“Ominous.”
Eammon tugged off the cloth. Beneath, a mirror, or something shaped like one. The glass wasn’t reflective— instead, a matte gray. The color within it shifted, like looking into a smoke-filled jar.
“What is it?”
“My mother made it with Wilderwood magic.” Eammon glanced at her, eyes unreadable. “To see her sister, Tiernan.”
Understanding was an undertow. Red’s hands fell numb at her sides. She turned from Eammon to the mirror, wariness washed away by longing. She’d grown adept at pushing away thoughts of Neve, these past weeks in the forest, but just the mention of the word sister made her heart feel suddenly too big for her rib cage. “Oh.”
“It’s old,” Eammon cautioned. “No one has tried to use it for centuries, and with the way the Wilderwood is now, it could be completely useless. But I . . .” He trailed off, took a breath. “You said, if you could do anything, you’d tell your sister you were safe. This won’t let you speak with her, but hopefully, it will at least let you see her.”
Gratitude seemed too small a term for the sudden lightness in her chest, like a weight she hadn’t noticed she was carrying suddenly lifted. “Eammon . . .” She stopped, swallowed. “Eammon, this is . . .”
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry this is all I have to give you.”
“It’s enough.” Her answer came immediately, instinctually. In the firelight, his eyes looked like honey.
Red stepped forward, reaching for the mirror but not quite touching it. “How does it work?”
“Sacrifice.” Eammon snorted. “Of course.”
“Blood?”
“No.” Quick, sharp. “I mean, it would work, but perhaps let’s give the bleeding a rest.”
Her rough braid fell over her shoulder; Red plucked out a split-ended strand and held it up. “This, then?”
Eammon nodded, arms crossed and jaw tense. “I’ll be right here,” he said, stern once again. “If something feels strange, in any way, I’m pulling you out.”
Red made an absent noise of agreement, all her attention on the matte surface of the mirror. Carefully, she wound the long strand of her hair through the swirls of the frame. Then she stepped back, stared into its darkness, and waited.
Five heartbeats, six. Nothing. Disappointment tasted bitter in the back of Red’s throat, and she was about to turn away, when something glimmered in the depths of the mirror.
The light of it caught her, reeled her in, a speck of silver in the gray. The longer she stared, the larger and more brilliant it grew, smoke billowing across its shine, growing and growing until it filled her vision entirely.
A blast of soundless light, like an exploding star, smoke whirling into dark cosmos.
And when the smoke cleared, there was Neve.
Chapter Eighteen
I t was like looking through a window. No, not quite— like being trapped in a window, folded into the glass. She tried to move and couldn’t, couldn’t sense her limbs at all. Her awareness was stretched thin, diffused and refracted into mirror-light.
Neve stood in the Shrine, behind the statue of Gaya. Her figure was smudged, but still Red could see she was thinner than before, her cheeks gaunt. A bandage wrapped around her left hand.
Red tried to scream for her, forgetting it would be fruitless, that this mirror was one-way and only for seeing. Distantly, she felt the work of vocal cords, but there was no sound, nothing.
Still, her shout seemed to spark something, like her desire strengthened the magic that made the mirror. Gradually, Neve’s image cleared, grew solid.
“We’ve been doing this for a month now, and she hasn’t returned.” Her sister was turned to the side, brows drawn down, dark eyes narrowed. Her lip disappeared between her teeth, an anxious tell she and Red shared. “Why hasn’t she escaped?”
Red couldn’t make out whomever Neve spoke to— they were blurred, shadowed. This mirror was built to show the First Daughter, and it did no more than that.
“It will take time.” The voice came muffled, barely clear enough to hear. “Great things often do. Patience, Neverah.”
“Is there no way to hurry things along?” Neve’s arms crossed over her thin chest. When her head lifted, firelight caught on the silver circlet in her hair. More ornate than the one she usually wore. Familiar in a way that tugged at the back of Red’s mind, that seemed somehow off.
“Perhaps.”
“Tell me what we need, Kiri.” Neve was no stranger to a commanding tone, but there was some new strength in it now. The voice of someone who knew beyond a doubt she’d be obeyed. “Tell me what we need, and I will make sure it happens.”