No. She couldn’t hold his gaze—but she also couldn’t hold back the truth for a single moment longer. “Youaren’tjust my partner or my friend,” she said raggedly, staring down at her hands as they clenched around the closest wall of his coffin. “I mean, you are mydearest, my best and truest friend, and I value that very much, but it’s not all. The truth is, I...I mean...”
He tipped her chin up with one gentle finger, and she almost lost her train of thought in the tender warmth of his smile.
She had always found her husband handsome, even before she had welcomed their marriage. But now...
As her breath caught, he spoke in a low, deep murmur that felt like a caress. “You know you can always tell me anything.”
It was true. He’d proven that so many timesalready—and sheknew, without a single doubt, that if she really hadwoken him with the news of either one of those outrageous plans he’d asked about, he would have heaved a single sigh in response—and then gone along with it for her sakeanddone his best to make it comfortable for her along the way.
He would probably even have found a way to miraculously supply her with good tea as they did it.
“Idon’tonly care for you,” she blurted. “I love you to an unreasonable—no, to an embarrassing,irrationalextent. I am wildly, hopelessly in love with you!”
“Oh, really?” Amber sheened his hazel eyes and made them blaze. “That, madam wife, isexcellentnews,” said Lord Riven, “because—as you may have noticed by this point—I happen to adore you.”
This time, their embrace lasted considerably longer...but the pressure of the coffin’s hard edge against her stomach eventually forced Margaret to draw back. Tears streaked her cheeks, although she couldn’t remember shedding them; she said, with a hiccup that held one final sob, “You canneverdoubt how much I love you from now on. For your sake, today, I voluntarily made small talk—and it lasted for overten minutes!”
“My darling!” He let out a crack of laughter as he reached out to dry her closest damp cheek. “I always knew you could manage it.”
“I don’t plan toeverput myself through that torture again,” she warned him.
“I would never ask it of you.” Risingto finally step free from the coffin, he took another skeptical look around the shadowy room. “May I ask where we happen to be at the moment—and how exactly I came here?”
“I’ll tell you everything,” she promised, “but first, let’s leave all of this behind and go home to join the others.”
They all gatheredin the same large dining room where they had met the night before, but this time, the tables weren’t empty. Apparently, Konrad must have spent all of his own anxious hours that day assembling a feast full of every different kind of sustenance that the inn’s various residents might require—and Margaret was deeply relieved to find a steaming pot of her favorite tea waiting on one round table, beside a tall glass of white wine, a bowl of soup full of potatoes, sausages, melted cheese, and a fragrant assortment of herbs, and a plate covered with half a dozen thick slices of dark, crusty bread.
She’d barely noticed her own simmering hunger across the day, but at that mouthwatering sight, the demands of her neglected stomach came immediately roaring to the fore. She nearly dragged her husband in her rush, unable yet to let him go—but he only laughed and lengthened his stride with ease to match her speed. When they arrived, he scooped up thesecond tall glass from the table—this one full of a thick red liquid that was not wine—and sprawled comfortably into a chair beside her.
“Nowmay I please hear everything?” he enquired.
By the time that Margaret, Leonie, and Herr von Krallemann—once more in his human form and impeccably attired—had related the story, with stammered interjections from Herr Fischer and a lively musical accompaniment from Herr Schneider, Olga had slipped into the room with her usual sinuous grace and taken her own place at a table piled high with meat so pink, it looked very nearly raw. She asked no questions as she watched it all with her slitted, regal gaze; she only smiled faintly from her shadowy seat, as if in possession of her own deep secrets.
“So, the nixen and their territory are now safe, as is our home,” Herr von Krallemann finished with quiet satisfaction. “Thank you, Lady Riven, for bringing much-needed light to our former neighbor’s cruel schemes and working with us to enact a solution.”
“What about the infamous Reflection’s Heart?” It was the first time that Olga had spoken, and she drawled the words like a challenge. “Let’s all see it for ourselves, shall we?”
Margaret looked to Herr Fischer; swallowing, he bobbed his head and went to retrieve it from the safe spot in the roof where he had left it.
As soon as he returned to the room, everyone left their own tables behind to gather around it. EvenMargaret’s still-demanding stomach could hardly compete with the fascination of that shimmering, unearthly surface as eerie mist passed over it again and again.
“So, we just...ask it what we want to know?” Leonie frowned.
“There’s a particular formula,” Margaret said, and felt her stomach clench tight with anticipation. She’d been waiting so long for this moment of truth...
And now it was time, surrounded by all the inn’s residents. Even Erich, their spectral host, was no longer mumbling anxiously but letting out faint, excited whispers of,“Ooh...ooh...ooh...”as his eyeballs floated attentively above Reflection’s Heart.
“What will you ask it first?” Lord Riven asked.
Margaret gave him a tremulous smile. “What else?” It was the great question that had drawn her here in the first place.
“Image be bright, image be clear, show me this forest’s seed, hidden so close to here.”
Mist swept across the stone’s reflective surface one more time...
And then the deep, dusky green of the Black Forest in daytime filled the supernatural mirror, closing in from above like a bird diving down through the air. As they watched, the stone’s reflective surface showed tall pine trees, birches, spruce, and then...a small stream, in the midst of it all.
Wait.That was afamiliarstream, fed by a small waterfall and rippling across rocks. Margaret didn’tneed the sharp gasp that sounded from multiple inn guests nearby to identify it:
