The Mirrored Shard ic-3

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “What do you mean by that no, Miss Grayson?” he snapped, his mouth twisting. I recognized the look. It was the look that all powerful men got when you told them what they didn’t want to hear.

  “Do you want me to repeat myself?” I said softly. “Because I will. As many times as it takes.”

  Of course I knew this might be a stupid decision. I knew that I might be sealing my and Dean’s fate. But I couldn’t bring myself, after all I’d seen—the vast stars, the Old Ones, the face of the Yellow King—to believe it would be the worst thing that ever happened to me.

  “Think very, very carefully about the next thing you say, Aoife,” Draven told me. “Because I would hate to have to do something unpleasant to you. Or to your little man-friend here.”

  “It’s funny,” I said. “I’ve heard a lot of threats since I found my Weird, you know that? More than I ever did when I was just some poor girl who was a city ward. But you know what else?” I stepped away from Dean and faced Draven. “You’re not going to follow through on them. You’re not going to raise one finger to me. Because you need me. Without my Weird, you’re just scared little men, cowering in the dark and watching the last of your fire go out. You’re playthings for the Fae if they feel like visiting the Iron Land for their amusement. Without me, you’re nothing.” I curled my lip at Draven. “You’re human.”

  “I don’t need to do anything to you, stupid girl,” he snarled. “Dean—”

  “If you harm one hair on Dean’s head I swear I’ll never help you again,” I said. “You might as well just kill me, because you won’t get the benefit of my gift. You can do your worst to me, but face it—it will never be enough. I’ve seen what lies beyond it all, Iron and Thorn. I’ve seen the worst things in the universe. What on earth makes you think I’d be afraid of you?”

  Draven said nothing, just stood there, chest heaving impotently and face growing crimson. I felt intense satisfaction at being on the other side of that outrage for once, to be the cause rather than buffeted by the consequences.

  “We’re leaving,” I said. “And if I feel like helping you unwind all of Crosley’s sneaky little bargains with the Fae, I will. And if I don’t, and I see another one of your little trench-coat brigade anywhere near me”—I narrowed my eyes—“I’m going to make you regret the day you looked into the shadows. You’re going to wish with every fiber of your being you knew nothing of this world.”

  I expected bluster and shouting, the things Draven was so good at. I expected threats and recriminations. I didn’t expect Draven to give a primal snarl and yank a shock pistol from under his tweed jacket, closing the distance between us and shoving it against Dean’s temple.

  “What?” he shouted as I recoiled, my hands flying up in a gesture of placation. “No clever rejoinders, Aoife?” His face twitched in a crazed man’s imitation of a smile. “Maybe you’re not quite as smart as you think you are, little girl.”

  “Aoife,” Dean choked out. He tried to pull away from the barrel of the pistol, but he couldn’t move under the restraints. I watched the muscles in his jaw twitch in panic and my stomach roiled in response.

  I wanted to kill Draven. I wanted to leap on him and beat him with my bare fists until he realized the error of his ways, but I didn’t move. That was the anger, the rage that I’d kept down for so long begging to be let free. It wouldn’t help me, and it certainly wouldn’t help Dean.

  “It’ll be all right,” I told Dean.

  Draven grimaced and jabbed Dean’s temple again with the gun. “Will it?” he snarled. “Or have we beaten you again, just like we did in the Arctic?”

  “Beat me?” I started to laugh. It was better than screaming, or crying. “You didn’t beat me, Draven. I used you to get what I wanted. I needed you and the Brotherhood to get my mother back. You let yourselves be manipulated by a little girl, someone you think is beneath you. No wonder you’re so angry now.”

  Dean stared at me, his eyes wide and unblinking, and I looked back. I didn’t think Draven would kill him, not when he had my allegiance on the line, but I couldn’t be sure.

  The thought of backing down felt like a leaden weight settling in my chest in place of my heart. But it wasn’t about my feelings for Draven. I wasn’t the only person in play here.

  I had to think of Dean. Had I brought him back only to lose him again?

