Chapter 40
The forest ended abruptly, the tall pines falling away around us to reveal the landscape beyond.
I gasped. Before us, the world had become… a mirror.
Clouds drifted beneath my feet as clearly as they drifted overhead, the land blurring seamlessly together. The effect was so perfect that it seemed as though one wrong step might send me tumbling straight into the heavens.
A fine mist drifted across the landscape, softening the edges of everything it touched and lending it an almost dreamlike quality.
I looked down and found my own reflection staring back at me from the water-slick surface.
“What magic is this?” I breathed.
“Salt,” Rìan grunted beside me.
I frowned up at him. “Salt?”
Moisture clung to his hair and gathered along the thick sweep of his lashes. “An ancient sea once covered this region,” he said at last. “When the water retreated, it left thick deposits of salt behind. The ground is nearly white. When moisture settles across the surface, it reflects the sky.”
I looked back toward the endless mirror stretching to the horizon. It seemed impossible that something so beautiful could be so ordinary.
“It isn't magic?” I asked incredulously.
Rìan didn't answer immediately. His gaze remained fixed forward, his expression distant and severe. “No,” he said at last. “But salt drains magic. And Illyra lies at the center of the flats.”
I followed his gaze toward the horizon, where a dark smudge in the distance broke the seamless silver expanse.
“That's where we're going?”
“Yes. The capital of the Court of Mirrors.” Something in the way he said it made me glance back at him.
My stomach sank. “Shouldn’t we be heading to the Tidelands? To find the second Gate?”
For the first time since we'd reached the ridge, his attention shifted fully back to me. “This Court borders on the Tidelands. I know someone who may be able to help us through.”
I frowned. “A friend?”
Something tightened in his expression. “No.”
The answer only made me more curious. “How do they know you're coming?”
His gaze drifted back toward the view ahead. “They know.”
The words landed with a finality that made it clear I wouldn't be getting anything more from him. I opened my mouth to ask how long it would take to get there, but Rìan had already set off. With a muttered curse, I hurried after him, breaking into a jog to catch up with his longer stride.
The illusion of the landscape became even more disorienting up close.
I stumbled more than I wanted to, unable to tell exactly where the ground lay beneath my feet until I took a step, each movement sending ripples skimming across the thin layer of water coating the ground.
Clouds drifted beneath my boots. So did Rìan.
Keeping my gaze fixed downward to avoid twisting an ankle, I found myself staring at his reflection instead.
Even upside down and fractured by shivering water, the scowl on his face was unmistakable.
The sensation began perhaps half an hour into our journey. At first it was subtle. A faint tingling beneath my skin. I frowned and rubbed at my forearms as I walked, convinced it was merely the chill dampness of the mist that had settled around us.
Without so much as glancing in my direction, Rìan said, “The salt is draining your magic”
The sensation intensified. I flexed my fingers. “It feels strange.”
“It gets worse.”
Wonderful. “How much worse?”
“By the time we reach Illyra, you'll be empty.”
The words stopped me cold. Rìan continued walking. After a moment, he sighed and stopped as well.
“Not permanently,” he turned back impatiently.
“The salt leeches magic from anything that carries it.
It's the natural defense of the Court of Mirrors.
No army can cross the flats and arrive in Illyra with its power intact, and skelding there is impossible with the wards in place.
By the time invaders reach the city, they're little more than ordinary mortals.”
“So no one in Illyra can touch their magic?” I asked in disbelief.
“You should feel right at home.” His eyes glittered. “The High Lady is the only one with her magic intact. She alone drinks directly from the Vein to sustain it.”
I scowled. “Why would any Fae live there?”
He shot me a sidelong glance. “Because it's a Court of utter debauchery.” He stepped over a shallow pool of water without breaking stride. “The High Lady turns a blind eye to anything that doesn't threaten her rule.”
“Such as?”
“Smuggling. Gambling. Contraband.” A corner of his mouth lifted. “Drug dens. Pleasure houses. Black markets. Every vice imaginable.”
I stared at him.
"She takes her cut as payment for not interfering. Every smuggler, merchant, gambler, and criminal in Elantis eventually passes through Illyra. As a result, it's the richest Court in Elantis."
“Is it dangerous?” I asked anxiously.
