The Mate Who Marked Me
When I lifted my head, my reflection greeted me in the small, spotted mirror hung above the basin, tired and pale in the low candlelight, dark circles pressed beneath eyes that looked entirely, ordinarily brown.
Then they didn't.
It happened fast, faster than I could track, a flash of violet bleeding into my irises like ink dropped into water, there and gone again in less than a heartbeat, gone so quickly that if I hadn't been staring directly into the mirror I might have convinced myself I'd imagined it entirely. But I hadn't imagined it. I knew what I'd seen, the same impossible color from the dream that still haunted me some nights, the same color Ivy had whispered about in cruel, gleeful