  “There’s no more talking,” Draven said. “There’s you doing as I say, or his brains on the wall. Am I making myself clear?”

  Dean still looked at me, and then, impossibly, he winked. “You’re better than all of this, Aoife,” he said. “I love you.”

  I felt a small smile touch my mouth. All at once, the doomsday scenario I’d been playing out in my head vanished. Dean understood. He loved me, even if I’d screwed everything up and brought us here.

  Dean trusted me, and his look told me now I had to trust myself.

  “I love you too,” I said, and then turned my eyes to Draven. There was strength in the admission—I’d known ever since the first time we kissed that I loved Dean, but to say it out loud made it real, inevitable and final.

  I loved him. I always had.

  “I don’t care what you do,” I told Draven. “You might kill him. You’re a bad man. You have no morals and a soul that’s rotten to the core. But I’m not that person. I know what I have to do to close my eyes at night, and working for your corrupt little gang isn’t it.” I took a deep breath and put my eyes back on Dean. “Do whatever you’re going to do. My answer won’t change.”

  Draven tightened his grip on the trigger of the shock pistol, and I felt a cry rise in my throat. I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but I knew I couldn’t give in to him, couldn’t agree to become the Brotherhood’s weapon without dire consequences for this already shredded world of iron.

  Before Draven could do more than inhale, the door banged open, nearly smacking him off his feet.

  “That’s enough,” a voice said.

  I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding when I saw my father standing in the doorway, and a small cry escaped. Just a ghost of the scream I would have given if the shock ray had pierced Dean’s skull.

  Dean slumped in relief. “Never thought I’d be glad to see you, Mr. Grayson,” he muttered.

  “Likewise,” my father said, and came over to me, wrapping his arms so tightly around me I could barely speak.

  “Y-you’re all r-right …,” I stammered.

  “I am,” he agreed. “A few days ago I came to. I’d been having the strangest dreams, Aoife, but suddenly they receded, and I was back to my old self. Conrad had left word where he’d gone, so I came here with Bethina. Conrad’s been bringing us up to speed on … everything.”

  “That’s all well and good,” Draven said, “but I think you’ll find that I’m in charge here, Grayson, and you’re a traitor.” He raised the pistol again. “It’s amazing what people will do when they’re desperate and in need of a strong leader. It was ridiculously simple to take over from Crosley and get everyone loyal to me.”

  My father turned on him, and the expression on his face was the coldest I’d ever seen. His mouth was a thin line and his eyes could have cut glass. “Maybe this cell of the Brotherhood, yes. But not all.”

  He advanced on Draven, who backed away, pistol wavering. “You think Crosley is the only one who escaped the Bone Sepulchre? He wasn’t. The others remember what you did to them, and the friends you threw into your Proctor prison. They want nothing to do with your little freak show. They’re loyal to me.”

  “No,” Draven said. “You’re a traitor, Grayson. You left the Brotherhood when they most needed you, left them vulnerable to the machinations of the Fae. Hell, you reproduced with one of those silver-blooded monsters. Nobody trusts you or your offspring.”

  “Better to leave than to be a part of this sideshow,” my father said. “But I’m here now, and the Brotherhood is going to start doing some things differently.”

  He snatched the s
hock pistol from Draven’s grip with an economical move. “And if you ever threaten my daughter again …”

  I saw Draven’s hand flash down while my father’s anger had him distracted. I saw it grasp a small black handle in his waistband and the flash of the blade as he pulled it free. I saw all this in slow motion as my blood roared through my ears like a crashing zeppelin, propelling me across the room and into Draven with my whole weight. We staggered together, caught in a rough dance, until his foot tangled in the rung of Dean’s chair and he stumbled.

  The knife blade lowered a fraction and I took the opening. I slammed my fist into his nose with all my strength. Broken noses hurt, and it was no less than he deserved. So much less than he deserved. But it would have to do for now.

