Chapter Thirty-Five
It’s just me and my gargoyle now.
And I think … maybe it was always going to be this way.
In the end, I am always alone.
The halls are silent as the grave. I study the night outside the windows at the end of the foyer, so tall they make me think of sentries standing guard over the royal family. The Mists have shifted from pitch black to a dark, moody gray, and a lump forms in my throat.
I have so little time.
I’m cold. My skin is numb and clammy, and I’m half drenched from the bog water.
My body is exhausted. I don’t know how much more fight I have in me.
My legs are sluggish, and my arms are heavy.
I want to find Roze and stop this, but I’ve been living for seven days in a state of near terror, always running, always hiding.
I’m so tired of hiding.
A sad, distant sound interrupts my thoughts, and I stumble. A violin. The sound is so melancholic, whining like a dying animal.
I glance at Waffles, and he returns my apprehensive look.
I force my thoughts elsewhere, keep the fear at bay, and make my legs move, sluggish as they are. But then the sound of the violin grows louder. Closer.
My breath catches in my throat, my whole body seizing up. Then the violin’s song shifts, turning from sad and slow to strained, desperate, frantic. It fills my mind and my bones, and the hair on my arms stands on end.
I run.
There’s a door at the end of the hall, and I fly through it without thinking, my heart and my mind moving too fast for my legs.
I crash through room after room, giving no heed to whatever might be behind each door.
All I know is that I need to get away from the sound of the violin, chasing me through these halls.
The pace of the music increases, becoming shriller and more frantic. My heart feels like it might fall out of my chest. Tears stream from my face as I crash through doors, my aching feet tearing at the carpet. The sound comes closer. It’s at my back.
Something seizes my throat, like a noose, and yanks. I fall backward, hitting my hip hard on the ground, and the noose drags me, fast as wind, backward into the dark hallway. I try to scream, but the invisible noose is tight around my neck, crushing my throat, cutting off my air.
Waffles bounds after me, running as fast as his feet can carry him, but I’m moving too fast, the carpets burning my face and hands. My vision speckles and the sound of the violin is in my ears, surrounding me, in me.
I will not die like this, at the hands of the Queen’s nightmares. I will live.
And suddenly, the violin’s song goes silent. The tug around my neck stops, and I’m still on the floor.
My heart starts to slow, and I peek through my arms, wrapped around my head. I’m … I’m in the Queen’s bedroom.
A moment later Waffles collides with me, sniffing around my face, nudging my shoulder.
“I’m all right,” I mumble, not sure if it’s the truth.
Pushing myself gingerly to my feet, I take in the room. It looks untouched from when Roze and I were here days ago—covered in dying flowers and dust.
And in the opposite corner—the magic mirror.
I take a step toward the mirror, keeping my eye on its black depths. Do I simply drive the stake into the glass? Can it be that simple? I approach the mirror again and gaze at my own reflection. Odd. I’d thought the mirror hadn’t shown my reflection before, not until I asked it a question.
I take the stake from where I’d stowed it safely in my pocket, approaching the surface of the mirror cautiously.
I stare back at my reflection, and it has every hair on my body standing on end.
The mirror seems completely ordinary. If I passed it in a hall, I wouldn’t even notice that it was enchanted.
Slowly, like I’m afraid the mirror will sense its impending doom, I lift my hand. I allow myself one deep breath and then bring the stake down like an axe on its glassy surface.
Silver against glass screeches as the stake slips down the surface, and my fist collides painfully with the glass. I drop the stake and cradle my hand.
“Ouch,” I mutter, shaking it. Saint Waffles growls, and I glare at the mirror. “So. Not that easy.”
I pick up the stake and bite my lip, studying the mirror again.
“It is a magic mirror, isn’t it?” I say to Waffles. “Maybe the trick to destroying it lies in knowing how to use it.”
The mirror is the tether for the Queen’s power, so logically, destroying it would weaken the Queen’s power, cutting her ability to focus it, to channel it.
If I can’t break it, what if I just un-tether her power?
I am a meiga, after all. What if there’s a way to take the mirror as my own tether—steal it from the Queen?
I step closer to my reflection, staring hard into its depths.
“Magic Mirror,” I say, “show me your secrets.”
Nothing.
My reflection stares back at me, mirroring my slight frown.
I crinkle my brows together and move my hand in front of the mirror. As expected, the reflection moves with me. I jump once, and it jumps with me. I look up into my own face and frown.
