Too slow. This whole time, I’d been too slow. Both Snow and the Mirror Queen had been one step ahead of me, and now I couldn’t even cross a single room in time.
“Now,” said the Mirror Queen quite calmly, “you are all going to leave here. At once.”
I knew—Iknew—that she had to be bluffing. Snow was the linchpin to all her plans. Without her, the Queen wouldn’t even be able to get apples back through the mirror to entrap more victims.
Knowing that someone is bluffing turns out not to matter much when they’ve got a knife to someone’s throat.
“Let her go and we’ll leave,” said Javier.
“This is not a negotiation,” the Mirror Queen informed him. Another drop of blood slid lazily downward. Snow’s eyes were half-closed. I wondered if she was about to faint.
Five apples. She’s probably going to die anyway. Youknowthat.
I knew it. I still couldn’t move.
Javier set down his sword and took a step forward, his hands spread. “You don’t want to do this,” he said.
I was trying to watch both him and the Mirror Queen, so it took me a moment to notice that beyond them, the mirror-geld was gesturing. Even the guard who had been fighting it had turned to watch the scene unfolding, so I was the only one to see its hands moving.
It pointed to me, to the Mirror Queen, to something in its hand. Then again. I couldn’t tell what it was carrying at first, a small object of some sort. Then it turned it, and I caught a glimpse of reflected color and realized that it was holding the mirror.
Me. Queen. Mirror.
Javier took another step forward. The Mirror Queen’s gray fingers tangled in Snow’s hair. “Not another step, guardsman.”
Me. Queen. Mirror.
“If you kill her, you’ll lose your link to the real world,” Javier said.
“What makes you think I only have one?”
I slowly reached into my bag. The saints bless my father andHealer Michael for impressing the value of organization on me. I knew exactly what I wanted and exactly where it was.
Javier tried another tactic. “She’s only a child.”
“Her mother killed my child. Only fair, don’t you think?” The Mirror Queen pulled Snow’s head back by the hair. Snow let out a faint moan.
I pulled out the tiny square of mirror that I used to see if a patient was still breathing. I had no idea if this would work, or even what working would look like, but we were out of options.
If you caught someone between two mirrors in the real world, their reflection fell apart and became a mirror-geld. What would happen if you did the same thing onthisside?
I didn’t know. Whatever it was, it couldn’t happen very often, because to get a mirror on this side—a true mirror, not a window back to our world—you had to carry one with you through the silver.
Which I had. Twice now.
The mirror-geld stretched out a hand, nearly at the ceiling, with its mirror in it. I turned mine in my hand, hoping I could match the angle and hoping even harder that the mirror-geld knew what it was doing.
“Enough talking,” the Mirror Queen said. “Either you start walking toward the door and take your monstrosity with you, or your king finds himself childless.”
I cleared my throat. “He’s got an older son, actually.”
The Queen said, “What?”
Javier said, “What?”
Both of them looked at me. Under other circumstances, their identical expressions would have been comical. I knew that expression quite well. It was the one that said,Anja, is this really the time to have this conversation?
“Prince Gunther,” I said. “I believe he’s currently attached to the court of Tohni.”