  Archie kicked the knife out of Draven’s reach and I rushed to Dean. I unbuckled the cruel leather straps and massaged his wrists, and he let his forehead fall against mine. “You have a hell of a left hook, princess,” he said. “Remind me never to get you mad.”

  I pressed my lips against his, tasted blood and sweat, and felt relief swell in me when I did. He was alive. He was bleeding, and alive, and I hadn’t lost him again.

  Archie cleared his throat, and we pulled apart. I felt my cheeks flush slightly, and then really focused on my father for the first time. He still didn’t look very well—he was thinner and pale, and stubble coated the bottom half of his face.

  “Thank you,” I said. He smiled at me.

  “No need to thank me, Aoife. I’m just doing my job as head of the Brotherhood.” He took a step, all he needed with his long arms, and enfolded me in an embrace. “And as your father.”

  I looked up at him, tears pricking the corners of my eyes. “Are you really in charge?”

  “Valentina is, technically,” he said. “Crosley was her father, and most of those simpleminded sheep are just happy somebody else is making all the hard choices for them. But she’ll do what’s right. She won’t make backdoor deals with the Fae, and she’ll teach them to really fight in the face of what’s coming.”

  I pulled away from him and looked down. “I’m sorry. For my part in everything. I’m sorry I ran away and I’m sorry I let Crow release the Old Ones. I was just trying to fix things.”

  “You can’t fix the world, Aoife,” my father said softly. “The world was broken long before you got here. And the harder you try, the faster it turns to dust in your hands.”

  I did start to cry then, long, heaving sobs that were humiliating. I wished I could stop, but it all became too much.

  Dean came to me and held me, but that did nothing to stop my tears. “Will you look at what you did?” he snapped at my father. “She’s hysterical.”

  “She’s tired and angry and she feels guilty,” my father said. “Just let her cry it out.”

  He was right—I was guilty. And I knew from his last words that he blamed me. “I’m sorry,” I choked. “I let you down.…”

  “I didn’t mean that,” Archie said sternly. “You made a mistake, Aoife. We all make them. But the Old Ones were going to break through whether or not you made that mistake. Even if you’d turned your back on them in the dream realm, they’d have found a way through. The barriers between their world and ours are too weak to hold them any longer.”

  He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I think that’s why you were born, Aoife. Because unlike Tesla, you have no doors to open, only doors to guard. The world needed your Weird to fight off the influence of these things, and that’s what you’re going to have to do.”

  I swiped at my tears, and as I did, my father turned me from Dean and looked into my eyes. It wasn’t his usual vaguely irritated look that said I was an annoyance he was trying to shape into something useful. It was a dead-serious look, one I’d only seen him give other adults.

  “You are our protector, Aoife,” my father said. “You are the one who balanced the spheres, and you are the one who can keep the darkness at bay. It’s not fair to ask such a thing of you, but I must. I’m your father, and I love you, and I will stand by you, but from now on, this is your calling. Tell me now—can you do it?”

  I returned his look, this new one that said I wasn’t a disappointment, his renegade daughter who was nothing like he’d expected her to be. He was regarding me as an equal for the first time, and in some ways that thought was more terrifying than the idea that I would have to take up the mantle of Gateminder once and for all, to stand alone against the forces, out there among the stars and here on earth, that crawled out of the mud and the mist and my dreams themselves to bedevil the human world.

  I had come this far, I thought. I hadn’t destroyed the Iron Land. I had fought back against Nylarthotep. I had conquered the nightmare clock.

  I was Aoife Grayson, and I was no longer just a scared little girl from Lovecraft. No longer a changeling who didn’t have a place in any of the Lands. I was myself. I was the Gates, and the Gates were me. How it should have always been.

  I nodded at my father. “I can do it,” I said. “I can be what I was always meant to be.”

  My father gave me a slow nod and smile. “Of course you can,” he said. “You’re my daughter, after all.”

  17

  At Home in Arkham

  THE JOURNEY HOME was almost comically uneventful. We picked up Conrad and Cal in Chinatown and flew back across the Rockies under the cover of a river of stars wide and broad as the Mississippi. My father’s personal aircraft, the Munin, was much smaller and faster than the zeppelin Cal and I had crossed on, which was made of wood rather than metal, so the trip took a matter of a day.