And the reflection smiles.
I tumble back and trip over the rug, falling to the floor. Waffles skitters backward, growling.
My reflection stays standing, towering over me.
That devilish smile grows wider, and slowly, it lifts a leg and steps through the frame.
I scramble away, my back hitting the foot of the bed.
The reflection steps toward me, completely outside the mirror.
Saint Waffles throws himself between me and my reflection, but it pays him no mind as it lowers itself until it’s squatting before me.
He tries to snap at it, but his jaws pass right through it, like it’s made of smoke.
It holds out a hand in front of itself, and I flinch. But then a teacup and saucer appear in its outstretched hand. It lifts the teacup to its lips and sips. “My, aren’t you pathetic?”
I stare back. This has to be another one of the Queen’s illusions.
The reflection sets its cup back on its saucer and sniffs. “I’ve been waiting for you to show up again, you know.”
My heart is still pounding in my ears, and I stare back at my own face.
The reflection shrugs. It’s such an oddly human gesture. “What are you?” I ask.
The reflection looks at me like I’m an idiot and points behind it to the mirror.
“You’re … a mirror?”
The reflection scoffs. “I’m the Mirror. I hold all the answers—past, present, and future. Whatever you wish to know, I can tell you, as long as you ask the right questions.”
I take a deep breath. “Did the Queen create you?” Is it something like Roze, flesh and magic, human and not?
Its hand strikes, gripping me by my throat, surprisingly solid. “I’m something worse,” it hisses. Its hand around my neck is surely real, closing over my windpipe, crushing my larynx. But when Waffles leaps at it, teeth bared and claws out, he passes right through it again.
But what the Mirror hasn’t seen is the stake hidden in my hand, that I’d slipped under my thigh as I fell moments ago. Gripping the stake in my white-knuckled fist, I swing it sharply up into the Mirror’s ribs.
Its eyes—my eyes—go wide. Its hold on my throat goes slack, and I sink back, coughing. Regaining my breath, I turn my head to watch the reflection stare down at the stake lodged between its ribs, its chest jerking and twisting oddly, its form shimmering like a light about to flicker out.
“The crest of Castelle,” it heaves. Then its narrowed eyes land on mine, and it hisses, “What are you?”
“M—my name is Viola. Viola Sinclair.”
Its head tilts. “No.”
I swallow. Apparently that wasn’t the answer it was looking for. “I am the daughter of King León of Castelle,” I whisper, the words feeling strange on my tongue.
The Mirror makes a peculiar hissing sound in its throat. “Get this thing out of me.”
“No.”
“Get it out, wretched girl!” Its eyes are alight with rage—its teeth are bared. “I am a power older and stronger and stranger than you’ll ever understand. You don’t know what you’ve done.”
“You’re the Queen’s tether for her magic. I came here to cut off her power at its source,” I snap.
Something shifts in the Mirror’s eyes. It shifts back, moving in an inhuman way, more like light than a living being. “You came to sever the Queen’s power?”
“Yes.”
The Mirror closes its eyes, almost as though in prayer, and when it opens them, the fury is gone from its expression. “Remove the silver from my side, little witch, and I will help you.”
I furrow my brow warily. “Why?”
The Mirror hisses again. “Because the Queen has trapped me here like a slave, and I have served her relentlessly for decades.” It lowers its head, my own curls falling over its eyes. “I am a being of revelation and truth. A life as the personal puppet of a deranged light meiga is well beneath me.”
I let my gaze fall to the stake in its side. I shouldn’t trust it. The plan was to destroy it. “Help me how?”
It growls in frustration. “You’ve already broken my tether to the Queen. But my own magic is being kept at bay while the silver stays lodged inside me. Remove it, and I will teach you anything you wish to know.”
This is a bad idea. Logically, I should walk away. Or I should drive the stake deeper, until the Mirror stops shimmering and disappears completely. But …
“What sort of things could you teach me?”
A slow smile spreads on its face—my smile. “Anything.”
Anything. What could I ask that would help me save Roze? What might this being know about the Queen? How to kill her? How to fight her magic? How to break the curse of the seven thorns?
Without giving it another thought, I reach up, seize the stake, and with a swift yank, dislodge it from the Mirror’s side.
It groans as though in deep pain, its eyes going glassy for a moment. It sinks to its knees, and a perfect replica of my own school skirt pools around its legs.
