The Shattered Mirror (Winter's Blight Book 4)

by M. C. Aquila

  “The machine!” Iain hissed beside her.

  Her eyes flew open and she turned toward him, though she kept her hand on the ground, connected to her magic. “What? You can… see?”

  He was staring dead ahead as if in a trance and gestured with a shaking hand to the amulet around his neck. “It’s like I’m above the army… It’s showing me a vision of where your magic is. They’re attacking it with the machine!”

  “Is it…?” She grabbed his hand harder. “Is it Alan?”

  “No, he’s not there. Move your magic five yards ahead, then turn right. There will be a line of men between you and the machine.”

  She followed his instructions as he guided her magic through the soldiers, helping her find targets again while avoiding the soldiers bearing the machine. They only caught up to her once, and being blasted by its magic clouded her senses like being thrust into a blizzard.

  But as Iain guided her away and onward, her renewed resolve flowed through her like a hot, bracing drink as her magic lashed wildly at the remaining vehicles. Soldiers jumped out of the way of the streams of inky magic as it spiked up, impaled, and ate away at the tires, of one truck, then moved to the next one.

  Just one more, she thought with each target taken down. Just one more…

  * * *

  Cecil pulled back the curtain shrouding the mirror in his room, and the velvet slipped to the floor in a pool like ink. The mirror was centuries old, the gold frame discolored in spots with age and in need of repair. The bedroom, and the entire manor, was in the same condition. An old, dead house, filled with memories of old, dead things.

  He was tired of living in dust, in the tarnished past that belonged to the manor. He wanted it to be new again—alive again. Vera’s cheery voice and fiddle’s strings had long filled the halls, lighting up even the dreariest corners of the old estate, but it was not enough. Magic had breathed some life back into him and the house—and it would do more still.

  Holding up a candle to the tarnished mirror, Cecil stood and waited for James to contact him. It had to be soon, given that the Winter Court and the Iron Guard were nearly at the Seelies’ doorstep.

  He turned when he heard Vera’s unmistakable, lightly dancing footsteps outside his room. The door was open, and he beckoned her inside with a wave of his hand, not moving from his spot in front of the mirror.

  “Why is it always so dark in here?” Vera asked him, coming to stand beside him. “I know you like to nap well throughout the day, but you only have one itty-bitty candle to light it when you’re awake.”

  “A little light is all I need, pet,” Cecil said.

  Vera giggled. “Is that what you do in here, look in the mirror at yourself? You’re very vain, you know.”

  “That’s exactly what Keats said to me when I met him.” With a nudge and a scoff toward his sister, Cecil said, “Perhaps I am contemplating if I should change my look. My hair perhaps. I’ve worn it long for centuries, haven’t I? I feel… rather changed. It’s funny—I crave change now, when for a while all I desired was to live in the past.”

  “I never understood why. I like how I live now—here with you and the thralls.”

  Cecil cupped her chin. “I know, pet. You’re the smartest of all of us for that.” Chuckling faintly, he turned back to the mirror and said, “Honestly, I think I almost understood Alan Callaghan when I first met him. I could almost understand fighting a war to avenge those lost… even if it was much too serious of an endeavor for me.

  “But I could never understand him giving up the new family he’d found just to avenge the old, dead past. Trading living flesh and blood for corpses. And giving up a heart, the chance to feel—what a waste! Even though time has numbed me greatly, I would never give up the opportunity to appreciate beauty, connection, and wonder—and hurt even.” Cecil looked at the flame of the candle flickering. “He gave up his light. The only light he had left.”

  Shrugging, Vera said with a little chuckle, “What a funny creature!”

  “Funny, indeed.” Cecil ran his fingers above the candle, avoiding the flame and feeling the burning heat. “James is quite similar, in some ways. He cannot let go of all he’s lost. I can see that he wants to—he wants so much to grow beyond who he is now. I know he will, eventually, with my help.”

  Vera’s mouth formed a hard line, and it was clear she did not understand.

  “I won’t be giving up my light, my family, now that I’ve found it. I realized the other day that I cannot risk losing James again,” Cecil said. “Do you understand?”

  Vera’s features twitched, but then she nodded. “I think so.”

  “Cecil.” James’s voice was steady, even, as he spoke into the well. “I need to talk to you. It’s really important.”

  The boy had come back to the same well as last time—the well in the grove of ebony trees that were strong with Flora Magic. James had only needed to call upon him once before Cecil greeted him with a tired smile.

  James let out a breath of obvious relief upon seeing him and asked, “You’re… you’re not hurt, are you? From, uh, saving me from that magic the other day?”

  “Oh, I’ll survive,” Cecil said with a careless wave of his hand. “I may not be able to perform great feats of magic while I recover, but I simply must carry on and keep a stiff upper lip, as we Brits say—”

  From the door, as she was on her way to the hall, Vera’s voice rang out gleefully. “That is not how you were acting before! Poor Cecil was moaning and complaining, making me wait on him. He acted as if he was dying.”

  With a scoff, Cecil turned to look at her, his voice laced with sarcasm as he replied, “Ah, yes, and you were a merciful angel with your remarkable bedside manner. Honestly, I don’t know how I’ve put up with you for several centuries.”

  They squabbled briefly until Vera danced from the room and into the hall.

  James clearly held back a snort, but then his features quickly sobered as Cecil asked him why he had called. After sitting up straighter, the boy carefully went over everything that a faery healer in the realm had said to him, every symptom of Kallista’s curse, as detached as if he were listing off items on a list.

  “You, um, do have a solution, right?” James asked, eyes hopeful. “Do you think the curse is connected to her… to her being a thrall?”

  “It is connected,” Cecil said after pretending to muse. “But you mustn’t think that it’s your fault because of it.”

  James recoiled, letting out a breath like he’d been winded.

  Cecil’s lie was well rehearsed and easily tumbled from his mouth. “I believe your father’s dark Unseelie magic is behind this. He’s afflicting her with the same magic he’s using, whether he means to or not. It sounds like an Unseelie curse, and it could cause lasting physical damage if not broken soon.

  “I can think of only one solution. Do you remember the mirror I told you about? The Light Magic stored inside would have been powerful enough to trade for your mother’s life. If you bring it to me, I can instruct you to cast the spell to free her from this curse.”

  A shadow clouded the boy’s face. “Where can I find the mirror?”

  “A Noble faery has it now. She is a faery called Sybil.”

  After a moment of confusion, James let out a relieved, half-hysterical laugh. “I-I know her! I know exactly who Sybil is, and I know she’ll help. She’ll probably use it to heal Mum herself—”

  “This magic cannot be performed by a Noble faery. You will have to bring the mirror to me. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” James stood, shouldering his pack and stumbling over his own feet in his haste. “I’ll bring the mirror to you.”

  “One more thing, James!” Cecil called, halting him before he vanished into the forest to complete his quest. “It will make the spell easier if your mother is here. Bring her to me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Kallista shivered in the cold outside the Summer Court barrier, her quick breaths visible as they sw
irled around her mouth. The late morning air felt as it had the day they arrived—full of frost and tasting of winter. The sun was shrouded from view behind a thick layer of dark gray clouds, and it was quiet as she and Cai slunk through the forested area beside a lake. The mountains towering above them seemed like giants closing in.

  The ground rumbled beneath them, and Cai motioned for Kallista to duck behind a tree as a group of military tanks and trucks thundered past in the valley beyond them. “They’re moving closer to the barrier,” Cai said. “We need to head farther inward to avoid any skirmishes. We’ll aim to go around, come at them from the side.”

  “All right,” Kallista said impatiently. “I don’t care how we get there, so long as we get there quickly.”

  “How’s your hand?”

  Kallista had been rubbing at her arm, half expecting to see or feel those Unseelie crystals like teeth jutting from her decaying flesh. The memory of that sight sent chills through her, and she wrapped her jacket tighter around her body. “Fine,” she said. “Let’s keep going, yes?”

