The Dollmaker / Season 1, Episode 9
Weeping Porcelain Secrets
The brush trembled in Mira’s hand, the fine bristles hovering over Rozálie’s porcelain cheek. A hairline crack snaked from the doll’s left eye, a jagged tear that seemed to weep in the dim light of the restoration room. The air in the baroque palace bit at her knuckles, cold seeping through the ancient stone walls, but her palms were slick with sweat. She’d been at this for hours, hunched over the workbench, the silence of the late Prague night broken only by the faint tick of a radiator and the occasional groan of the building settling. Rozálie stared back, unblinking, her painted blue iris catching the glow of the desk lamp. Mira swore the color had deepened since yesterday, a shade closer to sapphire, but that was impossible. Porcelain didn’t shift. Paint didn’t breathe. “Estás loca,” she muttered under her breath, the Spanish slipping out like a reflex, a tether to Miami, to sanity. She set the brush down, the wood clattering against the cluttered table, and rubbed her eyes. They burned from lack of sleep, from the dreams that clawed at her every time she closed them—hands shaping clay, fingers digging into something soft and warm, something that yielded like flesh. She hadn’t told Karolína about the dreams. Not about the way they lingered, leaving her skin prickling with...