“I consent!” Toralé cries. “Leave her alone, Tarrith. I consent.”
The knife blade lifts. Through the ringing in my ears, I hear footsteps. Just one set. Climbing the stair towards us.
“Luthan!” I shout. “We’re in here!”
Cursing, Tarrith backhands me, sending me sprawling on the floor. A single furious gesture slams the door. Knife in hand, he stalks over to Toralé.
I touch my throbbing cheek. The corner of my eye. They hurt, but I’m still in one piece. I scramble to my feet and stumble to the door, but I can’t budge it. Held closed by magic. Tarrith has Toralé back on the stone table now. I run to them, trying desperately to interpose myself between them, but Tarrith flings me to the floor again – and this time, he doesn’t let me back up. Pinned in place by invisible hands, I struggle to breathe. The air smells of blood. Where are you, Luthan?
Then the door bursts open, and she’s there.
Immediately, Tarrith straightens up and fires a bolt of pure energy at her. No stave means no warning; she barely deflects the blow. Another follows, but this time she is ready for it. She turns it back on itself, forcing Tarrith to duck. They circle each other, testing for weaknesses, looking for ways to tear each other down.
Edging past them, I run to Toralé’s side. Blood covers his hands and throat, but his birthstone looks intact.
“Are you all right?” I whisper.
“Alyssia?”
“Yes.”
“What’s happening?”
“Luthan’s going to defeat Tarrith. Then we’ll get you out of here.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “He didn’t finish, did he? The linking process?”
“I don’t think so. I feel … strange. Dizzy. But no worse.”
“Stay there for now.” Leaving my hand in place, so he knows I’m with him, I turn back to the duelling mages. My heart pounds. I might have told Toralé that Luthan would be the victor, but I’m not nearly as certain as I pretended to be. Tarrith has the power of all his links to draw on. Luthan has only her own blood, as much of it as she’s stored in her stave. And sure enough, even as I watch, she’s forced backwards across the room, where she falls to her knees. A squeezing gesture from Tarrith, and she begins to choke.
“Luthan!” I start forward – not sure what I can do, but determined to do something – only to be stopped by an urgent thought, as clear as if it were my own.
Alyssia. When I give you the word, distract him. It doesn’t matter how. Just break his concentration.
Meeting her gaze, I nod to show I heard her. My knife is still lying discarded beside Toralé; I pick it up. Then I wait in agonised anticipation as she gasps and chokes, apparently fighting for her life. I assume, underneath it all, she’s building something to use against him. Using her own weakness as a cover for an attack. But it’s hard to watch as slowly, ever so slowly, her face turns red and her body folds in on itself –
Now.
I hurl myself across the room and sink my knife into Tarrith’s arm. He turns with a snarl, knocking me down before plucking the weapon from his flesh. The wound is already closing. But even as it does, Luthan straightens up and mutters something. Sleep takes him, fast and hard, toppling him to the floor like a felled tree.
“Luthan!” I hasten to her side, retrieving my knife on the way. “Are you all right?”
She gestures at her throat, her voice a raspy whisper. “Sore. And the sleep – won’t last forever. We’d better – go.”
Between us, we lead Toralé out of the room and down the first flight of stairs. Battle no longer rages in the corridor below, but I can hear men running and shouting nearby. They’re still looking for us. We scuttle down the next flight and through the neolyte archway as quickly as possible, before Luthan replaces our original illusion. I feel a bit safer after that, but we’re not out of danger yet.
“Ifor’s here,” I tell her. “The whole thing was an ambush. Do you have enough power left to face him?”
She nods, looking determined. “I can try.”
“All right,” I say. “Then let’s get back to Oriana and Fabithe.”
He is going to lose. Fabithe knows that all too well. Oriana performed a miracle to wake him up – she even took away the pain – but the aftereffects of his enforced sleep still linger. His limbs feel heavy. His muscles are stiff. Everything is slow and muffled, as though his head is full of fog. Not only that, but it’s been five years since he fought with this sword. Pride and stubbornness led him to haul the thing around without ever using it, like some kind of tragic hero. And pride and stubbornness will kill him, as the old woman always said they would.
Still, you don’t stop fighting till you’re dead. That’s pretty much the first lesson he ever learned. And since it’s also pretty much the only one he can remember in his current condition, he’d better stick to it.
“Remember the last time we duelled?” he fires at Ifor, trying to disguise his own weakness. “A friendly match, you said. Between two countries about to make alliance. But I beat you, and it made you angry. Angry and scared. Because you knew that, even at fourteen, I was better than you.”
