Casandra Videncia's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The spirits had guarded a name. Casandra now believed the name was her daughter's. But belief was not proof. She stood in her workshop, the walls thick with gears and old clocks, the tall clockwork house quiet around her. She knew the danger. A wrong reading could break her. If she named the ghost her daughter and was wrong, grief would swallow what was left of her. She faced the mirror on the wall. The thin gold frame held stars and tiny gears. Inside the glass a pale woman floated under a night sky. She had not moved in days. Casandra needed a sign only her daughter could give. Her daughter had come to her first through one card. The Three of Cups. Casandra had not been searching then. She had not asked. Her daughter simply arrived. So Casandra would not ask now. She would test the ghost the same way. She shuffled her deck. Dark blue backs, gold stars, worn soft at the edges. She did not lay them in a spread. She held the whole stack against the cool glass and closed her eyes. "If you are mine," she said, "choose. I will not choose for you." She waited. Her hands shook. The house ticked. Nothing happened. A minute passed, then two. Doubt crept in. Maybe the silence of the other spirits meant nothing. Maybe she had built a hope from fear. Then the deck moved. Not from her fingers. A single card slid free from the middle and fell face up on the floor. Casandra looked down. She already knew. She made herself look anyway. Three of Cups. Her knees gave. She caught the table edge and lowered herself to the floor beside the card. She had feared The Tower. Her own card. A stranger's warning. But the ghost had reached past every other card and pulled the one only her daughter had ever used. No stranger knew that story. No stranger could. "It is you," Casandra whispered. "It has been you all along." In the mirror, the pale woman lifted her head. For the first time in seven days, she looked straight at Casandra. The eyes were her daughter's eyes. Casandra pressed her hand to the glass. It was cold. On the other side, her daughter raised a hand to match. Almost touching. A pane of silver between them. The joy lasted only a moment. Then Casandra remembered the last thing her daughter ever said. She was tired of being found. She had gone quiet on purpose. She had not wanted this. Casandra had her proof. The ghost was her lost daughter. But her daughter had not come back to be saved. She had come back trapped in a mirror she never chose. And now Casandra had to learn why her daughter was bound here, and whether freeing her meant losing her a second time.