Haskel had always told me I had more than five senses. A sixth sense, one for the uncanny—for danger. In truth, I sensednoxveil. And my instinct was, every time, spot on.
The central room sat quiet, the fountain and bookcases and tapestry all untouched, unmoving. The secret door had not opened, and nothing at all had changed. The fountain went on tinkling, the fish swimming, the moonlight shining.
The feeling came from behind… past the doorway to Eury’s room.
Before I understood why, I was in motion. I rose from the chair, blade in hand. I turned through the doorway and into the room. I set both hands on the grip of my sword, and there it was.
A mirror wraith.
I knew it before I fully saw it. The cold. The way light died at its edges. The formless dark sliding from the mirror like oil across water, pooling on the floor, seeping toward her.
It rose along the edge of her bed, stretching upward, reaching—until it came to a crouch like it had crawled there to watch her sleep.
I’d seen what these things did to a body. Two seconds more, and she would be dead.
One stride, and I leapt onto the bed, flipped the blade point-down, and drove it into the creature with both hands. The iron tipripped through bedding, mattress, and nearly penetrated the floor beneath.
Its shriek was thin and bottomless, the wail of a night-creature.
Eury woke, eyes wide, feet already in motion under the covers to press herself away from what I knew was incomprehensible to her.
We met gazes, and I twisted my sword with a snarl.
“Gawain is here.”
All of us except Mirek gathered in Eury’s bedchamber. Faun had already dealt with Liora’s handmaiden Theia—I didn’t ask how, but the fae was no longer at her post when I checked outside our guest chamber door.
We were alone, or seemed to be. If I knew Liora at all, she had other handmaidens with ears to the walls in places we couldn’t see, couldn’t reach. It didn’t matter much; the Dawnmaker would find out, in one way or another, about the mirror wraith.
In Eury’s room, Haskel sat with crossed arms in a chair in the corner, Eury sat on the edge of her partially destroyed bed, and Faun paced.
As soon as I’d killed it, the wraith had dissipated into nothing. The only proof of its existence was what Eury and I had seen. Seconds later, I’d detached the mirror from the wall and brought it out into the central room. I wanted to smash it, but Faun had stopped me. “Best not to destroy it before we understand it.”
So it lay on the floor, reflecting the moonlight back up at the glass ceiling like a terrible black pool visible through the doorway.
Faun pointed at me. “You’re sure it was Gawain.”
I leaned against the wall, pulse still thundering. “No one else deals in mirror wraiths.”
The creature wasn’t as fast as most night-creatures. It was probably meant to fail. Which meant Gawain was testing our defenses.He wanted to see how well Eury was protected, how fast we’d respond. Whether herveyreslept in her room.
This was reconnaissance.
Even worse, he’d already weakened us. We’d sleep worse tonight, trust less. The wraith was an injection of adrenaline and paranoia straight to the veins.
Faun reached one end of the room, turned, paced back. “Sylvanwild had mirror wraiths, long ago.”
“Not in hundreds of years,” Haskel said. “And few of us ever knew the art.”
“You did?” Eury asked.
“Not I,” Haskel said with a chuff. “It was a guarded practice.”
“Court spies,” I said. “The Unseelie courts once shared their arts. It all draws from the same source, anyway.” Feralis and noxveil were two parts of Unseelie magic.
Eury had picked up her folding knife from her bedside table. She unfolded it, staring down at the blade. “Who is Gawain?”
“Maeronyx’s spymaster,” Haskel said.And much more than that.