  When we got home, however, the good mood had largely ceased. Arkham was still under quarantine, but there was no one manning the walls to make sure citizens stayed out. I hadn’t seen one Proctor since we touched down, and my days largely went back to what they’d been when I first arrived—read, sleep, eat and do it all over again.

  Bethina flung herself on Cal and barely left his side as soon as she saw him in San Francisco, and home was no different. Conrad and I were getting along as well as we ever had. Valentina, when she returned to Graystone shortly after us, was the only one still chilly toward me.

  She knew what I’d done, how my releasing the Old Ones had nearly killed my father, and only by a lucky chance had they been distracted by Nylarthotep from casting their net of dreams over the world.

  My mother was on my mind a great deal, but I had to wait until everyone else in the house was asleep or otherwise occupied to act on my anxious, ever-running thoughts.

  Archie and Valentina were in charge of the Brotherhood now, but that was only half of my problems solved. There was still my mother, and everything she represented.

  I set my chronometer to wake me when it was just light, the first streaks of milky sunlight catching the granite cliffs around Arkham, setting them to glittering as if they were alive.

  A bowl of fog still rested in the garden and the orchards around Graystone, and danced across the waters of the pond like it was a spirit seeking a place to rest.

  I bypassed the garden, the pond, the hedge maze and the barn, and walked on to the apple orchard.

  I remembered the first time I’d come here, how scared I’d been to walk through these grounds. I could sense the malevolent force lurking.

  This time, when I came upon the small ring of mushrooms in the center of the apple trees, I stepped in without hesitation.

  My Weird flared, and I got the sense that the twisted, ancient hulks of the apple trees had taken an interest in my presence, that if I watched long enough, I’d see the gnarled branches uncurl and beckon to me.

  Instead, I focused on the energies swirling around me. The hexenring was different from a man-made Gate, but it worked on the same principles.

  I shut my eyes and reached for that place inside that connected me to the universe, to the places beyond the stars that only the Weird could touch. I felt the tug, the pain in my head, and when I opened my eyes I was in the Thorn Lan
d.

  My accuracy was getting better—I’d come through within sight of the Winter Court, inside a hexenring by the side of a crumbling farmhouse. When I reached the gates of the court, the Fae moving around the courtyard stopped what they were doing and stared at me.

  I stared back, suddenly no longer as nervous. They’re afraid of me, I realized. That was a new feeling, and I let the surge of power ripple up and down my spine.

  “Don’t just stand there,” I said when the closest Fae held my gaze a bit too long. “One of you go find Tremaine.”

  He scurried away, and I stayed where I was. The courtyard had eternally falling snow that blanketed the ground beneath the silver branches of dead trees. Ripe red fruit still hung from them, in spite of their desiccated state, and crystals dangled, suspended above my head. Occasionally they collided and chimed, giving the ever-blowing wind a voice.

  Tremaine appeared from the archway that led deeper into the palace, a blot on this ethereal space. His waistcoat was a deep blue, the color of the night sky, and contrasted with a silk shirt in the gradient red of an angry sunset. His crystal buttons and black cravat were impeccable, but his face was a mess of anger and uncontrolled rage.

  My mother came in on his heels, starting to say something to placate him, but I held up my hand.

  “What I have to say is important, so you better shut that shark mouth of yours and listen,” I told Tremaine.

  He shot me one of his infuriating grins, so smug I was sure he had to practice it in front of the mirror to get it so perfectly right. “Come back to threaten me? I wouldn’t think I was in such a position, were I you.”

  I glanced from side to side and saw the guards of the Winter Court moving in. My mother took a step forward. “Stop! You stop this at once. That’s my daughter!”

  The guards drew back, lowering the short gladii they carried as weapons. I returned Tremaine’s smug look. “I guess the sister of the Winter Queen has a little more pull than some sneaky regent that nobody actually likes.”