by Sarina Dorie
“What are we going to do? Neither you nor I have magic. You heard how Elric dismissed my offer. And for good reason. I can be of no use. The only thing I am able to do is keep you out of trouble. My one duty is to ensure your safety, and that I will do.”
“If those were our children upstairs, would Elric and Vega leave them? Think about what the Raven Queen will do to them. Would you want them to abandon our baby if we had one?”
I thought of that vision I’d had, holding a bloody baby in my arms. What if that hadn’t been the past at all but the future? What if I had seen what would happen to Vega’s baby?
I protested and argued, but Thatch didn’t listen. His expression remained stony as we traversed the passage toward the kitchen. He unlocked a door, revealing a set of stairs leading downward. A candle was lit in a sconce in the wall, but that single light revealed little of the gloom below.
“Hide. I will see to reinforcements.” He shoved me down the steps and withdrew.
“But Sebastian—”
He slammed the door in my face, a key clicking into place. I hated him for this. I stared at the door for a long moment, dwelling on this abandonment. I was helpless to protect myself with magic. Now I was also alone. Fear churned inside me.
I pressed my ear against the door. I tried to decipher what was happening in the rest of the house from the cracks and shouts. Something crashed into the door with a loud thud. Panic jolted through my chest. I stumbled back, losing my balance and grabbing onto the wall. I fell onto my knees and slid down the steps, pain throbbing in my legs.
This wasn’t the time for pain. What if I wasn’t well enough to stay awake, and I fell into unconsciousness again? That was only sustained pain, I told myself.
The crash against the door came again, but the door held.
Did they know I was here? I needed to find somewhere safe.
I turned to the shadows. I pried a candle from an unlit sconce and touched the wick to one already burning. Hurriedly, I made my way down the steep stairs. The first room was a cellar with bottles of wine and various barrels. Another thump against the door drew my attention. My heart sped up.
It was locked, I told myself. The door was strong. I would find someplace to hide and wait out this battle.
I raced into Thatch’s private bedroom. I closed the door behind me. There was no lock. The spartan furnishings didn’t leave much to barricade the door.
I needed to find weapons or some way to hide myself better if the door to the cellar broke. I attempted to push the immense dresser in front of the door, but it was too heavy.
Aside from a full-length mirror and a painting, there wasn’t much else in the room. I moved on to his torture room, eyeing the metal devices. I picked up his tattoo needle.
Something crashed above and muffled screams came from the house. I flinched at the reminder that all was not safe. Hot wax dripped down my fingers, pain jolting through me. I dropped the candle on the floor, and it sputtered out.
I stood in the darkness, listening to distant noises. I didn’t like hiding in this room where there were so many tools that could be used to hurt me if the Raven Queen found me. I stood like that for a moment in the dark, listening to my heart pound in my ears, not knowing what else to do. I could have fumbled my way to the table and attempted to drag it to the door, but I was likely to knock tools to the floor and make noise.
I could have returned to Thatch’s room, but the darkness closed in on me, suffocating me. I forced myself to breathe slowly, to not panic. My husband had locked me in his dungeon to protect me, not abandon me. I tried to remember that.
Something grated against the stone floor nearby. I spun. A faint blue glow illuminated the doorway, light spilling in from Thatch’s bedroom. I crept over to the door, peeking around it, listening as a shrill voice grunted and grumbled.
I didn’t see anything at first. Then I noticed where the light came from. The surface of the full-length mirror was silvery blue. It wasn’t as bright as the mirror portals at Womby’s, but it was similar in appearance. A little figure crouched, pushing what appeared to be a barrel from the other room over to the mirror.
It was a brownie! The brownies at Womby’s used the mirrors as portals to clean rooms. I couldn’t figure out why this little guy was pushing a barrel. Maybe there was something useful in it like gun powder. Brownies often were secretive, doing good deeds when people were asleep so they wouldn’t be seen.
