The Woman Beneath Me

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Face Beneath Mine

The first thing I noticed was that Adrian had stopped breathing.

Not literally. His chest still rose and fell, and his fingers remained wrapped around mine, but something in him had gone completely still.

He was staring at the mirror behind me.

I didn’t want to turn around.

There was something terrifying about the way he looked at it, as though whatever stood on the other side was not a reflection but a person he had spent years praying would never find its way back.

“Adrian?”

He released my hand.

That frightened me more than anything else.

“Don’t look at it,” he said.

The words came out quietly, almost gently, but his eyes were wild.

I looked anyway.

My reflection stood where it was supposed to stand, pale face, dark hair, the same dress I had been wearing since the night my memories returned. For one absurd second, I almost laughed at myself. There was nothing there.

Then my reflection smiled.

I didn’t.

The smile was small, familiar, and terribly sad. It was the sort of smile a person gave just before telling you something that would ruin the rest of your life.

My stomach tightened.

Behind my reflection, a second figure emerged.

A woman.

She looked exactly like me.

Not similar. Not a sister, not a distant resemblance, not another woman who happened to share my face.

Me.

Her eyes were darker than mine, her skin almost colourless beneath the dim light. A thin line of blood ran from her hairline to her cheek, and she wore a white dress that looked as though it had been dragged through several years of dust.

I stumbled backwards.

The woman in the mirror did not move with me.

She remained perfectly still, watching me with an expression I could not understand.

Then she lifted her hand and pressed it against the glass.

My own hand began to rise.

I caught it before my fingers touched the mirror.

“Adrian,” I whispered. “Who is that?”

He stepped between us.

“Get away from the mirror.”

“She has my face.”

“I know.”

The answer struck harder than a slap.

I stared at him.

“You know?”

His jaw tightened. For a moment, I thought he might lie again. I could almost see the words forming behind his teeth, another careful explanation designed to keep me frightened enough to obey him and confused enough not to ask the right questions.

But he looked at the mirror once more, and whatever he saw there seemed to break something inside him.

“Her name is Elena.”

The room tilted.

I remembered that name.

Not as a word I had heard recently, or a name written in an old file, but as something buried deep inside me. Something that had once belonged to me so completely that hearing it spoken aloud felt like having a locked door kicked open.

“Elena Vale,” I whispered.

Adrian turned towards me.

For the first time since I had known him, he looked genuinely afraid of what I might remember next.

“Yes.”

“That was my name.”

He said nothing.

The woman in the mirror lowered her hand.

Her lips moved.

I couldn’t hear her, but I understood the words with a certainty that made my knees weak.

He lied to you.

I shook my head.

“No.”

Adrian reached for me, but I moved away before he could touch me.

“Don’t.”

His hand fell.

The silence between us was unbearable.

I wanted him to explain everything. I wanted him to tell me that the woman was a trick of the light, that the memories flooding my mind were the result of some terrible illness, that there was a rational explanation for the face in the mirror.

Most of all, I wanted him to look me in the eyes and tell me that I could still trust him.

Instead, he looked at the woman who wore my face.

And he said, “You weren’t supposed to wake up.”

I stopped breathing.

The woman in the mirror began to cry.

Not dramatically. Not with the desperate, open-mouthed grief I might have expected. Tears simply slipped down her cheeks, leaving pale tracks through the blood.

Then she mouthed something else.

Three words.

Remember what you did.

A sharp pain tore through my head.

The room disappeared.

For a moment, I was somewhere else.

I was standing at the top of a staircase, barefoot, with blood on my hands.

A man was shouting below me.

Someone was crying behind a locked door.

And I was holding a key.

I looked down at it, and the metal was so cold that my fingers hurt.

Then a voice whispered in my ear.

“You promised me, Elena.”

I tried to turn, but someone caught my wrist.

Adrian.

Only it wasn’t the Adrian standing beside me now.

This man looked younger, his face drawn and exhausted, his shirt stained with blood. He held my hand as though I was the only thing keeping him alive.

“Please,” he begged. “Don’t make me lose you again.”

Then the memory changed.

A mirror shattered.

A woman screamed.

