The roots were white, like the branches in the Shrine, like the trees in the inverted forest. Dark veins ran through them, streaks of shadow that were still somehow luminescent. But far above, where the roots ended and the trunk began, were faint glimmers of gold.
Neverah Valedren.
A voice, reverberating all around her, coming from every direction and none at all. The diffuse sound made it difficult to pick out characteristics, but it came across as vaguely masculine, confident. Half familiar.
She took a step forward, toward the root tower. The tree itself grew no closer, but every step seemed to ground her more in her body. Her nightgown was gone, and Solmir’s coat and the Seamstress’s boots, leaving her in nothing but a gauzy white covering that reminded her uncomfortably of a shroud.
Following some deep dream instinct, Neve began to climb up the roots toward the trunk.
Something glimmered in all that white wood. As she drew closer, she saw it was a mirror, one framed in golden gilt that looked vaguely shabby against the luminous glow of the tree bark. Rusty stains marred the frame, the color almost unbearably lurid, and blond hairs had been woven through the whorls like rays from a faded sun.
But the mirror wasn’t nearly as unsettling as the reflection it held.
Neve’s veins were black under white skin, every one of them, tracing her entire frame in a lacing of darkness. Tiny spikes grew down from her wrist, largest near her hand, tapering into smaller points as they grew nearer her elbow. More thorns stood out from her knuckles, a gauntlet. And her eyes were wholly, completely black.
Just like Solmir’s had been when he took in all that magic from the Seamstress, the lesser beasts they’d killed. Except hers didn’t have the slightest touch of color that signified the presence of a soul.
This must be the monstrousness he was saving her from.
Gently, Neve lifted one thorn-laced hand and touched the mirror’s silvery surface, her skin gray against the red and gold.
Something shifted in the glass. A momentary distortion of her reflection, her gauntness filled out and given color. Dark-gold hair, fierce brown eyes, a face with fuller lips and plumper cheeks than her own.
Red.
There and then gone, and Neve all but clawed at the mirror, her spiked hands arching on the glass as if she could smash it. “Red! Can you hear me? Come back!”
But her reflection was merely her own again, and even that was momentary. The mirror stopped picking up her image and instead showed only a thick tangle of tree roots touched with darkness.
Neve slapped her hand against the glass. “Red!”
Nothing.
She slid to her knees, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes, mindless of her bracelets of thorns.
You almost have it.
That voice again, the one that had said her name, full and soft and somehow familiar, like a memory from childhood she couldn’t quite hold together. Sorrow welled in it, one deep enough to make answering pain echo in her chest. She took her hands from her eyes—no blood, as if her thorns were incapable of harming their wielder—and peered into the fog. “What?”
You aren’t ready to be the mirror yet. Not until you find the Tree, find the key.
Neve shook her head. Nonsense words in a nonsense place, but the voice had mentioned the Tree, and that made her think this was something she should pay attention to. “Who are you? An Old One? One of their adherents?”
A pause. Behind the mirror, in the gaps between the tree roots, Neve almost saw a figure. It was gone too quickly to make out anything distinct.
I don’t know what I am. Not really. Faint, with a note of longing. But I don’t think I ever did.
Frustration faded to something more complicated. Neve swallowed, gnawing on her bottom lip. “Why should I trust you, then?”
You probably shouldn’t. Almost joking. But you’ve made lots of questionable decisions when it comes to whom to trust.
Damn her if she was going to be lectured by a disembodied voice in a shadowy not-quite-dream—she’d rather just get to the point. “Do you know something about the Tree?”
I think I do. Maybe. But memories… they’re like fog. A billow of mist rolled across Neve’s feet. When I see you, it’s easier. But I’m caught in between.
“Between what?”
The two worlds. The two of you. Life and death, too, I think.
Neve wrapped her arms around herself, cold seeping through the gauzy dream-dress. “Tell me what you know.”
The Tree waits for you, in the place it’s always been. But just reaching it is not enough—there must be a mirrored journey, a matched love. And a key, if you’re to return.