A Winter's Promise

The first installment of The Mirror Visitor series opens with a mysterious fragment from an unnamed narrator who once loved God but despised a Book bound to God; one day, God "smashed the world to pieces." This cataclysm, called the Rupture, broke the old Earth into floating fragments called arks. Each ark is governed by a family spirit, an ageless being whose bloodline grants descendants supernatural powers. On the ark of Anima, where objects come to life through the family power of Animism, a young woman named Ophelia works as a museum curator. She possesses two rare gifts: the ability to "read" the history of objects by touching them with bare hands and the ability to travel through mirrors. Her glasses shift color with her moods, and her companion is a sentient scarf, her first golem.

Ophelia's quiet life is upended when the Doyennes, Anima's matriarchal council, betroth her to a man named Thorn from the Pole, a distant and reputedly dangerous ark. Refusing would mean permanent banishment. Ophelia researches the Pole in her great-uncle's archives and finds sketches of harsh landscapes and hunters with tattooed arms posing before the carcasses of enormous animals called Beasts. She also encounters the Book, an ancient, undecipherable document with skin-like texture, bearing the inscription: "Never, on any account, attempt to destroy this Book."

Thorn arrives wearing a voluminous white fur and towering over everyone, his scarred face radiating disdain. He offends Ophelia's family by refusing their welcome banquet and demanding to visit Artemis, Anima's family spirit, to deliver a casket from the Pole's family spirit, Farouk. The next morning he announces they are leaving that day. On the airship, Thorn avoids Ophelia and her chaperone, Aunt Rosaline, a sharp-tongued widow. When Ophelia brings him tea, Thorn warns her she will not survive the Pole and urges her to turn back; she refuses.

They arrive during a snowstorm and travel by dog sleigh to the Citaceleste, a floating city suspended above a frozen landscape. Thorn sneaks them to the estate of his aunt Berenilde, a beautiful woman living within an illusory park of eternal autumn. At dinner, Thorn reveals he killed a pursuer before departing for Anima. Berenilde explains the Pole's family tree has splintered into rival clans that kill one another; the Dragon clan is powerful but small. Ophelia learns she is expected to produce children for the clan. Berenilde reveals that Thorn is a bastard whose father had an affair with a woman from a disgraced clan, and that no Dragon woman would marry him. Thorn is not merely a hunter but Lord Farouk's Treasurer, the realm's chief financial administrator.

Confined to the manor, Ophelia escapes one night to explore the Citaceleste. At a costumed ball she meets Archibald, the ambassador and head of the rival Web clan, who sees through her disguise but does not expose her. He warns her never to go near Farouk. On her way back, Freya, Thorn's hostile half-sister, strikes her with the Dragon clan's "claws," a power that attacks the nervous system at a distance to cause real pain. Back at the manor, Ophelia discovers Berenilde is pregnant by Farouk, and Thorn orders her to keep a low profile.

Berenilde punishes Ophelia with invisible headaches while coaching her in court etiquette. When Farouk orders Berenilde to Archibald's estate, Clairdelune, she disguises Ophelia as a male valet called "Mime" using an illusory livery that gives her a forgettable man's face. Aunt Rosaline poses as Berenilde's lady's companion.

At Clairdelune, an illusory fairy-tale castle, Ophelia is befriended by Fox, a boisterous valet who teaches her the estate's workings. She also meets Gail, a fierce mechanic with a black monocle who serves Mother Hildegarde. Berenilde warns Ophelia to stay away from the Knight, a polite 10-year-old boy at Clairdelune to whom Berenilde owes an old debt. He is a terrifyingly powerful illusionist capable of imposing dreams on others through hypnosis.

Ophelia accidentally discovers that Archibald possesses a reproduction of Farouk's Book and is consulting experts to decipher it. When Gail asks Ophelia to deliver oranges to her employer, Mother Hildegarde, Thorn's grandmother secretly poisons the fruit. Hildegarde collapses, and Ophelia is beaten and thrown into the dungeons. The corrupt head butler Gustave offers to delay her execution if she causes Berenilde to miscarry. Hildegarde saves Ophelia by issuing a false medical statement. During a nighttime visit through Thorn's wardrobe mirror, Ophelia reveals the grandmother's guilt, which she discovered by reading the basket before her arrest. Thorn believes her and promises to deal with both threats; Gustave is soon found dead, an apparent suicide prompted by a judicial summons.

Gail reveals she has always seen through Mime's disguise. She is a Nihilist, the last survivor of a clan wiped out 20 years earlier, whose tattooed eye can cancel others' powers. She offers an exchange of secrets and a tentative alliance.

After the Spring Opera, Berenilde confesses the truth to Ophelia. Farouk desperately wants his Book deciphered, and the wedding's ceremony of the Gift will combine Ophelia's reading ability with Thorn's extraordinary memory—inherited from his mother's clan—to create a reader powerful enough to do so. Thorn himself desired this arrangement. Devastated, Ophelia realizes his concern was for her abilities, not her person. Berenilde then breaks down, revealing her own children and husband were murdered in court intrigues. Ophelia, moved, forgives her.

At the opera, Ophelia forgets her prop onstage, but Berenilde recovers magnificently and recaptures Farouk's attention. Aunt Rosaline fails to appear; Ophelia finds her backstage, her mind imprisoned by the Knight in loops of her own memories. At a disused train station, Ophelia tells Thorn she does not love him and will not share his bed or bear his children. Thorn accepts her conditions but warns she will regret having him as a husband. The next day, the entire Dragon hunting party, including Freya, is massacred when Beasts go berserk. The sole survivor describes a child-like "angel" who calmed the Beasts and spared only him. Berenilde identifies the Knight as the perpetrator.

Ophelia enlists Gail to save Aunt Rosaline; using her Nihilist power, Gail cancels the Knight's illusion and draws Rosaline's consciousness back. Archibald proposes an alliance, offering to become godfather to Berenilde's child. Despite Thorn's order, Ophelia accepts, asserting her independence. By accidentally reading carved dice in Thorn's coat, she experiences vivid memories of his lonely childhood, leaving her conflicted but unwilling to confuse his pain with her own feelings.

With the Dragon clan destroyed, Thorn delivers a telegram revealing Ophelia's family is traveling to the Pole, alarmed by her silence. Berenilde determines the only safe course is to present Ophelia to Farouk as his official ward. In the lift to the court, Ophelia catches her reflection and affirms her identity: She is the Mirror Visitor, and as long as she can face her own reflection with a clear conscience, she belongs to no one but herself. A brief epilogue returns to the mysterious narrator, who recalls that "God was punished" and has never been seen since.