct."

For the first time, something close to discomfort crossed Venielle’s face. She glanced toward the other woman before returning her attention to Mara. "She is one of my subordinates."

Mara stared at her.

The woman near the wall spoke before Mara could find the first of several things she wanted to scream. "The confrontation was arranged. The blows were not."

Mara looked back at Venielle.

Venielle lifted her left sleeve. A narrow healing cut remained along her forearm. "You needed a real Earth-side ending. Not a report saying you were dead. Not a false body. Not a copy we could discard once everyone stopped looking."

Mara turned toward the funeral again.

"So you let her kill me."

Venielle said nothing. The woman beside the wall lowered her eyes, and Mara felt her anger sharpen at the absence of even an argument.

The white room suddenly seemed too small. Mara pushed away from the mirror, paced several steps, then came back because leaving Marek’s reflection felt impossible.

"You could have told him. Or told him afterward." Mara turned fully toward Venielle. "You could’ve at least told me she was working for you!"

"I could have told you," Venielle said. "But knowing what was supposed to happen would have changed what you carried into the separation."

Mara waited, but Venielle said nothing. "And?"

"If you knew, you would have known exactly where the continued relation was supposed to resolve. Marek would have been watching you for the same thing. Marek’s Mark would have recognized that part of you was still continuing. If he knew where that continuation led, Sareth could eventually use the same connection to find you. I needed the Earth-side event to close without either of you carrying the continuation in a way someone else could follow."

Mara looked at the woman again. "And that whole thing about there being only one successor?"

"A reason the witnesses could understand," the woman answered.

"You laughed."

The woman hesitated. "That part was indeed excessive."

Mara stared at her with enough anger that the woman finally lowered her eyes, but she just ignored her.

Movement inside the mirror drew her attention back.

Marek’s knees weakened before he reached the coffin, and Rhovan caught him. Marek clutched the front of the Leo’s coat and buried his face against his shoulder.

"Dad disappeared. Mom left. She... You weren’t supposed to leave too."

Mara’s throat closed.

"Please don’t leave your big brother. I... I don’t know where to go home to anymore."

She lowered her forehead against the glass.

"I’m... I’m sorry."

Movement came from one corner of the white room before she could say anything else.

Water had begun gathering across the floor.

It rose without spreading, twisting upward until the outline of a gray jacket appeared inside the current. Amara stepped through before the water had completely fallen away.

Mara reached her so quickly that she almost slipped.

"Mom."

Amara caught her with both arms.

Whatever Mara had intended to say disappeared against her mother’s shoulder. She held on until her hands hurt, crying hard enough that breathing became embarrassing and uneven. Amara did not tell her to calm down or ask her to explain. She only held the back of Mara’s head the way she had when Mara was much younger.

When Mara finally pulled away, she saw that her mother was crying too.

"Go to him."

Amara’s face tightened.

"Mom, go to Marek. He needs some—"

"I can’t."

Mara stared at her. "You found me. You found him before too."

Amara wiped Mara’s cheek with her thumb. "That is exactly why I cannot use the same kind of route toward him now."

Mara looked at Venielle.

"Sareth’s active claim was broken," Venielle explained, "but the conflict exposed enough records for people to begin searching. The Twelve roads made that worse. If Amara opens a direct route toward Marek now, someone capable enough may be able to read it backward through the protected continuation."

Mara looked through the mirror again.

Rhovan was still holding him. Dario, Nadia, Kellan, Eren, Silas, and Rafe remained near the church even as other people began moving around them.

"He has people," Amara said quietly.

"That’s not what I mean."

Amara looked through the mirror again, toward Marek standing beside Rhovan and the others. She did not try to argue with her.

For a moment, Amara’s posture changed. The difference was small, but Mara had spent fourteen years with that face.

Celeste spoke through her, "He reached Degree V."

Mara wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "I don’t care."

Celeste waited.

"I mean, I care. Obviously... I care." Mara looked at Marek again. "But he still couldn’t save me... and that’s what he thinks."

"Yes."

"Can I undo this?"

Venielle answered before Celeste could. "Eventually, perhaps. But not now."

"Then make it now."

"I cannot."

"Why?"

"Because the House of Gemini already has active systems on Earth, Ilyara Sen’s record is no longer protected by obscurity alone, and Sareth has already demonstrated that your family can be used as a route. Right now, making you reachable would also make you findable."

Mara hated how she could not argue with her answer.

She turned toward the other woman and then back to Venielle. There was one question she had been trying not to ask since waking in the white room.

"Was that body really me?"

