“Lynet? What are you doing here so late?”
“I’m sorry I broke your mirror,” Lynet mumbled. She looked down at her feet.
Even though Mina had been happy earlier to blame Lynet for the night’s humiliation, the girl seemed so upset that Mina wanted to reassure her.
Keep your distance, Mina started to remind herself—but she didn’t need to anymore. Lynet had been shy with Mina ever since the engagement, and Mina had done nothing to discourage it, but that was before, when she wanted to please Nicholas. Now there was no reason to do anything for his sake.
“Come inside, Lynet,” Mina said. “I want to show you something.”
She led the girl through to her bedchamber, until they were standing together in front of the mirror. Mina went down to her knees and pointed at the web of cracks in the corner. “Do you see that?”
Lynet nodded.
“That’s where you hit your head. See? I would have to get all the way down here on my knees before I could even notice it. When I stand up”—she stood, to demonstrate her point—“I can’t even see it.” She stood a little to the side, so that she wouldn’t reflect on the cracked glass at all, and Lynet finally looked up at her and smiled.
“But what about your head? Does it hurt where you hit it?” Mina asked.
Lynet shook her head.
“Does your father know you’re here?”
She shook her head again. “He’s sleeping.”
Mina felt strangely smug about this, as if she and Lynet were keeping a secret together. She looked down at the girl beside her, the girl who had shown Mina nothing but warmth and acceptance since the moment they had met. Lynet was too young to know the prejudices of her fellow northerners, too innocent to see in Mina the sharp glint of her glass heart—and so in her innocence, she made Mina innocent as well.
Mina went to sit on the edge of the bed. “Come sit here with me,” she said, patting the space beside her.
“Yes, Stepmother.” Lynet climbed up next to her.
Mina wrinkled her nose. “Oh, I don’t like that. ‘Stepmother’ makes me sound so old and formal. Call me Mina, like you used to.”
Lynet didn’t say anything.
“Lynet, I know … I know I’ve been preoccupied with the engagement and the wedding, and so I haven’t been able to spend much time with you, but now that it’s all over … well, we’re still friends, aren’t we?”
“You’re my stepmother,” Lynet recited.
“That’s true,” Mina said. “I’m your stepmother, and I can never replace your mother, but you can still…” You can still love me. “You can still be my friend. You have only one mother, but you can have many friends.”
Lynet considered this, and then she inched closer to Mina, taking a strand of her hair in her little hand. “I wish my hair was like yours,” she said, the hair spilling from her hand.
“But you have such wonderful curls,” Mina said. Like your mother. But she was sure Lynet had heard that often enough from Nicholas. “You just need to brush it more often.”
Lynet shook her head. “The brush gets stuck, and then it hurts. I don’t like brushing my hair.”
Mina studied Lynet’s hair for a moment, and then she said, “Turn around with your back to me.”
Lynet frowned in suspicion, but she turned with her arms crossed. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to brush your hair.” At once, Lynet started to scramble away, so Mina pushed her back down and kept her hands on her shoulders. “Listen to me. I’m going to brush your hair with my fingers. I’ll be careful so it won’t hurt, but if it does hurt, we’ll stop. Agreed?”
“No!”
“Are you scared, little wolf cub?”
She pouted, but she stopped struggling to get away. “No.”
Mina tried not to laugh, knowing Lynet would be offended if she did. She started to comb through Lynet’s hair with her fingers, untangling and unknotting. She did hurt Lynet once or twice—the girl flinched whenever she approached a particularly nasty tangle—but Lynet didn’t protest or try to leave.
“When I grow up, I want to look like you,” Lynet said softly.
Mina pretended not to hear. It was an impossible wish. But she couldn’t explain that to Lynet, of course, no more than Mina could explain her own glass heart.
Mina’s hands paused as they brushed the skin on Lynet’s neck. Her skin was always so cold, and yet she never seemed to feel the cold at all. Perhaps her seeming immunity to the cold was one of the effects of her creation—but was that the only one? Mina had never considered that Lynet could have the same power over snow that Mina had over glass, but now she wondered how she could have missed it. There had been times during her walks with Nicholas when Lynet had played in the snow, making elaborate structures that should have been difficult, if not impossible, for such an impatient child. Mina hadn’t been able to shape glass until her father had told her about her heart; perhaps Lynet couldn’t fully transform the snow until she knew the truth of her birth. I might teach her, Mina thought. I’m the only one who could.
But then she would have to explain to Lynet the circumstances of her birth, the debt she owed to Gregory. Mina still had nightmares sometimes of that rotting heart in its jar, her father’s voice behind her telling her that she owed him her life. She remembered the way the village girls had looked at her when they had seen her experimenting with her powers. Lynet was probably better off never knowing the truth.
Even when the last tangle was free, neither Mina nor Lynet moved away. Running her hands through the girl’s hair was surprisingly soothing. It was thicker than her own, but softer. Could Nicholas even look at it without thinking of his wife’s hair? His wife, Mina thought, as though he only ever had one. She had the sudden urge to pull out Lynet’s hair, every last strand, and burn it all.
Lynet let out a little yelp, and Mina saw that she had started to act on her fantasy without meaning to, a few loose strands of Lynet’s hair coming away in her hand.
“I think it’s time you fly back to your room, Lynet. Your father might wake to find you missing, and your stepmother is tired.”
Lynet bounced off the bed in happy oblivion, and Mina watched her go. How many years would they have together before Lynet realized that whatever love she thought she felt for Mina was nothing but a childish illusion? How soon before Lynet began to resemble the portrait of Emilia on Nicholas’s wall? One day they would both start to see each other differently, and Mina couldn’t imagine how they could become anything but enemies on that day.
18
LYNET
The huntsman went straight to Mina and took her face in his hands, studying her intently. “You look sad,” he said. “Tired.”
Lynet was rapt. She’d never seen anyone approach her stepmother with such intimacy. Her father always wore a layer of formality when he was with the queen. But despite his youthful appearance, the huntsman spoke to her and touched her like they’d known each other for a long time.
Mina brushed his hands away, and her voice was cold as she said, “I look sad, do I, Felix? And why do you think that is?”