15. Behind the Glass

The glossy surface of the mirror at the back of the balcony reflects my ambivalence. I'm about to face my biggest fear—and probable doom.

"Are you ready?" One asks me with his arms crossed.

No.

"Yes," I answer instead.

We stand shoulder to shoulder in front of the glass, our slightly distorted reflections touching at the hips.The mix of humiliation and exhilaration from last night's trial still clouds my brain as I observe him from the corner of my eye. I went straight to bed after the trial, exhausted from the intense use of magic, and spent the entire day biting my nails, wondering when he would fetch me for my lesson.

He wears a long bow on his back, the majestic weapon held in place by a leather strap, with no quiver in sight. A neatly trimmed sideburn runs parallel to his ear, licking the edge of his mask and a string of discrete Fae drawings disappear under his hairline.

When you've only seen the bottom third of someone's face, and suddenly you get to see more, it's hard not to obsess over every little detail. Or at the very least, it's the excuse I use to stare at his tattoos and pointy ears a little longer.

"The sceawere is an endless labyrinth. It can take you anywhere you want, but it can also swallow you whole. Once we're inside, just stay close to me." He links our fingers and steps toward the glass like it's ordinary.

His hand is warm in mine, and I squeeze it without thinking. My whole body stiffens at the prospect of visiting the in-between world that lurks beyond the mirror.

I flatten my mask to my face with my free hand, drawing in a sharp breath and holding it in. A pinch of frost tightens my cheeks, the wave of silver in front of me quickly vanishing in favor of a kaleidoscope of colors.

One's silhouette is slightly askew, everything beyond him blurry and incomplete. I catch glimpses of every room in the castle like I'm seeing through a series of tiny peepholes. As soon as I focus on one image in particular, it hides from me, replaced by another. On this side of the mirror, the glass moves, wild gusts of intangible wind plying it back and forth.

Thousands of silvery strings ripple between the different reflections. Multiple networks of semi-translucent threads have been crafted into different shapes and patterns like an eclectic, woven macrame. Some strings are thick as wool while others are as slim as a hair. Their strange shimmer makes it hard for me to focus, and shadows lurk at the edge of my vision.

One caresses the back of my knuckles. "Breathe, kitten."

The fresh air clears the dark spots that were dancing in front of my eyes.

He lets go of my hand and rolls up his left sleeve to his elbow, showcasing the inked drawings on his lower arm. "I've seen you dawdle about with Introduction to Runes. Can you tell me the meaning of one of these?"

I press my lips together, slighted by the jab. I'm the most studious of the three seeds, and while Mara thinks that makes me a dork, I bet she's never even tried to paint the most basic rune. Forcing down a flare of anger, I concentrate on the familiar symbols.

The runes are laid out in three squares, the nine closest to his wrist bigger than the five by five ones in the middle of his lower arm, a set of a hundred written in such small calligraphy near his elbow that I shudder.

I hold out one finger and recite the first nine near his wrist from memory. "That's Fae, Faerie, male, light, flame, wind, stone, water, heart, and the one in the corner here is the mark for ‘the lack of.'"

The last one is most clever. If I were to combine it with the rune "light," the combination of the two spells "darkness."

His mouth opens slightly.

I search the five by five square, my bottom lip tucked between my teeth. With more certainty than I possess, I trace the first three, the skin of his underarm soft and smooth under my fingertips. "And those are tree, flower, and apple."

"You switched the last two." He smacks his lips. "But impressive."

The corners of my mouth curl up, and I let a hint of arrogance show on my face.

That'll teach him to underestimate me.

"To travel through the sceawere, you need an iron-clad will." One raises his left hand to the network of strings closest to him and glides his fingers along the flexible threads the way a musician caresses his lyre. "The in-between is a sort of unending harmony. The strings are all part of a gigantic instrument, in a way, and traveling to the right place only demands the right melody. Runes act as a sheet of music and mark the desired notes."

He tangles his left hand in a hanging piece of woven threads. The ink on his knuckles darkens as he moves the strings between his expert fingers, and his right hand comes as a sort of violin bow, his fingertips pricking a few of the runes on his lower arm.

As he moves, peeks of the familiar rooms in the castle are replaced by foreign places. One handles the glass strings like they're part of the most fragile musical instrument in existence, and his loving, careful movements bring a shiver to my core. His black nails are cut short, his long fingers more nimble than I expected. Men who fight often trade their agility for strength, but not One, obviously. A big part of me wishes he would touch me instead.

