Chapter 25 #2
An emotion flickered in Liora’s expression—surprise, perhaps, or approval. She’d expected me to rage about Gawain, to demand justice or threaten vengeance. But I’d spent the night with her words rattling in my skull. The darkness, veyre. Best make your peace with it.
I’d made my peace. Or something close to it.
“You leave now, veyre.” Liora turned to Eury. "Did you bring what you need?”
Eury nodded.
“And no one else saw you leave?”
“No one.”
“Good.” Liora gestured to one of her handmaidens. The woman moved toward the cell door; with a flicker of light in the lock, the door swung open. “Step out.”
I came out into the hallway. “You going to escort us out the front gate? I’m sure Maeronyx will love that.”
“Tch.” Liora closed her fingertips as though sealing my lips. “Does he always talk so much?”
Eury’s eyes glinted with humor, but she said nothing.
Liora turned away, toward the dungeon’s interior. “This way. Save your breath, both of you, for the climb.”
Instead of up, Liora led us deeper into the dungeon—through a fake wall and down a curling flight of stairs, her blue dress winking the whole way. I walked behind Eury, and the handmaidens flanked me.
I didn’t know where she was taking us, only that our choices were limited in Liora’s domain. It was down, or nowhere.
The staircase ended in a single hallway, so narrow and low I had to duck through it. The handmaidens brought out golden crystals from their dresses, lighting us into the dark.
“No one alive knows of this place but the five of us.” Liora’s voice echoed off the crumbling walls. “When you return, you cannot come back this way.”
Some kind of path out of the castle, maybe to Highmark’s harbor. We were headed generally southeast, though I was no navigator.
We came to a door, and Liora set her palm to it. A glow emanated from her fingers, and the door unclicked and opened with a ghostly moan. Dust poured out, and Liora crossed the threshold.
Eury went after her, as fearless as a creature could be.
I stepped into the doorway as, across the room, Liora yanked an enormous sheet off a rectangular object. My own reflection stared back at me.
A mirror.
The room was covered in sheeted objects like a storage space, though I had no idea how they had transported all of this through that ancient hallway.
Eury moved up to it, her own reflection appearing. “Another mirror-way.”
“How can you tell?” Liora sounded truly surprised.
Eury’s fingers lifted, but she didn’t touch the glass. “It holds the same depth as the mirror in my chamber, before it was shattered. Like a pond with no bed.”
Liora came to stand beside her, the two of them alike in height and build. “That’s Noctere’s magic you see. It’s an imprint.”
I took Eury’s other side. “Permanent magic, like on the doors of Sylvanwild’s citadel.” I met Liora’s eyes. “Why do you have so many mirror-ways, Dawnmaker?”
“Why else? They’re useful,” Liora said. "It’s a shame they’re limited to noxveil. This one dates back to when Noctere had a more pliant queen.”
One of the handmaidens approached, and Liora’s face came into brighter relief. With precise motions, the handmaiden retrieved a sword belt with a sheathed sword and a chalk pouch and offered them to me.
I took the belt and tied it around my waist. She proffered a black cloak; I took it and swung it over my shoulders. It was the correct length, though not of Sylvanwild. This was fine, thick Highmark make.
“Where will the mirror put us?” I asked.
“A cave,” Liora said. “Not far from the outer wall.” So this was how Highmark did it. For our part, we’d always had to go on horseback.
“I’ll go first,” Eury said.
"No," I said at once.
Liora tched again. “If it wasn’t safe, we wouldn’t use it, fool.”
She turned to Eury, lifted her palm, and pressed something into it. A small stone, dark and worn smooth. “You’ll need this, where you’re going.” Liora’s voice had lost its edge, gone almost soft.
“And where is that, exactly?”
“The endless dark.” Liora closed Eury’s fingers around the stone. “Never forget that you are, by birth, a Seelie of the light.”
Something passed between them—a look I couldn’t read. Then Liora stepped back and said, at a normal pitch, “Go. Find your fate.”
Eury’s thumb moved over the stone. Then, without a word, she stepped forward. She didn’t wince, didn’t hesitate. She stepped right into the mirror and disappeared into its depths.
I moved toward it.
“Wait,” Liora said.
My head snapped toward her, my lip curling in a snarl. “What?”
Liora’s hand gripped my wrist. “You love her for her courage. For her intelligence. But will you love the person her fear brings out of her?”
The fae queen blurred beneath my stare as though she’d slapped me. That word—love. She’d said it so freely, like she saw what I could not.
Liora stepped closer. “You saw the acid rain. You saw her standing amidst it. You saw how she killed Rhiannon, didn’t you?” Her voice lowered. “And though you already loved her, you felt fear of her. Didn’t you?”
Her fingers went to my arm, and she pulled me down toward her. I went, lowering my head as though she were inside my mind. Because by some import, she was.
“From the first moment you saw her, you saw the power in those eyes. Incredible,” she whispered. “Incredible, and terrifying.”
I didn’t speak. I only saw Eurydice standing amidst the wreckage of her home, that blond braid down her back. Just her. Then she’d turned toward my blade, and I’d been stunned. Entranced. And yes, terrified.
Just as I’d been in that meadow, when she’d called the rain. The first time and the second time, when she’d straddled me like she might kill me.
“There’s a monster inside her. It eats light,” Liora said. “Will you love that, too? When it comes out of her—when she stands on the Killing Fields and looks back at you?”
Before I could answer, solaire appeared in her hand. With strength only a Highmark queen could possess, she thrust me away in a starburst of light.
I was thrown into the mirror, and through it.