Her fingers went to my arm, and she pulled me down toward her. I went, lowering my head as though she were inside my mind. Because by some import, she was.
“From the first moment you saw her, you saw the power in those eyes. Incredible,” she whispered. “Incredible, and terrifying.”
I didn’t speak. I only saw Eurydice standing amidst the wreckage of her home, that blond braid down her back. Just her. Then she’d turned toward my blade, and I’d been stunned. Entranced. And yes, terrified.
Just as I’d been in that meadow, when she’d called the rain. The first time and the second time, when she’d straddled me like she might kill me.
“There’s a monster inside her. It eats light,” Liora said. “Will you love that, too? When it comes out of her—when she stands on the Killing Fields and looks back at you?”
Before I could answer, solaire appeared in her hand. With strength only a Highmark queen could possess, she thrust me away in a starburst of light.
I was thrown into the mirror, and through it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Eurydice
Green afternoon lightpoured into the cave. Outside its mouth, rain fell hard and fast. Astringent, stinging my nose.
I had gotten soft. I had been away so long, my body had lost some of its resistance to the acid. But the sting feltgood.It felt like home.
Two minutes later, Dorian stumbled through the mirror like he’d fallen—or been shoved.
I rose from my crouch. “Lost your way?”
He straightened, glared back at the mirror as though it had offended him. “Liora had a few words for me.”
“She always does, doesn’t she?” Only now did I remember the stone still in my hand; I pocketed it. “What did she say?”
His face shuttered so fast, I hardly saw the change happen. “She told me to protect you. Keepyou safe.”
A laugh scraped out of me, and I turned away. Some bullshit. “We have to wait until the rain stops.”
“Should be in about a half hour,” he said, and his footsteps took him deeper into the cave.
“How would you know that?” I said, twisting around.
“A bear hibernates here in winter.” He sniffed, deep and thoughtful. “That’s why no one ever found the mirror.”
I stared. He was talking as though…
“Did Liora mention how we’re supposed to get inside the wall?”
“We wait until night.” He kicked at some old moss on the floor. “Then we climb.”
“Climbwhat?” He couldn’t possibly mean?—
“The stones. There’s handholds the whole way up.”
“That’stwelve stories.”
“Yes,” he said. “I know.”
He dropped to a seat and began removing things from his belt. He pulled out a small pouch, untied it, and held it up in his palm. “Chalk, for grip.”
Chalk? Fucking chalk?
I grabbed the pouch. “We can’t possibly climb the wall. We’ll be spotted before we’re halfway up.”