Ifor’s smile remains unshaken. “That was when you still mattered. Before I broke you, and watched your brother destroy you.” He presses forward, forcing Fabithe back. “You are nothing. An exile with no home, no family, not even a real name. And if you failed to die back then, it is only because you were destined to die now.”
I keep the code till I get the chance to remove Ifor Darklight’s head from his shoulders. And then, forget mercy. How foolish those words seem now. How unbelievably arrogant. Fabithe retreats a few steps, taking the chance to catch his breath. He glances at Oriana, held firmly between two northern soldiers; their eyes meet. Whatever it is he told you about yourself, it is not true. She believes in him. Despite everything.
He can’t let her down.
Detachment is beyond him, so he lets the surge of emotion carry him instead. He’s not one with the weapon. He doesn’t even remember how to use it, not really. But it doesn’t matter. Sometimes love and rage are enough.
He attacks in a flurry of blows, regaining lost ground. Allowing the physical memories written deep in his muscles to do what his fuzzy head can’t. The sword flies out of Ifor’s hand, spinning through the air. Fabithe presses forward, the tip of his blade menacing Ifor’s throat, and fear darkens Ifor’s eyes –
An invisible force explodes outwards, flinging Fabithe against the stone wall of the cavern. The breath is slammed from his lungs; his sword clatters to the ground. He tries to move, but he can’t. He’s as helpless as an insect on a pin.
Ifor smiles. Not bothering to retrieve his own weapon, he walks up to Fabithe and drives a fist, hard, into his stomach. Fabithe’s entire body convulses, trying to fold in on itself, but he’s still held in place. Eyes streaming, he manages to croak out, “Cheat – ”
“Never mind.” Ifor pats his cheek, a commiserating gesture. “There will be plenty more time for us to play.”
No. Not that. Not again. Fabithe curses at him, though cold fear is settling deep into his bones. But Ifor only laughs. Gesturing to his men to release Oriana, he takes her chin in one hand and tilts her face up to his.
“You lose,” he says softly. “That is what happens when you put your faith in a worthless man.”
Her fists clench. “I have only ever d-done that once. When I agreed to marry y– ”
The last word is cut off as he strikes her across the face. Blood wells from her lip, and Fabithe struggles again to free himself. I’ll kill him, I swear I’ll kill him. Yet he can’t move. He can only watch Ifor’s hand move slowly down from Oriana’s chin to close about her throat.
“You are beginning to forget yourself, little one. Must I remind you whose name is written in your flesh?” His fingers dig deeper. A tortured gasp escapes her. “Or perhaps it is not you who needs reminding.”
With his other hand, he makes a small, careless gesture. Fabithe’s lungs empty of air. He fights to take in another breath, but he can’t. He can’t breathe. His head throbs. His heart races. He’s going to die.
Through blurred eyes, he catches movement in the passage that leads from the cavern to the Retreat. Someone else is here. Ifor notices it at the same time; he lowers his hand, and the air rushes back into Fabithe’s lungs like the sweetest kind of blessing. He falls to the floor, gasping.
“Luthan.” Ifor smiles. A complicated smile, made of sadness and regret and bitter hatred. “It is about time.”
Protected by illusion, the three of us hurry down the corridors of the Castle Retreat as fast as we can, but it isn’t fast enough. Toralé is sore and stiff, and lacking his sight besides; every doorway is an obstacle, every staircase a mountain to be climbed.
“You go on ahead,” I say to Luthan, finally. It’s what I saw would happen, after all. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
She nods, and runs off; I follow, hoping I can remember the route. I keep a firm grip on Toralé’s arm, but I don’t talk much, because I need to think about this. Ifor believes that Toralé and I are under Tarrith’s control. He’s got Fabithe and Oriana cornered. So when Luthan turns up, alone, he’ll believe this is it. Game over. Defeat Luthan, and he gets what he wants.
Of course, that could still happen. We’re on a knife-edge here. But Ifor isn’t expecting me to show up. If I can distract him long enough for the others to get away, and if we can outrun all those soldiers, then maybe …
Just after I’ve helped Toralé through the concealed exit, the illusion on me disappears again. Luthan is fighting Ifor. I see it in flashes, around and alongside what I’m seeing through my own eyes. Luthan sending a bolt of power in Ifor’s direction. Ifor deflecting it contemptuously, returning a fiercer one of his own. Luthan staggering, nearly falling to her knees. Ifor is stronger than her; she knows it, and so I know it too. She’s going to lose.