It utters another aching sigh, lifts a hand, and a teacup and saucer appear in its grip. “All right, then. Ask your questions,” it says, taking a sip.
“Questions?”
It rolls its eyes vexedly. “I can’t give you an answer without a question, now, can I?”
I swallow and ask, “You’ll answer any question?”
“Any question that has an answer.”
“How do I kill her?” I can’t help but think that if Roze had asked the question, he’d sound cold and threatening. I sound more afraid than fearsome.
The Mirror wags one of my own fingers at me. “That’s not the question you need.”
I frustratedly rub my eyes.
It leans forward. “You need to know what you are and what she is.”
“What does that mean?”
The Mirror’s smile is full of cruelty and self-satisfaction. “You are the same, and yet not. You are both the whole and the part.”
Why did I think this would be easy? Of course the Mirror won’t give straightforward answers. “You’re saying we’re the same … because we’re both meigas. But how are we different?”
Setting her teacup aside, she leans forward, resting her arms—my arms—on her knees. “You are two sides of the same coin. The Queen is a light meiga. She wields the powers of creation, revelation, and unification.”
“I knew that already.”
The Mirror acts as though she doesn’t hear me.
“You, however …” That cruel smile returns.
“You are different. I haven’t met one of you in quite some time.
Little Shadow Girl, a dark meiga, from the Kingdom of Darkness itself.
You wield the power of destruction, obfuscation, and separation. All things dark and dividing.”
Something tightens in my chest. Sir Patrick’s lecture from days ago comes roaring back to me. “Is dark magic evil?” I ask.
“Do you think you’re evil, girl?”
I don’t have an answer to that question.
The mirror licks her teeth. “Evil is relative. Are the stars evil because they dwell in darkness? Humans use them to navigate and mark their seasons. Is the sun good because it brings light? It scorches the land with its heat.”
I frown. “I’ve never seen either.”
The Mirror’s grin reveals all its teeth. “Yet.”
“My shadows kill people,” I whisper, the sick feeling that’s been with me since the caverns twisting in my stomach.
Kole, my brother … how can their deaths ever not be evil?
At the very least, they were horrible, horrible accidents and all my fault.
They didn’t deserve to die. “You said my power is destruction. How is that not evil?” I ask, staring at my hands, pale in the light.
“It depends on what you destroy, now, doesn’t it?”
I swallow, staring back into my own eyes. Could the Mirror be right? Is it possible that I’ve made my shadows into a twisted force of fear and self-loathing? Maybe I’m truly the monster the Queen thinks I am—but it takes a monster to kill a monster.
Like and unlike. The same and not.
My father told me to be dangerous. Maybe I can be dangerous and still be something good.
“How do I do it?”
The Mirror’s eyes gleam. “That answer lies in something you’ve been searching for for a very long time. And a great many questions will be answered by it.”
Something sparks in my mind. “Where is the Book of Odds?”
It bares all my teeth in a catlike grin. “Now you’re asking the interesting questions. It is far beyond these castle walls.”
I deflate. “Then how can I know what to do?”
“I have seen it.” It taps its forehead. “In here. I will show you what you need to see.”
“Show me,” I urge.
As soon as the words leave my lips, something solid lodges in my esophagus, and I choke. Coughing, I reach into my mouth, bending over until something mushy and damp falls from my throat onto the floor. A wad of parchment paper.
“You couldn’t have just handed it to me?”
The Mirror only smiles.
I unfold the soggy paper in my lap. My breath shakes as I smooth it out and realize what I’m touching. Even if it’s the Mirror’s reproduction—this is the actual text of the Book of Odds. No one has seen it in eons. And it’s covered in Hivernian runes.
I want to curse the professor for being such a coward as I peer down at the runes. This is translation work far above my skill level, but still I piece together a few clauses as well as I can.
“This is an account of the first time the Mists came,” I whisper.
The Mirror is silent as my fingers trail down the page, picking apart sentences where I can.
“The power that creates is the power that destroys,” I translate. “In the end, after all our efforts were in vain, the devastation undid itself …”
My eyes scan the page until they land on an illustration. An Ouroboros—a serpent consuming its own tail.
I look up, meeting my own eyes in the Mirror’s. “I have one more question.”
The Mirror’s eyes light with excitement. “Yes?”
“Mirror … who sent the Mists?”
The Mirror grins viciously.