The mirror-geld’s arm moved back and forth, trying to get thecorrect angle.Please, Saints, let this work.We were only going to get one shot at… at whatever this was. I swallowed. “Tohni’s a fascinating place. They have a poisonous bird there. It’s the only known one in the world.”
“Guardsman,” said the Mirror Queen, “I suggest you take your idiot and leave.Now.”
“It’s a type of parrot who eats cocklebur seeds, and the poison seems to transfer to its feathers, so if you handle it, you break out in a ra—”
The mirror-geld stretched a final inch and turned its mirror just so. It reflected off the one in my hand and caught the Queen between us. For a moment, she extended to infinity.
Her white face erupted. Cliffs of gray mirror-stuff extruded from the side of her head, and she cried out in evident agony. Her hands sprouted dozens of extra fingers, and the red dress acquired a monstrous weight of gray sleeves.
The myriad reflections began to calve off her at once. Unlike the incident I had witnessed before, there was nothing solid underneath. When the mirror-stuff fell away, it took part of her skull with it. One dark eye blinked from the floor, and what remained of her head looked like a half-eaten apple, bites taken out, leaving a bloodless void behind.
Snow, with astonishing presence of mind, jerked away from the dagger and slapped at the Mirror Queen’s hands. Fingers fell to the floor like grisly rain.
The Mirror Queen staggered back, out of the narrow band of reflection, and the grotesque doubling stopped. The mirror-stuff growths shrank and snapped back into place, but the damage had already been done. She tried to reach for Snow, but only thin slivers remained of her hands. She lifted them before her single eye and cried out, turned, and ran.
Of all of us in the room, Snow was the only one who wasn’t frozen in silent horror. The Mirror Queen bolted through the door in the wall with the king’s daughter hot on her heels. That wasenough to jar me out of my paralysis. I ran for the door and hit it at the same time as Javier.
The room beyond was dominated by the largest mirror the king’s wife had brought to Witherleaf. A blast of light and color filled the room, and against it, the broken Mirror Queen looked even more monstrous. I could see daylight through her head. Nothing that looked like that should be moving around.
The Mirror Queen staggered to a halt, turning as if at bay. Her mouth was perfectly intact, the red lips parting as she panted, revealing a blackened tongue.
Snow rammed into her midsection, shoulder first, driving her back toward the mirror’s surface.
Snow was only twelve and already half dead of poison, and the Mirror Queen, though torn apart, was still far stronger. But the Mirror Queen took half a step back to brace herself, and there was a small gray cat exactly in back of her ankle, and she went over backward and struck the mirror.
For an instant both she and Snow hung there, as if suspended against the surface. Charcoal shadows ran up Snow’s arms and across her face, and I understood what Javier must have seen when I tried to push the bird through the mirror. We both cried out and tried to step forward, but then the gray vanished and the Mirror Queen fell through and Snow fell through on top of her.
By the time we reached the other side of the silver, Snow lay unconscious on the floor, and of the Mirror Queen, there was only sparkling gray dust, and then no longer even that.
CHAPTER 29
“Is she…?”
Javier didn’t have to finish the sentence. I was already on my knees, holding the mirror under Snow’s nose.
Several ages of the earth passed, and then it fogged. I sat back on my heels and exhaled. “Not yet. Help me get her onto a bed.” I looked around the bedchamber that belonged to a dead queen. Everything lay under dustcovers, like the ghosts of furniture. “Maybe not here.”
Aaron happened to be coming up the hallway at just that moment, intent on his flirtation with Eloise. They were both treated to the queen’s door being kicked open and Javier emerging with the princess in his arms.
“You found her!” Eloise said. “But what happened?”
“Shit,” said Aaron, taking in the way Snow’s head lolled over Javier’s arm. “Is she…?”
“Not yet,” I repeated. “Get Rinald.Now.”
Aaron spun on his heel and ran down the staircase. Eloise darted ahead, flung open a door, and said, “This one’s being aired.”
The room was a duplicate of mine, down to the enormous mirror. There were more dustcovers, but the mattress was covered in sprigs of lavender. Javier laid Snow down in a cloud of fragrance. The off-white canvas mattress cover was darker than her skin and made her look even paler by comparison. If you were a poetic soul, maybe you’d say she looked like a princess in an enchanted slumber. To me, she mostly just looked dead.
“What can I do?” Eloise asked.
“Get some water,” I said. I didn’t know that I was going to need any water, but it’s the task I always order family members to do.
Eloise nodded. Her hair, perhaps aware of the solemnity of the occasion, was hiding behind her neck. “Do you need a sheet torn into strips?”
I stared at her, baffled. “What?”
“Birthing,” murmured Javier in my ear.