  As they moved through the forest, heading deeper in, Kallista glanced about frequently. Though the forest was still and silent, every loud step or the snap of a stick breaking under their feet was followed by a fainter, distant sound. It was not an echo, and Kallista couldn’t shake the sensation of being hunted.

  As they walked, Cai quietly went over with Kallista all he knew from Nikias about the situation. The Iron Guard had been sending squadrons of soldiers, tanks, and trucks that were moving steadily toward the barrier. Unseelie monsters had plowed ahead and around the soldiers, attacking and distracting any Fae soldiers. The machine was breaking down magical barriers with the help of Unseelie magic.

  With that information in mind, Kallista and Cai tried to determine where and in what position General Callaghan would be. “You say he’s injured, that the magic cursing you is affecting him as well,” Cai said, musing. “I know he’s been using the magic to break down barriers, but how long do you think he could do that, being in this condition?”

  Kallista was already shaking her head. “He won’t fall back, and he won’t stop, even if it kills him. We’ll find him with the infantry. He never leaves a task unfinished, and he is… very stubborn.”

  “I see,” Cai said. “You’re speaking from experience.”

  Kallista let out a wry laugh. “I am also stubborn.”

  “What a fine married couple you two must have made.”

  “Compared to Titania and Oberon? Certainly.”

  After a while of walking, gunfire and explosions thundered in the distance, along with the rumbling, clanking, and clicking of tanks. Punctuating the human metal and machinery sounds were inhuman growls and roars from Unseelie monsters. Beyond all of that grew a faint but insistent thrumming energy, like the static of lightning in the air before a strike.

  When they spotted another squadron through the trees, there were men on foot and in trucks and tanks, defending the insect-like machine bolted to the bed of a small military truck. Cai and Kallista stayed back, waiting and ducking for cover, when, with a screeching sound of metal bending and warping, spiky bursts of Shadow Magic attacked the squadron, breaking down trucks and stopping several of the tanks in their tracks.

  The chill in the air worsened. Icy pain jolted up Kallista’s arm, and her vision darkened as she slumped forward. Cai was gripping her shoulders, saying something.

  “—close, isn’t he? The Unseelie magic is getting stronger.”

  When Kallista could see again as the pain passed, she found herself staring into Cai’s wide eyes. His face was drained of color, and he had one hand pressed against his side. “Your wounds,” Kallista said. “Is the magic affecting—?”

  “We have to act now. This is our one shot. Alan must be in this group somewhere.” Cai helped her to her feet. “I see the machine. I can destroy that, at least—” He broke off, drawing his sword, and pushed her behind him.

  She turned to see a flash of black fur and sharp, yellowed teeth—an Unseelie hound leaped from the foggy woods as if materializing from air and lunged for her, snarling.

  Cai’s sword slashed through the air, slicing into the Unseelie hound’s head and lopping a side of its face clean off. The monster fell limp on the ground but threatened to rise again, even half-dead. They hurried away as a howl sounded in the woods behind them, making the hairs on Kallista’s neck stand on end.

  Moments later, Cai and Kallista broke through the line of trees toward the mountain clearing. The knight stayed in the shadows of the trees, waiting for an opening to reach the machine. Kallista paused, scanning the group of men for Alan, her legs trembling and unwilling to move, while pain radiated through her bones. She did not see him.

  She looked at Cai in desperation, gesturing helplessly. The old knight nodded to her, signaling for her to stay put. A moment later when the soldiers had dispersed from the machine, leaving only a few remaining, he readied his sword and charged into the clearing. The moment the soldiers spotted him, they raised their guns and fired. Crying out and covering her ears, Kallista dropped to the ground and could only watch, horrified.

  Bullets struck him, but the knight ignored them like they were minor annoyances as he kept going. He ran forward and charged into several soldiers, knocking them down like a battering ram, then struck out with his sword, slicing through the weapons. He was almost to the machine when the tank in front halted and a man leaped out.