"Traveling within a world can be as easy as cutting through butter, but a novice can tap the strings a little too hard—a false note, if you will—and end up in the wrong realm." He slows down, moving languorously, as though he's serenading a long-lost lover.

"The runes on your hand, they're…different."

He motions to his left arm. "Those are tattoos, inked permanently into the skin but these—" he flips his right hand to show me his knuckles. "They're the equivalent of musician calluses, branded on my skin by all my travels, some of the destinations so ingrained in my memory that they have become part of my flesh."

Woah.

"Play the wrong sort of song" —he flicks the threads roughly, touching the runes near the kink of his elbow, and a shadow condenses across several pieces of glass. A demonic pair of reptilian eyes stares back at us from the other side— "and you will attract the entirely wrong kind of attention."

The monster juts an arm forward, and I tug One away from its long claws, but the creature only manages to streak the glass between us.

A small, gentle laugh trickles off One's lips before he bends the strings again, now threading the runes closer to his wrist. "Familiar places come easily."

The foot of my Faerie bed appears through the fray, and I squint, but it's there one moment and gone the next.

"But if your mind isn't clear and focussed, if you let your fears get the better of you or muddle your runes, you will get stuck and wander the in-between until nightmares find you."

He twists the strings more rapidly, and I'm disoriented to the point of helplessness until he grabs my hand again and pulls me forward. Colors and shapes blur together, and the cold goodbye kiss of the sceawere peppers flecks of ice on my skin.

"Welcome to New York, a staple of the new world," he says, releasing me.

Tall, sharp-angled towers run up and up around us, ten times the length of the tallest castle in Demeter, stretching almost as far as the eye can see. Lights flicker in the large windows of the humongous buildings, all the way up to the empty night sky, and the road in front of us is black and crusty. A few cracks run deep into the unknown material and reveal a few lonely weeds.

The narrow alleys the coachman rushes through in Lundan come to mind, full of dirt, grime, and the occasional criminal.

Behind us, a rectangular container full of garbage reeks of rotten cabbage, the acrid smell clogging up my nostrils. The mirror we just walked through has a smashed corner and a white trim, the thin, flimsy-looking piece of glass leaning on the garbage bin, tilted to the side as though it's part of the trash.

I wonder at a world where a mirror so big could be left lying around, unattended. Do these people know anything about magic?

"Why are we here?" I ask, not understanding the point of the lesson, our surroundings dirty and drab.

"A hunt. What else?" One points to a dark blotch at the end of the alley and crouches, lowering his voice.

I squint, my eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness. A griffin pecks at something on the ground, its beak cutting through it with ease.

The half-eagle, half-lion creature tilts its head backward to swallow a mangled piece of meat, blood spraying its white feathers.

An oily, black sheen licks the underside of its wings, the griffin flapping them cheerfully every few seconds, its enthusiasm for its meal—a dog, I think—raising all the hairs at the back of my neck.

"Nightmares are fashioned out of the Shadow Court's magic. They're supposed to prey on the dreamers, but when they spill out of the sceawere to reach the awake, they threaten the proper flow of our magic. It's the hunters' job to kill them to release their power and bring it back to Faerie," One explains before approaching the creature.

He bows slightly in front of the griffin, a show of respect but not submission. The nightmare grazes the black, volcanic-looking road with its talon.

"Most of them are akin to animals, with the same urges and behavior. Others…are worse."

A burst of shadow stretches from One's hands and condenses into an arrow. A sleek, metallic glint reflects off its sharp head. Quiet as a ghost, he nocks it onto the string and draws his weapon. The creature cocks its head to the side, more out of curiosity than anything.

My pulse flutters, and I bite my bottom lip.

The bow gives a low creeek, but the phantom arrow is deadly quiet as it flies to the heart of its prey. Startled, the griffin cries out before it explodes in a cloud of smoke. Dark tendrils wisp out of its abdomen, snaking along the road in our direction until its body dissolves into nothingness. The serpentine remnants of the nightmare stretch toward us, and I dig the balls of my feet into the ground, ready to run.

"Don't move," my teacher orders, and I uncoil my muscles, watching with bated breath as the shadows blend into his skin.

"When we kill a rogue nightmare, we become a vessel for its power. The magic remains inside us until we return it to the Hawthorn, and when we do, both king and kingdom are strengthened by its return." A flush of heat colors his neck as he snaps the bow back over his shoulder.

"You killed it so quickly…"

One shakes his head. "I've been doing this for a long time. Believe me, it's not as easy as it looks." He digs a sleek rectangular-shaped metal device from his pocket and touches the center. Light blares from the previously dark contraption, and I recognize what Mara called a cellphone.

"We have to check out my place nearby. Something apparently tripped up the alarm."

"Your place?"

He gives a sharp nod. "Traveling between worlds is more tiring than it looks, kitten. The king keeps dwellings in both the old world and the new. A ton of them, in fact." He grips my hand and tugs me back inside the crooked mirror, the depths of the sceawere as confusing as they were before.

When we emerge, we're no longer outside, but surrounded by tall walls that run up to a vaulted ceiling. The place must have been very close to the alley because it took barely a second to travel, and I recognize some of the fixtures of the new world that I read about.

A large bed—larger still than the one in my Faerie bedroom—occupies the opposite side of the living space. The large mirror we stepped through is glued to the wall, and a nearby sink is flanked by a string of white cupboards.

"Where are we?" I ask.

"A condo on the Upper East Side," One says as he discards his bow on the dresser.

Tall glass windows offer a jaw-dropping view of the lighted towers from before. Hundreds of them shine in the night, and I hold my breath as I take in how far up we actually are, the slim street below minuscule and downright scary.

I hold my arms out on both sides of me and backtrack toward the mirror. "We're so high up…"

"Don't worry, windows in the new world are thicker than bricks and harder to break than stones." He punches the glass forcefully with his palm, and I jump at the sudden move.

"See? Safe as houses."

He checks the lighted screen again and mutters under his breath before pushing the large double door open. We enter an immense closet, and he turns on the lights with a press of a button. I jump at the intense burst of light. Only the most modern houses have electricity in Lundan.

A golden amulet hanging from a hook reflects the warm glow of the electric chandeliers. Coffered spaces hold a wide array of clothes and weapons as well as a collection of trinkets, jewels, and figurines.

"There you are," One says.

In the far corner of the closet, a black and red spider the size of a small pig laps blood from the ground with its hairy pedipalps—the crooked appendage next to the fangs.

The body of a woman lays in a straight line next to it, deep lacerations running down her skin, and I shudder. "It's another nightmare."

"Yes." His voice remains calm and level, but I detect a hint of unease. One holds the creature's gaze until it stops eating. "You killed my maid. That's not very nice."

The arachnid's front legs twitch a few times before it turns its back on us and starts drinking the blood again.

One snatches a crossbow similar to the one I'm used to from the wall and presses it to my chest. "Kill it."

The heavy weapon isn't as hard to hold as it used to be. "Me?"

"Yes."

A silver bolt is already in position, and I raise it to the nightmare. Seemed easy enough with the griffin, and I've spent weeks practicing my aim.

"Aim deep below the eyes. A spider's brain is located close to its stomach."

I blow air out of my lungs and concentrate on the head. I've done this a hundred times by now, but a wooden target always stood on the receiving end—not a living thing.

I rationalize that these nightmares aren't really alive, merely moving puppets of shadow magic. My fingers tingle with warmth as I let the bolt fly, and the silver tip buries deep inside the spider, right below its eyes.

My lips quirk up as I lower the crossbow.

"Not bad. Not bad at all," One says.

The spider melts into eight strands of black smoke that wave across the room, creeping closer to us. They probe the soles of my shoes and twist around my ankles.

I shake my legs furiously. "By the Mother?—"

"Relax, kitten. Let it in."

I force myself to stay still and allow the shadows to merge with my flesh. A boost of energy washes through me, quickening my heartbeat and spreading across my muscles.

When I'd passed the trial, I'd felt a tiny speck of magic merge with me and fill a tiny hole in my heart. The power I'm feeling now could fill an entire canyon, but just as I knew the magic from the underground cave wasn't mine and only there for me to use, this is merely borrowed as well.

I press a hand to my sternum. "Wow. I feel like I could run ten miles."

One moves to cover the dead body with a white sheet. "Your first kill. Congratulations. I just need to figure out how the fuck this nightmare got in here and we—" He stops abruptly, his mask angled to the ceiling. "Get behind me. Quick."