Chapter 37: Mirrors and Monsters
The ballroom glimmered with hundreds of floating lights, their soft golden glow suspended midair like captured fireflies. Music curled through the marble hall in elegant ribbons of harp and flute. Every noblewoman shimmered like starlight, each lord and duke a moving monument of pride and power. Eira had stood in rooms like this before—but tonight, something in the air clung to her skin like ash.
Mira’s voice echoed behind her, gentle but anxious. “You don’t have to stay for the full duration. If your head begins to ache again—”
“I’m fine,” Eira interrupted, her fingers clenched around the stem of her glass. “The headaches come and go.”
What she didn’t say: the headache had never left. It pulsed behind her eyes like molten glass, a heat that no tonic co
