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There is a game that young people play, to have a reason to cling to each other and shriek. Sorin learned of it when they were sixteen, when they and Talent had been the guests of some Lady and her Dame wife. In a dark room, illuminated only by a single candle, you stare into a mirror that is half-draped with dark fabric—a cloak or thin blanket will do. You look unblinkingly at the half of your face that you can see, and it is said that if you look long enough, your features will shift horribly before your very eyes. Stare long enough, and a monster will stare back.
Saint left Edmund asleep in their bed, gathered their thief's garb, and quietly closed themself in the washing room. By the light of a candle, they looked into the old mirror propped up on the washbasin stand. They glanced at the wounds on their naked torso—the shallow red lacerations across their chest, and the blossoming bruise over their ribs—which were what they had expected, and a fitting punishment for their failures. Then, they leaned in closer to the mirror and peered at their face.
The bruise from Lamakh was nearly as dark as the one left on their ribs by a war-hammer and darkening still, which spoke to her prowess in barehanded fighting. It began high on their cheek and extended past their temple. Saint turned their head and pushed their hair back for a better look. They supposed that they should feel lucky that Lamakh had just missed breaking the ring of bone that Sonder had once called the orbital socket. Or, perhaps her placement had been deliberate. Could it be that she hadn't wanted to fracture anything? She had enjoyed Sorin's face, once.
Saint exhaled a nearly-soundless and mostly-mirthless laugh, and disregarded the notion.
The blow itself had felt like a thunderclap. If they hadn't turned their head with the force, it would have knocked them out cold. Even with that, it had been a near thing, and the sheer power of it had darkened their vision and made the world spin. Even now, hours later, their ear was still ringing on that side and their head pounded with a sickening ache. Their tongue hurt, too. If only they hadn't been running their mouth when the blow came; then they wouldn't have bitten their tongue so hard that a messy trickle of blood ran down their chin, and they might have been spared that small indignity.
Then again, if they hadn't been running their mouth—if they hadn't said exactly the thing that they should not have said, like an idiot of the highest order—then Lamakh might not have had to hit them at all.
"At the very least, you could have dignified me with a proper rejection. But you just left me there—"
Saint gingerly explored the boundary of this bruise that their once-lover had given them as they replayed the moment of violence in their mind. The memory of Lamakh's face as she raised her hand, her features displaying an anger that was startling in its nakedness, was as clear as if preserved by magic. Had they ever seen her expose an emotion so entirely? It felt like something they shouldn't be allowed to see, even as a part of them relished in having stolen a glimpse of it at all. Lamakh's words echoed in their mind, each word hitting like a blow to the chest.
"You left me. You disappeared. You have no right to tell me what I could and could not say, when you—you left. I had no chance to speak. Do not try… Do not try to gaslight me, you, S—"
Pained by old regrets and fresh wounds, Saint reflected on Lamakh's words, and on the one that she had bitten off. Lamakh, who had ever seemed invulnerable and unafraid of anything, had stopped herself from saying their name. Lamakh, who had once said the name Sorin in a way that made them love the old appellation in a new way, and who had been gifted Saint's first and truest name, had refused to call them anything at all. Lamakh, who had not wanted them, now burned with the wounded rage characteristic of love transformed to loathing. But she hadn't wanted them! She hadn't. If she did, she would have said as much. Wouldn't she?
With their raised hand covering half of their face, they made eye contact with their reflection. In the candlelight, their irises could have been any colour, but they felt like a deep blue—the blue of certain velvets, and the sky at the edge of night, and of knowing things that you wish you didn't. Saint lowered their hand, turned away from the mirror, and began to dress.
How horrible it was, to look straight at yourself and find that you were the villain of your story, and to fear that you always had been, even as you told yourself an altogether different tale.