SAGE

My real self was… breathtaking.

The thought didn’t come from vanity so much as quiet disbelief as I stared into the tall mirror—the same mirror I had stood before countless times while wearing Dora’s face, Dora’s skin, Dora’s careful lies.

I stepped closer slowly, almost cautiously, as if the woman in the glass might vanish if I moved too fast.

She didn’t.

White silk hair cascaded down my back in a luminous fall, soft as moonlight, threaded through with fine strands of molten gold that shone under light. It flowed past my shoulders, past my waist, a living river of pale fire that no illusion could ever truly contain....