Unlike Witchkin, the brownies could use a mirror as a two-way portal. I had used the back end of the mirror to enter rooms at Womby’s, though I’d never found the hallway where they were hidden in Elric’s estate. I could use the mirror portal to get out of this room if the brownie helped me.
I hesitated, wondering if that was wise. Thatch had placed me here so I would be out of the way and I would be safe. But was I safe here? Surely the Raven Queen’s emissaries would search the room eventually. If I could get the brownie to bring me to the secret passage, that would be safer. I could then see what was going on in the rest of the house.
Another crash came. It sounded as though wood were splintering. I prayed it wasn’t the door to the cellar.
If I escaped through a mirror portal, I could help rescue Sebastian and the other babies.
“Excuse me,” I said, rushing forward.
The brownie squealed, darted past the barrel, and leapt through the mirror. The surface rippled like water. The glow slowly faded.
“Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.” I waved at the mirror, hoping the brownie was watching. “Look, I can help you.”
I dragged his barrel closer. I didn’t know how he’d managed to get it this far from the other room. It was heavy enough I decided turning it over and rolling it was more practical. I struggled with it and maneuvered it to the mirror. The contents sloshed around inside. It didn’t sound like gun powder. Maybe it was a cask of wine.
“Let me do a favor for you,” I said. “You want to take this barrel, right?”
A rhythmic pounding started up above me. Someone was trying to break the door down. My heart quickened.
Brownies would do good deeds for food. But I had no food. Thatch didn’t keep snacks around in his room at Womby’s. He wouldn’t have any here. It was either this barrel or nothing.
I pushed the barrel closer. “Do you want this? Take me through the mirror, and I’ll help you get it to your side.”
My heart thumped against my rib cage. A little head finally poked through the mirror, beady eyes squinting at me. “Aye. But what be yer price, lass?”
Yes, of course. No good deed went without a price.
“I just want to get to the other side of the mirror. I need to get out of this room.”
The creature harrumphed. “There’s a thing ye Witchkin usually use called a door, ye ken.”
“Yes, but it’s locked. And the Raven Court is outside trying to get in. It’s safer this way.”
I tilted the barrel toward the mirror. The brownie grasped the wood, trying to heave it up.
“Will you help me if I help you?” I pushed from underneath, leveraging the barrel over the frame.
The brownie disappeared out of sight, but I could feel him pulling. I held on to the barrel now. I had to make him agree to my price.
A large crack echoed from the stairwell. Shouts came from above, louder, no longer muffled. They’d broken through the door.
I tried to push my hand through the mirror, but my skin met the solid surface. The brownie pulled more of the barrel through. I hugged the large cylinder, trying to keep it on my side.
“No,” I said. “You can’t have it. Not unless you take me with you.” I draped myself across the barrel, leveraging it back down like a teeter-totter. My face was inches from the mirror, my voice a hush. “If you don’t help me across the mirror to your side, I’m going to give this barrel to the Raven Queen.”
Voices were in the cellar now, in one of the distant rooms.
My clammy hands were slick against the wood. The brownie reached through the mirror and grabbed a fistful of my hair. He yanked me forward. Cold sucked at me, rushing over my skin like water. I fell through the mirror, sliding off the barrel, and somersaulting onto a dirt floor. The barrel toppled through the mirror, rolling into the wall.
I lay on the floor moaning for a moment. The hall was lit with blue light coming from portals through other mirrors lining the walls.
“Those evil harpies cannae appreciate good wine. It would be a waste.” The brownie rolled the barrel away.
I sat up and looked back. Just on the other side of the mirror stood three emissaries of the Raven Court.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Bye Bye Blackbird
The Raven Court had arrived. I brought my hand to my neck where I wore the amulet Elric had given me. It was gone. He’d removed it because his home was supposed to be safe.
I shrank back from the mirror, watching the three figures who entered Thatch’s room. I held my breath, afraid they would hear me. The world on the other side of the mirror was silvery and bright, not the darkness I’d been in only moments before. That was always how things looked from the other side of the looking glass.
