11th of Darkfall, 412 AH
My arms hurt.
I lay on top of the blanket and tried to lift them above my head, just to stretch the ache out. They came up shaking and stopped halfway. I let them drop and that hurt too. I wanted to hit something so badly but there was nothing to hit, only the ceiling, the dark, and my own shit arms that wouldn't even lift.
It served me right. I knew exactly what I'd done. Cut after cut after cut until my shoulders hurt and then well past that, because working myself stupid was the one thing that ever shut my head up.
Now I was paying for it, and it was nobody's stupid fault but mine.
I got up. I didn't know why, maybe to spite my own body, to make it do one thing I told it. The floor was cold and my feet hated it. I walked to the mirror.
It was nearly dark. Just moonlight through the window, and the dim light-stone on the wall, so the mirror gave me back mostly shadow with the shape of a girl in it. I looked anyway.
I looked at my arms first, because they'd just betrayed me. Weak still, I was twelve and skinny, everyone said so, but they were harder than they used to be. The muscle had started to show. Mine.
I looked at my hands. The calluses stood out in the moonlight, pale ridges across my palms. Catrin doesn't have them, she's got nice hands.
I had earned them swing by swing, on the days nobody watched. It was the one thing in the whole place that was only mine, and looking at it in the dark glass I felt something close to proud.
Then I looked up at my face.
It was a good face for what I needed it to do. In the bad light I couldn't read a single thing off it. Mouth flat, eyebrows neutral, nothing moving. I'd practiced that. You learn it when there are people who go quiet and watch your face for the place it cracks so they can jam a thumb in it. I'd taught myself to give him nothing, and standing there I could see I'd done it well.
Except the eyes.
I met my own eyes in the glass, and they showed me every bit of what I'd kept off my face. The anger. The plain, ugly hate I'd been hauling around all day and pretending down.
"You're angry," I said to the mirror. My own voice surprised me, how flat it came. "You hate them so much."
I was lying to myself. It wasn't only them. It was her, the arms that quit on me, the girl who'd cried. Weak. Her I hated most of all.
A year ago. I'd been working a cut for a week. I'd finally got it to travel as the guard captain said it should. I was so stupid-happy about it. He waited there with his shitty grin until I noticed him, then said it low, just for me, you know they're only letting you play, right? Like Rosabel when she plays with sticks in the garden. Mother told them to let you. Then a pause so it'd hurt more. But it's sweet that you take it so serious.
My hands had shaken so hard. I should have punched him in the face right then and there.
I didn't go back for four days. I told them I hurt my wrist. I lay in this room and cried until I made myself stop. The worst part wasn't even him, the smug little bastard. The worst part was that I'd believed him. I'd looked at the guard captain's kind face and thought, oh, is that what this is. On the fifth morning I got up before daybreak, went down to the hall with anger, and made myself pick the saber back up. I swore I'd never again be the girl who cried. I'd be so good there'd be nothing for him to say.
That was what my training was for. Half of it... at least half. Every clean morning since then was proof that I was strong.
And then he fell off the wall.
He was so different now. I kept trying to match the Klaus in the doorway up with the Klaus in the training hall today, but it didn't match up.
And then he just stripped his jacket off in front of us, peeled it off himself, sweat down his collar for anyone to look at. He didn't even look ashamed. A boy doesn't do that. You don't just take your clothes off in the open like a cheap whore.
I didn't know what to do anymore.
The wall I built was to keep out cruelty. I knew cruelty, I went looking for it in him and couldn't find it. I had built and built the wall against a person who wasn't there anymore.
What is it even all for?
I never got to be so good in front of him that he had nothing to say, because now he had nothing to say to me anyway. I just stood with my arms aching for no reason.
And under that, there was something worse waiting. I never let myself think on it for too long.
Because even if I out-worked everyone. Even if I got so good the whole estate had to look... The house goes to Catrin. It was always going to go to Catrin. She's the eldest and she's away learning how to be duchess. Mother writes to her about Fairhaven over supper and slides over me on the way like I'm furniture she's fond of. The spare. Cousin said it easy, as though it was just the word for a girl like me, a spare girl in a house that already had its eldest.
The hate came back with nowhere to point but the weak, never-enough thing in the glass. Me. I wanted to put my fist through the mirror, make the girl stop looking at me like that.
I was still looking in the mirror.
I didn't know how long. Too long. I'd gone so still and stared so hard at my own face that it stopped being my face. It became strange. The eyes I'd been hating weren't eyes anymore, just two dark places. The reflection was still there, but I couldn't find myself in it. It looked like something wearing my face, holding still, looking back to see if I'd notice.
Goosebumps came up all over my arms. What the fuck am i doing.
I looked away.
Looking away changed nothing. The thing in the mirror was still me. And a thing you hate that much, you don't leave it where it is. You beat it. You get up before first light and you break it down rep by rep until it's someone else.
So I'd get better.
My arms would let me by morning. They'd let me whether they wanted to or not. Faster, stronger, until the girl in the glass was someone I could stand to look at.
I got into bed. My arms still hated me. They could keep on hating me on the way down to the training hall.