And I watched my own face fall apart in a thousand glittering pieces.

I came back to myself on the floor.

Adrian was kneeling beside me, calling my name.

Not the name everyone else used.

“Elena. Elena, look at me.”

I pushed him away so violently that he fell back on his heels.

“Don’t call me that.”

He looked devastated.

“You remembered something.”

“I remembered you.”

His face changed.

I laughed, though there was nothing remotely funny about the situation.

“Isn’t that what you wanted? You wanted me to remember you, didn’t you? You wanted me to remember that I was Elena Vale, that I was married to you, that I chose you over Silas. You wanted me to remember everything except whatever it is you did to me.”

“I never wanted you to suffer.”

“Then why does every memory of you hurt?”

He had no answer.

I rose unsteadily and moved towards the door, but he didn’t try to stop me.

That was almost worse.

“Tell me one thing,” I said without looking at him. “When you said I chose you, did I know what you were?”

Adrian was silent for so long that I turned around.

His eyes were fixed on the floor.

“Adrian.”

“Yes.”

“Did I know?”

He lifted his head.

“You knew more than anyone.”

The words followed me out of the room.

⸻

I found the oldest mirror in the house just after midnight.

I hadn’t intended to search for it. I had intended to leave, to find the nearest road, to put as much distance as possible between myself and the man who seemed to know the ending of my story before I could even remember its beginning.

But the house was a maze of corridors, and every staircase led me back towards the same central hall.

Eventually, I found myself standing before a narrow door I had never noticed before.

It was unlocked.

Beyond it lay a small room filled with dust and the smell of damp wood. There were no windows, only a single candle on a table and a mirror covered with a dark cloth.

I knew, before I touched it, that this was the mirror I had seen in my memories.

The oldest mirror in the house.

The one Adrian had warned me never to approach.

I pulled the cloth away.

The glass was clouded with age, its silver backing darkened at the edges. Someone had carved symbols into the wooden frame, and beneath them, almost hidden by scratches, was a sentence.

I leaned closer.

WHAT IS LOST MAY RETURN, BUT IT WILL NOT RETURN ALONE.

A chill travelled down my spine.

I touched the inscription.

The candle flickered.

For a moment, the mirror reflected only the room behind me. Then the glass darkened, as though ink were spreading beneath its surface.

A figure appeared.

A woman sat on the floor of a room I didn’t recognise, her wrists bound with strips of white cloth. Her hair hung over her face, and her shoulders shook with silent sobs.

I stepped closer.

The woman raised her head.

It was me.

But this version of me looked older, or perhaps only more exhausted. There were faint scars along her throat, and her eyes carried the terrible emptiness of someone who had spent too long waiting for a door to open.

She looked directly at me.

Then she spoke.

“If you’re seeing this, he’s already made you forget.”

I froze.

The voice was mine.

Not similar to mine. Not an imitation.

Mine.

The woman in the mirror glanced over her shoulder, listening for something beyond the room.

“I don’t have much time,” she continued. “You need to understand that the man who loves you is also the man who—”

The image fractured.

A violent crack travelled across the glass.

I gasped and stumbled backwards.

“No. Wait.”

The woman pressed both hands against the other side.

“Don’t let him take you to the staircase.”

The candle went out.

Darkness swallowed the room.

Then I heard footsteps in the corridor.

“Elena?”

Adrian.

His voice sounded different now. Not afraid.

Angry.

I turned towards the door.

For the first time, I understood that the danger in this house might not be hiding in the mirrors.

It might be the man who kept telling me not to look into them.

I ran.

⸻

I made it halfway down the corridor before Adrian caught up with me.

He didn’t grab me. He simply stepped in front of the staircase, forcing me to stop.

“Move.”

“No.”

“Move, Adrian.”

His eyes searched my face.

“What did you see?”

I laughed bitterly.

“Which version of the truth would you like me to tell you?”

His expression tightened.

“You went into the room.”

“You knew it was there.”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t tell me.”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“Stop saying that.”

My voice broke, and I hated myself for it.

“Every time you hide something from me, you call it protection. Every time I remember something you don’t like, you look at me as though I’m becoming someone you cannot control.”

He flinched.