The first figure was a man in a cloak made of black down. The long beak, top hat, and goggles over his eyes reminded me of an old-fashioned doctor during the time of plagues. He twitched his head from side to side, stalking through the room with a cane. At the end of the scepter-like cane was an hourglass with birdwings protruding from it.
My eyes were riveted on that symbol. I had seen the emblem before. I could still see it burned behind my eyes on a crest of silver, black, and red. I tried to blink the vision from my eyes.
A smaller man, hunched and spindly, with feathered wings that had seen better days, stood behind him. He was bleeding, and one of his arms was bent unnaturally. He sniffed at the air.
“I smell her fear,” he said.
“Then where is she?” the bird-beak man said.
“I heard her voice,” the other man said.
“Enchantment is at work here. She must be using magic to hide herself.”
Out from behind both of them strode Odette. She was tall and slender like Thatch, with an elegant nose and large eyes. Her long black hair cascaded across folded wings on her back.
Thatch had once said his sister was dead because she lacked a heart. Yet I had the sense she wasn’t completely evil, even if she was the Raven Queen’s emissary. But that might have only been naive optimism talking.
She surveyed the room with liquid-black eyes. Even through the ethereal light of the mirror casting everything in hues of pale blue, her eyes sucked away the light as thoroughly as a black hole. For the briefest moment, her eyes flickered to mine through the mirror.
My heart seized in my chest. Did she know? Her gaze flickered past me and kept scanning the room.
“Obviously she’s no longer here,” Odette said. “Come along. There are more rooms to search.”
The hunched creature eyed the painting of me on the wall, his talon-like hands raised menacingly. I couldn’t watch as he shredded the painting. It was like he was destroying a part of me, as silly as that seemed.
The man with the bird beak growled in anger and toppled the dresser over. They left for the torture chamber. The ache in my chest grew unbearable. I let out a long sigh of relief, realizing I’d been holding my breath.
There were no mirrors in Thatch’s torture room to watch them. I lifted myself from the floor and surveyed the hallway where I stood. Windows lined both sides of the stone passage, the shape reflecting the mirror frames on the other side. The rooms these portals led to were in no particular order that I could see.
Through the windows, I observed rooms with servants battling harpies and birdlike creatures. The sounds were muffled, like noise coming through a barrier of water.
In one window, I observed Thatch with Vega. He held two crying children in his arms while she lashed out with spells of fire and electricity. In another window, I found Elric weaving lines of light, lashing out at enemies as they tried to pour into the house. I was relieved Vega and Elric had returned.
In the nursery, Captain Errol’s wings blazed as brightly as his sword. He looked like a guardian angel fighting off demons. In the corner huddled one of the nurses clutching a baby and a small child to her chest. Imani stood in front of a wardrobe. Two children behind her threw toys at the attackers, their attempts at protecting themselves about as futile as mine might be.
The view through the mirror was on the far side of the room. I had little magic. I didn’t know what I could do to help them.
The Raven Court swarmed into the room, too many for Errol to fend off. They mobbed him and took him down, tearing at his wings and beating him. One of the harpies snatched up a child throwing building blocks. But she didn’t snatch the little girl and carry her away as I would have expected.
She smashed the child’s head against the wall and cackled. She left the girl there before reaching for the next child.
I rushed forward, knowing I had to stop this. It was me they wanted. I burst through the mirror, sound crashing down on me all at once. I dove for the raven woman, tackling her and taking her down. She rolled away from me. I threw my elbow into her face and shoved her down again, digging a knee into her back when she tried to get up.
I didn’t know if I had enough magic to create lightning, but I reached into the well inside me and churned the electricity of my affinity into action. It flooded into my veins. I thrust a hand at the woman as she tried to rise. A bolt of lightning shot out of my palm. Pain lanced through me. It was a small bolt, but enough to make the woman slump to the floor dead.