I hurry Toralé along, faster and faster. When we reach the cavern, I halt us in the shadows at the edge, scanning the scene: Oriana and Fabithe held by northern soldiers, Ifor backing Luthan towards the cavern wall –
Then Ifor gestures, and the stave flies out of Luthan’s hand into his grasp.
“I am almost disappointed,” he says. “You are so weak, this time. So untrained. But to be honest, I do not mind all that much. Not if it means I finally get to kill you.”
In a sudden flare of magic, he brings the stave down across his knee and snaps it in two. He casts the pieces aside. Then his knife blade scores across Luthan’s palm, opening up her fateline, and pain resonates through my scar. Let me go! My hand. Where am I? My whole body. He is going to kill me. Like sound, rising and rising. If you hurt her, I swear I’ll – Like a roundabout spinning, faster and faster. There must be a way out of this. Like a wave that never breaks but keeps on building and building and building, until the pressure is unbearable, until I’m covering my ears and screaming silently – Marked. I’ve been marked. I’m Alyssia Gale I’m Alyssia Gale but my head is going to burst it’s going to –
She is very quiet, the girl who saved my life. I wish I knew how to thank her. She made me whole again. Almost. If I could only see –
This is our chance. He’s not using his power on me now. They’re all watching the fight. If I headbutt that one in the face and then go for the other with the knife –
That makes all five of us. Isidor was right. Yet my stave is gone, and I’ll be no use without it. If only I could remember what I knew, the night I became a mage –
When Fabithe tries to break free, I will join him. I cannot endure returning to Ifor and his games. Perhaps we will die, but if not, there is still the tunnel … Where is Alyssia?
The sound in my head is like the ringing quiet after an explosion. My palms still cover my ears, fingers splayed uselessly across the sides of my skull. I unpeel each stiff, aching joint. Straighten up. Look around, blinking. I feel … hollow. Like the aftermath of intense pain, a mixture of relief and emptiness. Yet I don’t have time to adjust to it.
“Stay here,” I murmur to Toralé. Then I step forward, into the light.
“Ifor!” I call.
“Alith sia.” He turns to face me. He looks calm, I realise with mounting dismay. Not like a man who’s been caught unawares. “It has been a long time.”
“That makes all five of us,” I say, echoing Luthan’s thought. Feeling my way through the mysterious significance of our matching scars. “Marked.”
Ifor’s gaze flicks to Luthan, then back to me. He’s in no hurry to reply, so I probe my own mind, trying to see if anything has changed. The shimmering bonds that connect me to each of my four friends are still there, even stronger than before, competing for my attention. Him. Has she taken me back to him? – Now! – She knows. – Goddess, get us out of this. But beyond them –
Others.
Like a whisper on the very edge of hearing, I’m aware of other voices. Other pairs of eyes that if I wanted to, I could look through. I am no longer one of five. I am one of many. Dozens of new, fragile silver threads. And foremost among them, one that’s nearly as strong and bright as the original four …
Ifor. I’m connected to Ifor.
I’ve been seeing through his eyes for days now, on and off, but it’s still a shock to feel him in my head. To know that I can choose to cross the divide between us, whenever I like, and see the world as he does. To sense his emotions, as I do the others’ …
No way out, now. We are in this until the bitter end.
“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” I say, improvising from a mixture of half-understood facts and wild guesses. Hoping to buy enough time for everyone else to get away. And all the while, their thoughts and feelings and movements flash through my head until I’m struggling to keep a grip on my own consciousness. “To be rid of us?”
Where is she? I don’t understand. Luthan edging back towards Toralé. Now. This is our chance. Fabithe and Oriana struggling with the northern soldiers. Let me go or I will – stop it! Gasping, I add faintly, “You can’t fight fate.”
Ifor’s eyes narrow. “What exactly is it that you think you know, alith sia?”
“I know enough.” Toralé. This way. “I know you’re afraid of us – ”
But I stop, because he’s laughing. It has a brittle sound to it, like broken glass.
“Afraid?” he repeats. “It is not fear that drives me. It is the desire for justice. Time and again, the five of you are remembered as heroes, and I must play the villain’s part.”
Oriana, a man’s arm around her neck. Sinking her teeth into his hand. He drops her, and Fabithe pulls her to her feet. The northerners circle them. Too many of them. Far too many. But better to die than –
“We fight and we die and are born to fight again,” Ifor says. “Over and over. And you do not remember it – you never remember it – but I do.” And I am so tired of it, his spilling emotions add. So very, very tired.
“If you’re that tired of it,” I say, still struggling to understand – still struggling to keep hold of myself – “then why don’t we stop? Why does it have to go on like this?”
