The Mirrored Shard

you, heard, as in heard a story—that when a soul is taken before its time, another soul, a living soul, can touch it and make it remember that it’s not supposed to be dead. There’s a story of a man whose love was taken away by the god of the underworld, and he went after her and led her away from death.”

“What happened?” I said, swiping at my face to get rid of the last vestiges of tears. I’d die before I’d let any of the Fae see me crying.

“He looked back,” my mother said, her eyes falling. Her face was incredibly sad, and I felt a little guilty for pushing her into this. “He looked back at Death, and he was trapped. Forever. So you see, Aoife, it’s not as simple as contacting Dean’s spirit. You’d have to visit the Deadlands, actually visit, risk your life and your soul. It’s not worth it.”

“It’s Dean,” I snapped, more harshly than I meant to. “Anything is worth it.”

“Please,” Nerissa said, her eyes welling with tears. “You’re my only daughter, Aoife. I can’t lose you again. …”

Before I could tell her that she’d already lost me long ago, when she’d been committed, the door opened soundlessly. I’d have known the spike of pain the presence outside brought anywhere. I’d been bitten by a shoggoth what seemed like an eternity ago, and sometimes the venom still reacted with creatures alien to my blood. Tremaine was about as alien as they came.

“Everything all right in here?” he purred. My mother left me and took her place on the other side of the table. I kept my head bowed so Tremaine wouldn’t see my red face and eyes. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much I was hurting. Tremaine reveled in hurt, took pleasure from it like most people did from food or music or dancing. Watching others suffer was his preferred form of entertainment. He was a snake, and I despised him and would until one or both of us was dead and gone.

“Fine,” my mother told him. She took a sip of wine. Everyone drank wine in the Thorn Land, but its berry scent and cloying taste only increased my urge to vomit.

“Dear Aoife.” Tremaine glided in and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Whatever is the matter?”

I slapped his hand off my shoulder. “Don’t touch me,” I said, my voice monotone. I might have to tolerate Tremaine’s presence, as he was regent of the Winter Court, but I didn’t have to tolerate his cold, pale fingers on me.

“Testy, are we?” Tremaine sighed and shared a look with my mother. “She is at that age. Her human blood is making her difficult.”

“We’re fine,” my mother said. “Thank you for your attention, Tremaine.”

My blood boiled, threatened to vault me out of my chair and force my fingers around Tremaine’s throat, but I stayed where I was. I was afraid of Tremaine. The Fae scared me in a way the Proctors and even my own mind didn’t. They were alien, even though half my blood was theirs. Unnatural, unknowable and tempestuous. Even Octavia, the Winter Queen and my mother’s sister, scared the hell out of me.

Tremaine finally left and my mother let out a long sigh. “Tremaine always was a piece of work. You see why you must give up this ridiculous idea, Aoife?” She clasped her hands over mine. They were as warm as Tremaine’s had been icy. “I know you miss Dean. I know you wish you didn’t have to spend the rest of your life here, but that’s just the way it is. To keep healthy and safe, we must live as Fae now, Aoife. I wish I could have been the mother who prepared you for all this, taught you how to sacrifice, but I wasn’t, so my job now is to make it up to you. And you must put aside your thoughts of the Iron Land and learn to accept this new life.”

I looked at her, into her calm pale eyes. Mine were green and dark—my father’s eyes. Human eyes. I felt another stone added to the weight, felt the desperation that had been growing since we arrived in Thorn boil over.

My mother could apologize and say whatever she liked, but she was wrong—the Thorn Land would never be my home.

We did what we always did in the evening: my mother sat by the fire sewing or reading aloud from a book in the Fae language, which sounded like liquid silver running over a rock to my ears, and I used Dean’s pocketknife to carve wooden models of the machines I’d hoped to build, back when things were simple and I was an engineering student rather than a half-Fae anomaly.

There was no iron in Thorn, no mechanical devices except those approved by the queens, and no aether, the blue-white fire that powered everything from radios to lamps in the Iron Land. Whittling was as close as I could come to my chosen vocation. Just another reminder that this was my life now, boredom without end.

I tossed the wood aside and it clattered on the stone floor, far from the satisfying crash I’d hoped for.

My mother yawned and shut her book. “I think I’ll retire,” she said, and that was my signal to lay down my knife and announce that yes, I was tired too. We never did anything separately, were never apart, because she was afraid that a full-blooded Fae might try to harm me. She’d never stated it explicitly, but I saw the fear in her eyes whenever I so much as crossed the room to retrieve a book or a new block of wood.

Tonight, though, I had other plans. “Nerissa,” I said. She flinched.

“I thought we’d at least gotten past using each other’s first names as if we were at a tea party,” she told me.

“I understand you’re protecting me, but you need to do what you promised,” I said. “You need to tell me what I have to do to see Dean again, or I’m going to leave.”

Her book dropped to the carpet with a soft thunk and I saw the panic rise in her eyes like a flash flood. I felt horrible issuing such an ultimatum, like the worst kind of defiant child, but it had to be done.

I couldn’t stay here. I’d always known that this wasn’t permanent, safe as I might be. Living in Thorn might actually drive me madder than iron poisoning would.

“You mustn’t …,” she started. “You can’t.”

“I can,” I said. “You know what my Weird is, Mother. My gift. I don’t even need a hexenring to leave Thorn.” The Fae system of travel, enchanted rings that spirited the user from place to place, was arcane compared with the mechanical magic of the Gates, interdimensional devices designed by Tesla to travel all the lands one after the other as if they were beads on a necklace. But I didn’t even need mechanics to do it—my gift was creating Gates, and I’d used the knowledge that I could leave Thorn anytime I wanted to keep myself patient and compliant.

But now my patience was at an end. I had to see Dean. And I had to know that my family—my real family, my father and brother and best friend, Cal—were all right.

“To speak that way will get you exactly the wrong kind of attention,” Nerissa hissed.

“Tell me,” I said, raising my voice, “or I’m going to disappear through a Gate right in front of Tremaine’s bug-eyed face.”

“All right!” my mother shouted, kicking the book at her feet. It flew like a dying bird, in a low arc, and hit the wall with a smack before wilting to the ground again. “Stone and sun, Aoife, you are a difficult child.”

I raised my chin and tried to pretend that the words didn’t sting coming from her. That I’d never wished for a mother who tried to be reasonable rather than one who got angry when I did, who was still largely lost in her own world. Wishing for things I could never have didn’t work. I was still human enough to realize that.

“I’m not doing this to spite you,” my mother said. “Believe it or not, I’m doing it because I care about you and I’ve hurt you enough. I won’t contribute to any more disasters befalling you, Aoife. I simply won’t.”

I thought very carefully about how to phrase my next request. “Mother,” I said, “I don’t want you to be angry with me, but that’s for me to decide. My entire life, I’ve had to decide everything for myself, whether I wanted to or not, and because of that I know what I can and can’t do. I—”

But she cut me short. “You can’t do this!” she shouted. “You think you’re invincible with that dark blood the Graysons gave you, but this is beyond anything. You can’t simply have this Dean boy alive again, Aoife—you’d have to visit the Deadlands, and no Gate goes there. Not even one you make yourself.”

With that, she stalked over, snatched up her book and went to the door of her bedroom. “Now, that’s the last I’ll say on the matter,” she snapped. “Go to sleep and stop whining like a little girl who didn’t get a sweet.”

Her door slammed, shutting off my reply, which was for the best. It was hot, and angry, and rude.

I didn’t want the last thing I said to my mother to be in a fight, but it turned out that way.

At least she’d told me what I needed to know—to find Dean, I would have to visit the Deadlands. There was