  Kallista stared, barely breathing. Alan… it’s Alan.

  The man, blank-faced, strode toward the knight, a handgun in one hand. The other hand, gloved, he extended toward Cai. The man’s shadow whispered as it slithered across the ground directly to Cai. The moment the magic hit him on the left side, Cai let out a strangled, barely suppressed shout of agony and fell to his knees.

  As the general watched impassively, the knight struggled to his feet again, raising his sword, and lunged at Alan with a yell, only to fall again as more magic pulsed through the shadows around the knight. Then Alan raised his handgun and leveled it at Cai’s head.

  “Stop!” Kallista shrieked as she raced into the clearing. Alan froze, eyes snapping to her.

  The other soldiers seized Cai and forced him down on his knees, two on each side and one at the back of him—yet the knight still struggled, swearing up a storm. Their gaze darted between her and Alan, who clearly recognized her, and demanded orders as she approached.

  Alan did not respond, staring as if she were a ghost who had drifted from the deep, dark woods. He shook his head as if to clear it, then looked again, perhaps expecting her to vanish.

  She stood her ground, her fists shaking at her sides. “Release him. Now!”

  In that second, the knight freed one arm and elbowed a soldier square in the jaw, knocking him out and onto the ground. A second later, one of the soldiers restraining him grabbed his gun—Kallista screamed as a gunshot went off, covering her face as Cai’s body thudded to the ground.

  When Alan remained mute, one of the soldiers approached her, grabbing her arms. She did not resist, staring in shock. Then he moved directly in front of her, a wild, desperate look in his eyes. He reached out to her with his gloved hand, and Kallista flinched, turning away.

  “Orders, General?” the soldier asked again a bit sharply.

  Alan’s gloved fingers brushed the end of one of her braids, almost as if to see if she was actually standing there. Then, dropping his hand, he said, “Take the civilian to the holding cell for now, where it’s safe. I’ll be there shortly.”

  As Kallista was led away, she glanced back twice—once to say a prayer for Cai, whom she knew would recover with time, and another to look at Alan. Her vision blurred as fear filled her that her hope was in vain.

  She paced restlessly behind a glass wall. The soldiers had led her to a truck parked by their encampment a mile away and had ushered her inside. Her stomach churned at the stark white innards of the truck, at the cruel metal chair with straps on
the outside of the glass. Her oldest son had described this horrible place to her before—where Deirdre’s magic had been ripped away, taken from her.

  She halted at the sound of the doors being thrown open, and Alan strode into the truck alone, approaching the glass, seeming a corpse or a ghost with his dull, emotionless features. He stared at her until she turned away, shuddering.

  “You left.” His voice sounded hollow in the enclosed space.

  Kallista whipped around to face him, anger tightening her chest. “So did you! Why do you think I left? Why do you think I didn’t come back to you?”

  But the man was unaffected by her seething anger toward him. The cold, blank look in his eyes made her shudder, and she rubbed her arms to ward off the chill. He looked like her husband, like the man she’d loved—but flesh was the only resemblance left.

  She let out a sob, covering her mouth.

  “Kallista…” For a moment there was a desperate spark of recognition in his green eyes, and he stepped toward her, dazed, as if waking. “Why did you come back? Six years without a word. Why here? It’s a war zone out there. There are monsters—”

  “The monsters you are working with?” she snapped, folding her arms. Then she answered, lowering her arms, “I came here to find you. I know what the magic is doing to you, and I came here to try to help you.”

  “Why? After all I’ve—”

  There was so much Kallista wanted to say and so many answers she needed. But she only had time to try to save him.

  “Alan.” She steeled herself. “Alan, please—this magic is killing you. I’ve felt it. You need to let it go.”

  “I know.” He looked at her, grimacing. “But it won’t let me.”

  Alan held up his trembling, gloved hand as wisps of frost rose up like steam from inside. Kallista was kneeling on the ground before she knew what was happening, pain blinding her. The moment she cried out, Alan shouted her name. She heard him yanking open the glass door to her cell.