Elias was standing among many other men, upon the foot of a bridge. He was wearing a uniform, Dora thought, and it looked as though it had not been washed for some time. Still, his wild white-blond hair stood out among the other men, and the bright fire that danced between his fingers commanded attention. The men around him fired muskets, so that she couldn’t tell the difference between the smoke of the guns and the smoke of the flames. The Lord Sorcier had no musket—nor indeed did he require one, given the far more deadly weapon in his hands.
“...if I were a black magician, that is,” Elias said distantly, and his tone seemed hard now. “But I am not, Lady Hayworth. And if you intend to accuse me of such, you had best be prepared to repeat your words before the Prince Regent. It is primarily the court magician who stands between England and the dark arts. I cannot fulfill that duty if there are whispers that I abuse my magic.”
Dirt flew, and a sudden chaos came upon the line of men. At first, Dora lost sight of Elias entirely—but then she found him on the ground, thrown violently back by some concussive force. The fire in his hands had winked away, and far more blood now stained his uniform.
His mouth was open, and his face was agonized. It took Dora a moment to realise that he was screaming, since she heard no hint of the actual sound.
“I will retract that much, Lord Sorcier,” Lady Hayworth murmured reluctantly. “None in this household will gainsay your loyalty to England. Your lack of couth, on the other hand, is a matter of open record.”
Dora stared at the thrashing figure of the Lord Sorcier, unable to reconcile the sight with the man that had handed her the mirror. The chaos of the entire scene afflicted her badly; she knew that it would haunt her far more terribly than even the pile of miserable words she kept at the bottom of her mind. Is this the war? Dora thought. This must be what the soldiers were doing off in France, not so very long ago.
“Fortunately,” Elias said lightly, “lack of couth has not yet been named a crime. Though I am sure Lord Hayworth might bring it up when the House of Lords next convenes. You should suggest it to him.”
Another soldier staggered towards the Lord Sorcier, clearly off-kilter himself. As he collapsed to his knees before Elias, Dora recognised Albert’s brown hair and currently-dirty features.
Men closed in around them in a tight panic. Dora saw them all shouting things, but she couldn’t tell the nature of their words. Albert, still dazed and bleeding himself, tore back the Lord Sorcier’s uniform. Beneath, Dora saw two hideous-looking injuries—one on Elias’ right arm, and one at his shoulder. The blood was awful—but far worse was the way in which Elias’ pale skin seemed to burn. It was this burning, Dora thought, that made him scream so painfully. But it surely could not have helped matters when Albert went digging into those injuries with his surgeon’s knife.
I ought to be sick, watching this, Dora thought to herself. But for once, she was glad to be devoid of most emotion. The awful scene in the mirror might well haunt her nightmares, but at least it did not make her shiver or cry.
Albert pried loose a bloody, jagged-looking piece of shrapnel from the injury in Elias’ shoulder. As he tossed it aside, the burning there lessened and faded away. The second jagged bit of metal was much harder to dig out, and Dora greatly wished that she could look away. But there was the peculiar sense that she wasn’t even properly in her body, and so she didn’t know quite how to turn her head.
Albert dug and dug, and the Lord Sorcier’s eyes rolled back in his head. He seemed in danger of fainting—but as Albert retrieved the other bit of shrapnel, he slapped the Lord Sorcier’s cheek and murmured something to him which forced the other man to focus.
Men fell around them—some merely injured, some glassy-eyed with death. But others reached down to haul Elias to his feet... and Dora was discomfited to see that hellish fire reappear between his hands.
Mercifully, the mirror now went black—the vision snapped away before she could see the results of his magical handiwork.
“Miss Ettings?” Elias asked. Dora glanced up at him sharply. It seemed wrong to her, suddenly, that he seemed so clean and relatively relaxed. But was he relaxed? Dora remembered now the way that he had jumped at that small brush across his shoulder, at the party. The fear on his face, she realised, had been a distant cousin to the frightful confusion he’d worn upon the battlefield.
Elias frowned at her. “You have seen something, then,” he said. There was a note of triumph in his voice which suggested he had confirmed some sort of theory.
“I did,” Dora agreed. A faint nausea churned in her stomach—but as usual, it failed to make its way into her voice. “I believe that I saw Mr Lowe save your life.”
The Lord Sorcier’s eyes widened a fraction at that, and Dora knew then that he had not anticipated she might see such an awful scene. “That is... interesting,” Elias said slowly. He looked genuinely troubled. “You have my apologies. That was... an unfortunate day.”
Dora chewed at her lip. She wanted to ask all manner of questions about what she’d seen, but she knew that the countess was listening intently to every word they spoke. If Lady Hayworth thought that Elias was showing her such things, she would probably toss