“Because this time,” he says, “I intend to stay alive. I intend to rewrite history the way it should have been. And you are going to help me.”
Stay here. Luthan talking to Toralé. I have to help them. She doesn’t have her stave any more, but there is always the knife – and meanwhile, her thoughts run in panicked circles. It’s too soon. Too soon for us to defeat him. This isn’t how it’s meant to happen.
I shake my head, though I can’t quite remember what I’m denying. “No. No, I – ”
“You did it before, and you will do it again. You cannot ignore the bonds of family, alith sia.”
I stare at him. Finally, I manage a hoarse croak. “What family?”
He smiles. It isn’t the charming smile he flashed so many times at Oriana. This is something softer and more intimate. Almost loving. “I would have thought that was obvious, little sister.”
What? No. Surely –
But suddenly I’m out of words.
Ifor makes a sharp gesture, and the sound of fighting ceases abruptly. I risk a sideways glance. My friends are stiff and still, held in place by magic. The northern soldiers close in around them, locking each of them in handcuffs while they are incapacitated. Then – then he could have done that any time. We never stood a chance.
“I have often wondered how you were,” he says, walking towards me. Around us, the cavern is deathly silent. “I thought perhaps I had made a mistake by sending you away. Perhaps, if you had stayed, I could have convinced you of the truth.”
I shake my head. I don’t understand. I don’t –
“But as you have observed, fate was against me. So exile seemed safest for us both. I could not allow you to betray me, but neither did you have to die.”
He takes another step closer. Heart racing, I grab the knife from my belt, and what looks like genuine sadness fills Ifor’s eyes.
“Oh, Ariamé,” he says. “Why do you always have to betray your family?”
It can’t be true. It can’t be. I scowl at him. “I’m not your sister.”
“Our parents would disagree,” he says. “Even after four years, they would still recognise you.” For an instant, his gentle sorrow reveals a flash of something darker, like a blade concealed between the fingers of a velvet glove. “You look very like Dakion.”
Four years … no. He’s trying to mess with my head. He must have spied on me at other times, gathering information to use against me. There’s no way that he can really – that I can really –
“I sent you away when you were twelve,” he says. “I waited as long as I could, but in the end, it was that or kill you. And I have killed my sister too many times before. I wanted … I thought this time could be different. So I made you forget, and I sent you away.”
Not real, my entire self screams. Not real not real not real. And yet …
And yet, the emotions spilling from him are clear. Recognition. Kinship. Even love. I don’t want the love, but it’s there. And I respond to it, despite myself, because no one has ever felt this way about me before. No one has ever looked at me and known me. Who I am. Where I belong.
“We are family,” he says softly. “You cannot deny it.”
And I can’t, because it fits. It fits the way I emerged from the car accident with nothing except a name: no family, no past. It fits the way he recognised me, when he saw me in the mirror. It fits the way he knows who I am and what I can do.
It fits the way that now, suddenly and shockingly, I can see myself in him. The shape of his nose. The line of his jaw. The way his eyes crease at the corners. It’s subtle, but it’s there. He’s my brother.
He’s my brother.
“Alyssia?” I’d almost forgotten we weren’t alone. But now Oriana’s voice, ragged as it is, catches at my heart like the sharpest cry of pain. “What is he talking about?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry, Oriana. I swear I didn’t know.”
“What difference does that make?” Ifor says. “They will never accept you, not now they know who you are. You are the enemy, Ariamé.”
“Don’t call me that.” Yet he’s right. As my own confusion and panic subside, their thoughts are filling my head once more. Ifor Darklight’s sister. But – I trusted her. I thought she was my friend. Has she been playing with us, all this time? Is this some kind of game?
“You have never known what is best for you,” he says. “Always growing so attached to these people who pull you in and sway you from your loyalty to family and home. Which is why it is up to me to protect you, little sister.” He nods to two of his men, who come forward wheeling something between them. A large mirror in a carved wooden frame. “It is time for you to leave.”
That mirror. It’s the one I saw when we came in. He must have planned this all along.
I swing the knife towards him, but he knocks it from my hand as easily as swatting a troublesome insect. His fingers dig into my upper arms, as if he’s going to shake me, and through my terror surfaces a single thought that makes me shudder: This feels familiar.
“Let me go!” I spit at him.
His fingers flex hard enough to make me wince. “Do not be foolish, Ariamé. You have a choice to make.”
One hand goes into his pocket. When it emerges again, he’s holding a fragment of glass between his fingers: a reddish triangle. At the sight of it, shivers crawl all over my skin. I’ve seen it before. I know it.