It was a small movement, but I saw it.

“Is that what you think this is?” he asked.

“I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“Then look at me.”

“No.”

“Please.”

There was something in that word that made me hesitate.

Adrian rarely begged. He could be cold, manipulative, infuriatingly composed. Even when he spoke about the most terrible things, he had a way of making it seem as though he had already accepted the consequences.

But now he looked like a man standing at the edge of a grave.

“I know what you saw,” he said. “And I know what she told you.”

“Then you know I can’t trust you.”

“I know you shouldn’t.”

I stared at him.

He swallowed.

“I have lied to you. I’ve hidden things from you that you had every right to know. I told myself I was buying you time, that if I could keep you away from the worst parts of your past, you might have a chance at a different life.”

“And did it work?”

His eyes shone in the dim light.

“No.”

The honesty was so unexpected that I had no idea what to do with it.

He stepped closer, slowly enough that I could have moved away.

“I loved you before you forgot me,” he said. “I loved you when you looked at me as though I was a stranger. And I loved you when you began remembering things that made you hate me.”

“Then tell me the truth.”

“I am trying.”

“No. You’re trying to decide how much truth I can survive.”

He closed his eyes.

For a moment, neither of us moved.

I could hear the distant ticking of a clock somewhere in the house. The sound seemed absurdly ordinary in a place where mirrors showed people who shouldn’t exist and memories could disappear without warning.

When Adrian opened his eyes again, he looked at me with an expression I had never seen before.

Resignation.

“Silas wasn’t the only person you were afraid of,” he said.

My heart began to pound.

“What does that mean?”

“It means you were afraid of yourself.”

The words settled between us.

I wanted to deny them, but the memory of the blood on my hands returned so vividly that I could almost smell the iron.

“What did I do?”

Adrian looked towards the staircase.

“Something you begged me to help you forget.”

Before I could ask another question, a door slammed somewhere upstairs.

We both turned.

A second later, a woman’s voice rang through the house.

“Adrian!”

He went completely still.

I had never heard that voice before, yet something inside me recognised it.

The woman called his name again.

Then she laughed.

It was a quiet, familiar sound.

The sound of someone who knew exactly where she belonged.

Adrian’s face had gone white.

“Stay here,” he whispered.

I caught his arm.

“Who is she?”

He looked at me, and I saw the answer before he spoke.

“Someone who should be dead.”

⸻

The woman was waiting at the top of the staircase.

She wore a black dress and stood beneath the chandelier with one hand resting on the banister. Her hair was silver at the temples, her face pale but composed.

She looked at Adrian first.

Then she looked at me.

And smiled.

“Oh, Elena,” she said softly. “You have no idea what he’s done this time.”

Adrian moved in front of me.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

The woman tilted her head.

“Neither should she.”

My fingers tightened around his sleeve.

“Who are you?”

Her smile faded.

For the first time, she looked genuinely sad.

“Someone who knew you before he taught you how to forget.”

She reached into her handbag and removed a small photograph.

Then she walked down the stairs and held it out to me.

I took it.

The picture showed three people standing in front of the oldest mirror.

Adrian was on the left, younger but unmistakable.

I stood beside him, my head resting against his shoulder.

And between us was a little girl.

She had my eyes.

The photograph slipped from my fingers.

I couldn’t speak.

The woman watched me with quiet satisfaction.

“You remember your husband,” she said. “You remember the house. You’re beginning to remember the experiments.”

She glanced at Adrian.

“But you haven’t remembered your daughter.”

Something inside me seemed to stop.

“My daughter?”

Adrian closed his eyes.

The woman smiled again, though there was no warmth in it.

“Ask him what happened to Lily.”

I turned towards Adrian.

He didn’t look at me.

He looked at the photograph lying on the floor.

And then, very quietly, he said the one thing I had never expected to hear.

“She’s alive.”

The woman laughed.

“No, Adrian.”

She stepped closer to me.

“Your daughter is dead.”

Then she looked directly into my eyes.

“And he knows exactly who killed her.”

The chandelier flickered.

Somewhere behind us, the oldest mirror cracked.

And from the darkness above the staircase, a child’s voice whispered my name.

“Mummy?”