“Everywhere in Elantis is dangerous.” He gave me a dark look. “Illyra simply doesn't pretend otherwise.”
The tingling was spreading now, creeping through my body in countless tiny currents like millions of ants moving beneath my skin. It wasn't painful—but it was deeply unsettling, the sort of sensation that made me fight the urge to rake my nails across my arms in search of relief.
Rìan didn't so much as twitch to betray a shred of discomfort, yet every so often his nose would wrinkle faintly, a small involuntary reaction that suggested the sensation was bothering him too.
Otherwise, he stayed focused on the horizon through the misting rain, as though nothing existed beyond reaching it.
Of course he would be headed to a Court like that.
A city built on thievery, vice, black markets, and criminals sounded exactly like the sort of place the Dark Prince would cultivate allies.
Exactly the sort of place someone like him could vanish into without attracting a second glance.
The thought did very little to reassure me about the mysterious contact waiting for us in Illyra.
My eyes drifted toward the distant city.
What would Lady Elyndra think if she knew the Dark Prince was making his way toward her capital? Without his magic, Rìan would be vulnerable. Vulnerable enough that a single blade in the right place could end him before he ever regained his footing in Elantis.
The thought made me deeply uneasy. If anyone discovered us, we wouldn't make it out of the city.
“How long does it take to cross the salt flats?” I asked, partly because I genuinely wanted to know and partly because I was suddenly wondering how quickly we could flee if we needed to.
“From Illyra at their centre, two days in any direction.”
“Two days?!”
He seemed entirely unbothered. “If we become lost, considerably longer. But that could be a death sentence.” He adjusted the strap of the waterskin at his hip.
I gaped at him. We'd been forced to abandon our packs at the temple after the Spinner attack, and Rìan hadn't wanted to risk returning to the Wildlands to retrieve them.
As a result, though he still carried most of his knives and the sword strapped across his back, I had little more than my bone knife sheathed at my hip.
No food. No blankets. No spare clothes. Just one waterskin between us and two days of unforgiving emptiness.
My gaze drifted downward, the flats shimmering wetly beneath our feet.
“The water is contaminated by the salt,” Rìan said, following my line of thought. “There is no source of fresh water until we reach Illyra.”
I looked out across the expanse before us. Only moments ago it had seemed magical. Now I saw it differently. The flats were beautiful, yes—but it was the beauty of a drawn blade, gleaming and exquisite right up until the moment it cut you.
The only reassuring thing about it was that getting lost seemed nearly impossible. The ground stretched unobstructed in every direction, offering a clear view as far as the eye could see.
I later realized how spectacularly wrong that assumption was.
As the day wore on, the weather gradually shifted around us.
The cloud cover thickened, and the sky began to spit fat, spiteful droplets.
They pelted the water with such force that, at times, it looked as though the rain was falling upward.
Before long, the mirrored landscape absorbed the horizon until there was no longer any distinction between sky and earth.
Hours after we'd left the ridge behind, I glanced over my shoulder. A startled cry escaped me. Rìan stopped at once, his hand dropping immediately toward one of the knives at his belt. He relaxed when he realized what I was looking at.
Behind us, a dark shadow lay on the horizon, the ridgeline we'd descended from nearly indistinguishable from the distant silhouette of Illyra ahead. For one horrifying moment, I genuinely couldn't tell which was which.
“That's impossible,” I whispered.
Getting lost suddenly seemed frighteningly easy.
We continued on.
The flats proved far more difficult to cross than they appeared from a distance. The reflective surface concealed subtle dips and rises in the terrain, and more than once my foot landed where I didn't expect it to.
The first time I stumbled, I caught myself. The second time I nearly fell into Rìan. The third time I went down entirely.
Cold water splashed up my legs as my knees struck the surface.
Rìan kept walking.
“You could at least pretend to be concerned,” I called bitterly after him when he didn't so much as glance back.
“There's no cause for concern unless you're dead or dying.”
I muttered several unflattering things about him beneath my breath and pushed myself back upright.
By late afternoon my trousers were soaked through, the cold so persistent and biting that my legs had gone numb.
Rìan wasn't entirely merciless. He called for frequent stops throughout the day, though the moments were devoted entirely to practical necessities. Short rests. Quick trips away to relieve ourselves while the other kept their back respectfully turned.
And a single sip of water.