“Come on, handsome.” Puck put a hand on my shoulder, and I brushed it off. “Quit preening. I think we’re almost there.”
As we started down the corridor, wary of traps and pits and ambushes, I thought of Meghan, back in the Iron Kingdom. It would be dreadfully ironic, I mused, if once I earned a soul, I forgot everything about being fey, including all my memories of her. That sort of ending seemed appropriately tragic; the smitten fey creature becomes human but forgets why he wanted to in the first place. Old fairy tales loved that sort of irony.
The hallway went on. The flickering candles cast strange lights in the opposite mirrors, endless rows of flame, stretching to infinity. From the corner of my eye, I saw my own dark ref lection, walking along beside me. Smirking.
Except, I wasn’t.
I stopped and slowly turned toward the mirror, dropping my hand to my sword. In the glass, my reflection did the same … but it wasn’t me. It was someone who looked like me, pale and tall, with dark hair and silver eyes. He wore black armor, a tattered cape and a crown of ice rested on his brow. I drew in a slow breath and I recognized him.
It was me, the me I’d seen in the dream, the Ash who gave in to the darkness. Who killed Mab, claimed the throne and cut a bloody path through the Nevernever and the other courts. Ash the Winter King.
He was smiling at me, that same cold, empty smirk that showed the madness behind it, but otherwise our movements were the same, identical.
Backing away, I looked to my companions, who had also discovered the new reflections in the mirrors. Behind me, Ariella stared in horror at herself, pale and statuesque in an elegant court gown. Her slender hands gripped an icy scepter. But her eyes were empty and cruel, her face without emotion. A circlet glittered on her forehead, not unlike the crown of the Unseelie King. A Queen of Winter, she stared with cold, impassive eyes until Ariella turned away with a shudder.
“Prince,” Puck murmured, coming up beside me, standing so that he faced my shoulder, his back to the mirror. His voice, though light, was curiously shaken. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing, or is it just me?”
I glanced at Puck in the mirror behind us and had to stifle the urge to shove him away and draw my sword. Puck’s head gazed over my shoulder, lips pulled into a vicious grin that was almost animalistic, teeth gleaming in the firelight. His eyes were narrowed gleefully, but it was the kind of mad glee that sent shivers through you, the type of glee that found humor in drowned kittens and poisoned cattle. This was the prankster whose jokes had turned deadly, who put adders in pillowcases, let wolves in with the sheep and made all light go away at the edge of a cliff. He was shirtless, barefooted and wild looking, the Robin Goodfellow I’d seen glimpses of when he was truly angry and out for revenge. The Robin Goodfellow that everyone worried about, because we all knew Puck could turn into this.
“You can see it too, huh?” Puck murmured when I didn’t say anything right away. I nodded, once. “Well, your reflection isn’t too encouraging either, ice-boy. In fact, it’s kinda weird seeing us like this, because you look like you really, really want to cut my head off.”
I pushed him away, and our images did the same. “Ignore them,” I said, walking toward Ariella. “They’re only reflections of what could be. They don’t mean anything.”
“Wrong.” Grimalkin appeared, trotting up and sitting down in front of a mirror, curling his tail around his legs. His golden eyes observed me lazily. “It is not what could be, prince. It is what already is. You all have that reflection inside you. You just choose to suppress it. Take the dog, for example,” he continued as the Wolf came loping back, his ruff standing on end. Ariella gasped, shrinking against me, and Puck muttered a curse under his breath.
The Wolf’s reflection was enormous, filling three mirrors side by side, a huge, snarling monster with blazing eyes and foaming jaws. It stared at us hungrily, red tongue lolling between huge fangs, eyes empty of rational thought.
“A beast,” Grimalkin said calmly as the real Wolf curled a lip at him. “A beast in its truest, savage nature. With no intelligence, no clear thoughts, no morals, just raw animal instincts and the desire to kill. That is what your reflections show you—yourself in your purest form. Do not dismiss them as having no meaning. You only deceive yourself if you do.” He stood and curled his whiskers at us. “Now, hurry. We have no time to stand around doing nothing. If the mirrors upset you, the logical answer would be not to look at them. Let us go.”
He lashed his tail and trotted off, back down the hallway into the dark. As he padded away, not bothering to glance back, I noticed that the cait sith’s reflection looked no different from the real Grimalkin. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised.
As we hurried after Grimalkin, I glanced at my ref lection once more and received another shock. It wasn’t there anymore, and neither were any of the others. The candles, the flickering flames, still cast their reflections, stretching away into infinity, but our images were gone.
“Hurry!” came Grimalkin’s voice, echoing out of the darkness. “Time is running out.”
We broke into a sprint, footsteps echoing down the narrow corridor, passing hundreds of eerily empty mirrors. I could see the candles flickering around us, thousands of orange lights reflected in the glassy walls. But other than the lights and the opposite walls, the mirrors showed nothing else. It was like we weren’t even there.
We came to a crossing, where another hallway stretched away in opposite directions, vanishing into the black. In the middle sat Grimalkin, calmly washing a front paw. He blinked as we stopped, gazing up with a bemused expression on his face.
“Yes?”
“What do you mean, yes?” Puck said. “Did your feline brain finally snap? You said to hurry, and now you’re just sitting here. What’s the deal?”
“The exit is farther down.” Grimalkin yawned, curled his tail around his legs, and smiled at us. “But I doubt you will ever reach it. I find it amusing that you can speak so freely of intelligence, when you cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is not.”
“What?” Puck looked startled, but the Wolf suddenly let out a snarl that raised the hair on the back of my neck. I drew my sword and looked up, searching for hidden attackers.
Robin Goodfellow smiled at me from the mirror’s reflection, arms crossed to his chest, a demonic grin on his face. I spared a quick glance at Puck, and saw him backing away, pulling his daggers, different actions from his image on the wall. His reflection waved cheerfully …
… and stepped out of the mirror.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Goodfellow smiled, drawing his own weapons as he faced the real Puck. “The party’s just getting started.”
Movement rippled behind me. I spun, throwing myself to the side as the monstrous head of the other Wolf exploded from the frame and lunged at me. I felt its hot breath and heard the snap of its massive jaws inches from my head. Backing away, I drew my sword as it slid out of the mirror and into the hall, a monstrous creature with burning green eyes, drool hanging in ribbons from its teeth. It howled, making the mirrors tremble, and crouched to spring at me, and that’s when the real Wolf hit it from behind.
I leaped aside as the two giant wolves careened past, ripping and tearing at each other, vanishing down the side hallway. The smell of blood filled the air, the roars and snarls adding to the din of chaos. I turned to see Puck locked in battle with his twin and a second Robin Goodfellow stepping out of the mirror behind him, raising his blade.
An arrow streaked through the air, striking the second false Puck in the chest, causing him to explode in a swirl of leaves. Ariella, grim-faced and determined, raised her bow again, but a tall, pale figure slid out of the mirror beside her. I shouted and lunged forward, but the false Ariella raised her scepter and struck her twin in the back of the head. Ariella crumpled to the floor, dazed, and the false Ariella loomed over her with a vicious smile.
Roaring, I flew at the false Ariella, but the Ice Queen raised dead, cold eyes to me and slipped back into the mirror. I swung at her retreating form, and my blade struck the surface of the glass, shattering it. Shards flew from the force of the blow, glinting in the light, and the entire surface collapsed in a ringing cacophony, scattering