Nobody answered quickly enough.

Mara’s face went cold. "Tell me."

Venielle came closer. "Yes."

"Not something you made?"

"No."

"Not a copy?"

"No."

Mara looked down at her hands.

Venielle continued more carefully. "The Mara Vale who remained reachable through Earth’s civil records, family relations, and first House acknowledgment reached a real endpoint. That is why Marek found nothing to remove. Nothing was hiding inside the body, and nothing was pretending to be dead."

Mara’s stomach turned.

She remembered the strange instant before darkness, the feeling of being in more than one place without knowing which one she was supposed to call herself.

"One me died."

"Yes."

"And I’m what?"

"Mara Vale."

Mara laughed once, but there was nothing funny in it. "That is stupid."

"Gemini frequently sounds stupid when explained by people who assume one truth must become false simply because another truth exists beside it."

Mara looked at the woman by the wall. "Did she kill me?"

"She closed the Earth-side relation you had already agreed to end," Venielle said.

"She killed me."

Venielle did not correct her again.

On the other side of the mirror, the coffin had reached the grave.

The first soil struck the lid.

Mara flinched.

Gold spread across the fresh earth a little later, thin veins of light gathering between the shovelfuls until lilies began pushing upward. White petals bloomed with gold running through them, and one after another, the flowers bent toward the grave.

Mara wiped her face again. "Of course, he made flowers."

Amara looked at her. "He can’t do anything normally."

The complaint came out weak, and Mara was grateful to Rhovan regardless.

She pressed one hand against the mirror where the lilies reflected beneath her fingers. "He thinks I left him."

Amara came beside her. "You did leave."

Mara turned sharply, but her mother did not take the words back.

"But that does not mean you stopped loving him," Amara continued. "It means loving him did not make the choice harmless."

Mara looked down. "He’ll hate me."

"He might."

The answer hurt enough that Mara wished Amara had lied. Then she remembered the death form.

Marek had signed it because there had been no parent there. "I even let him sign that."

Amara closed her eyes briefly.

"I watched him sign that I was dead," she repeated.

"Yes."

Mara’s voice became smaller. "I let him bury me."

Amara reached for her hand. Mara pulled away before immediately feeling guilty for doing it.

"The person hunting you had already used Marek to reach you once," Amara said. "If he knew you were still here, that connection could become another way to find you."

Mara’s hands tightened against her sleeves. "He still would’ve agreed."

Amara remained quiet.

"He would’ve said it was his choice." Mara looked at her mother then. "But we didn’t even give him one."

"No," Amara said. "We didn’t."

Mara looked away from her mother and back toward the mirror.

Celeste’s voice came more quietly. "Marek’s Authority is becoming increasingly dependent on rightful custody and rightful choice. Sareth attacked that by turning relations into claims. If Marek knowingly carried your continuation, closing the route could have required him to deny a relation he had already accepted as true."

Mara stared at the grave. "So I betrayed him first."

"You protected him," Celeste said.

Mara shook her head. "Those can be the same thing."

Celeste became quiet.

Amara took Mara’s hand again. This time, Mara let her.

"They can," her mother said.

Most people had begun leaving when Marek crouched beside his backpack. Mara knew what he was counting before he pulled one packet out.

It was the noodles.

Mara moved closer to the mirror. "No. Keep it."

Marek stared at the packet.

"You idiot, keep it. Those are still emergency noodles," Mara grumbled, but her eyes were already starting to water.

He bent over the open bag and stayed there.

Mara pressed both hands against the glass until her palms hurt. She wanted to cross through, hit his shoulder, complain about the photograph, tell him he still owed her something and that she had not decided what yet. She wanted to annoy him until grief had no room left between them.

Instead, she remained where her own choice had placed her.

"Is he going to be okay?" she asked.

Amara looked through the mirror for a long time before answering. "He will survive."

"That isn’t what I asked."

"No," Amara said softly. "It isn’t."

Mara watched Rhovan touch Marek’s shoulder before the two of them finally walked away. Her brother looked back once, then again several steps later, and both times Mara found herself leaning closer to the mirror as if he might somehow see her standing there.

"I’m still here, Kuya Marek," she whispered, pressing her palm against the glass.

He kept walking.

Mara followed his shrinking figure with her hand until he disappeared beyond the edge of the mirror. The sounds from the other side continued for a few seconds after that—the scrape of shoes, distant voices, someone moving near the grave—but Marek was gone from view.

After everything it had taken for Marek to find her, Mara could only stand behind the glass and watch him leave, believing he had lost her again.