My belly cramped so intensely, I curled around myself. My vision wavered. I needed to pull myself together.
Imani screamed. Someone had a hold of her. No one saw me. All their attention was on Imani. I shouted for them to stop, but my voice was hoarse. I couldn’t be heard over the chaos.
That’s when I noticed the change in the air. The odor of ozone tingled in my nose. Magic prickled against my scalp, and the hairs on the backs of my arms stood up on end. I thought it was my magic, that I’d activated some kind of panic switch inside me, but I didn’t feel my affinity growing.
I looked to Imani. She crackled with red electric light. The emissaries holding her fell back. They screamed, their hands smoking. Imani stretched out her hands. Lightning flashed in the sky outside the window. Thunder deafened the room. Imani waved her arms at the mass of ravens, power surging out of her. Another flash came, blinding me. I fell back against the wall as it hit me. The air snapped and zapped around me, hot and oddly satisfying. Thunder rumbled so loudly it felt as though it came from inside my head.
The raw power of electricity washed over my body, and I drank it in. I sank deep inside myself to focus on my own affinity, to process this overwhelming amount of magic before it hurt me. The energy faded, leaving me feeling full and content.
I would have forgotten where I was if it hadn’t been for the stench of burnt flesh wafting toward me. The odor made me gag. Aches and pains in my body grounded me back into myself, forcing me to focus on numbing the pain. The surge of power that had fed my affinity a moment before dispersed as the horrific scene around me sank in once again.
I blinked the spots from my vision. My ears rang. I could see children crying, but I couldn’t hear them. Charred black shapes littered the floor around me.
Imani dropped her hands and sank to her knees. I tripped over a writhing figure toward her. I caught Imani and eased her back against the dresser. She spoke, but I couldn’t hear her. She raised a shaky hand. Her fingers were blistered and bloody, her own skin burned from using magic she didn’t know how to control.
She pointed.
A little Witchkin girl lay sprawled across the floor. Another figure clad in black was draped over her, charred and smoking. I went to the child, h
auling the dead body off her. The girl was small, about five years old, with her dark hair in her face. I kneeled to check on her. It was Dora. Her head was a bloody mess.
She was the one the harpy had smashed against the wall.
Tears filled my eyes. A little boy hugged me around the neck, burying his face in my hair. He sobbed against me, strangling me as he clung to me. I felt the vibration of his voice, but I couldn’t understand him with the deafness the lightning and thunder had brought. Three more children crawled out of the wardrobe. One of them held a wiggling bundle in his arms.
I felt Dora’s wrist for a pulse. My hands shook, and I tried her neck, and then her chest. I couldn’t feel a heartbeat. I started chest compressions, but my arms were weak. The momentary surge of electricity I’d received earlier was dying away.
How could they have done this to Dora? She was a baby. She was the sweetest, most well-behaved child. She didn’t deserve this. I wanted to make her better, but I didn’t know how. Even if I’d had my full command of magic, I didn’t know how to heal someone else.
The mass of bodies writhed. Like a golem made of earth, they shifted and rose. I desperately looked around for something to grab to stab the figure with. The best I found were children’s toys and building blocks.
Bodies fell aside. A figure stood. Drenched in crimson, his hair was matted. His neck had been gnawed on, bite marks marring his flesh. One wing hung limp behind him. The other had been defeathered and half torn off. His face was so bruised and swollen I wouldn’t have recognized him if it hadn’t been for what was left of his armor. It was Captain Errol.
He staggered forward, tripping and falling over. He crawled toward me, pointing toward the window. A figure with black wings blocked the view of the stars outside. I staggered back, taking the clinging boy with me. But the figure in the window wasn’t coming in. It leapt from the window, wings flapping. In its arms I saw a limp form.
I ran to the window, tripping over bodies. The attacker from the Raven Court carried someone large enough to be an adult. A woman from the looks of the dress flapping in the breeze. That was all I could make out before they were swallowed by the blackness of night.