Taking advantage of his loosened grip, I pull myself free, kicking at his legs, trying to get to my knife. Ifor snaps a word and I’m thrown backwards, my shoulders slamming into the mirror. He looks at me and lifts his eyebrows, unruffled. Virtually indestructible.
I don’t think I have any chance of fighting him.
But the best way to fail is to stop trying.
And so I try again. I manage three paces before invisible bonds curl around my wrists, yanking my arms behind me. My feet are pinned in place. Ifor laughs under his breath.
“I had forgotten how exhausting you are.” Holding up the triangle of glass so that it catches the light, he asks me, “Do you know what this is?”
Memory falls into place. It’s a piece of glass from the wall design in Easterwood. The one that was smeared with blood. The one that held no reflection. But as for what it means –
“It is a key,” Ifor says. “Part of one, at least.” A shadow crosses his face. “I believed it had been destroyed. But people can be very superstitious about glass.”
A woman who used her own blood to make a key of glass. Luthan’s words come back to me. With it, she could hide on the other side of any mirror.
A safe place.
Or, if someone else holds the key … a prison.
“A drop of blood, and you will be gone,” Ifor says. “Safe from all this. The manipulation. The madness.”
“I won’t go.”
He shrugs. “It is your choice, Ariamé. That is how these things work. But I suggest you choose carefully, or you will regret it.”
“You won’t hurt me.” I can feel it in him, as deep and certain as life itself. I don’t know why our relationship is so sacred to him, but I know it’s true. “You’d hurt almost anyone else in the world, to get what you want. But not me.”
He laughs. “Who said anything about hurting you? I know how your mind works, Ariamé. Leave, or I hurt them. While you watch.”
Of course. That’s how this place operates: forced consent. The fool’s bargain. A choice that isn’t really a choice. I shake my head. “You’ll do that anyway.”
“No,” he says. “Agree to this, and I will let them go.”
“I don’t trust you,” I snap. “You’ve already hurt them. How can I be sure you won’t do it again?”
“They deserved it.”
“Then why not me? Why don’t I deserve it too?”
“You do,” he says simply. “But blood is more important even than vengeance. You are my sister. I do what I must to protect you.”
“I don’t want your protection.”
“Nevertheless,” he says. “Leave, and I will keep my word.”
“But why?”
“Because fate is closing in on us all, little sister. But with you safe – alive – history cannot be repeated.”
I hesitate. I can read his meaning clearly enough. This would be a reprieve, not an ending. He’d let them go now, only to come after them again later. Without all five of us there, he might have a chance to win. He’d have changed the pattern of history. And all the time, I’d be stuck in the other world, watching helplessly as he sought to destroy them.
Yet what’s the alternative? Letting him torture them in front of me, one by one. I can’t do that. No, I’m going to have to give him what he wants. Better a glimmer of hope than none at all. Even if it does mean I’ll be in exile the rest of my life …
Exile. The rest of my life.
People can disappear in mirrors.
“All right,” I whisper. My heart is thumping so hard, it almost drowns out the words. I raise my voice so that everyone can hear me. “I agree. Release them, and I’ll go back.”
Ifor makes another swift gesture. The sound of metal on stone echoes in the air as four sets of handcuffs fall to the floor. I shoot a sideways glance across the cavern, watching my friends. Oriana, leading Toralé to the passageway she found earlier. Fabithe, retrieving his sword from the cavern floor before following. Luthan, lingering behind the others, her gaze on my face. But I don’t let myself feel what they’re feeling. Not now. Not when it could break me.
Catching me by the elbow, Ifor swings me round to face the mirror. His reflected gaze meets mine. And his emotions, I allow to flow through me. Satisfaction. Determination. Still, terrifyingly, that hint of love.
In silence, he holds out the triangle of glass. I raise my left hand. Ifor’s brows draw together when he sees the reopened cut on my palm – but then, I turn my hand over and smear the key with my blood.
Our reflection wavers. Like the first light of dawn glimmering on the horizon, the mirror begins to glow. Bright and dim, bright and dim, keeping exact time with my pounding heart. Something stirs, deep in the glass; a shifting, a changing, as though the world is rebuilding itself around me. The cavern, Ifor, the northern soldiers all fade. And in their place –
“I am sorry, alith sia.” His hand catches me between the shoulder blades, pushing me forward.
I teeter.
But even as I lose my balance, I twist round to grab his wrist and yank him after me.
His eyes widen in shock, then narrow in anger. He tries to say something. To wrench his arm away. Yet the two of us are already falling, into our own reflection.