Page 137 of The Mirror of Beasts

My disappointment stung so deep, it left me breathless. I tugged at my braided bracelet, trying to rip it off, but the knot held firm.

Caitriona was as stubborn as stone; only death would change her path now. A part of me hated her for this, and the longer I lingered there, in pain and resentment, the uglier my anger became.

We had chosen each other. We were supposed to see this through together.

Together to the end.

But I blamed myself, too. I’d felt her there on that precipice, all along, every moment since that last day in Avalon. I’d thought that if we were together, we’d be there to draw her back from the darkness that seemed to be gathering around us at every turn. To save her from her own fury.

“There are some journeys,” Nash said, “we can only take ourselves.”

“It’s not right,” I told him.

“No,” he said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “But it is necessary.”

None of us were who we used to be. The Caitriona I knew would never abandon a sister, or a friend. She would never seek revenge, as the sorceresses had so many centuries ago.

You weren’t enough, came that old voice inside me. The one that had ruled over my heart for years like a tyrant. You were never enough to save the people you love. To keep them with you.

“Life is a mirror,” Nash said. “There are times we must stare into its depths and face what we have become. The true fight is in saving ourselves if we cannot accept what we see there.”

I am enough, I thought. I am enough. I wasn’t going to be the one to let go of us. And maybe that made me a fool, and pathetic, and all the things I used to be afraid of, but I knew now that choosing hope was the braver thing than letting go first to avoid being hurt.

I chose them, and I would keep choosing them, no matter what happened, or who we became.

“Until she returns, we must keep moving forward,” Nash said, guiding us back to the door the sorceresses had already passed through. He entered first, whistling some soft song, leaving Emrys and me to watch him disappear.

Emrys leaned down to kiss my cheek. I turned toward him in surprise, flushing.

“It’ll be all right,” he said softly, as if knowing every storm in my heart.

“You can’t promise that,” I said.

He took my hand. “I just did.”

We walked through the split between the worlds together. I turned back one final time, but only to watch the shadowed land of Lyonesse vanish as I shut the door behind us.

“Where are we, anyway?”

“Highgate Cemetery,” Emrys answered after a quick look around.

“It’s the Circle of Lebanon,” Nash corrected.

“The Circle of Lebanon located in Highgate Cemetery,” Emrys said in turn.

Nash peered at him in the darkness, looking more and more peevish by the moment.

“So, London,” I said, rolling my eyes.

I hurried past them, trying to catch up to where the sorceresses were cutting a slow path through the nearby tombs. Burial vaults lined the walls on either side of us, curving around to form a sunken circle set apart from the rest of the cemetery.

The location of the Council of Sistren’s headquarters was a closely guarded secret, though many had assumed it was in London, just by virtue of how many sorceresses were spotted there. Every time a Hollower tried to follow them back to wherever it was they met, they invariably became lost and found themselves on the steps of the Tower of London. I’d always thought that last bit was a nice touch.

Emrys fell in step beside me, taking a long look at the cedar sapling tree looming over us. It had been planted on top of the tombs at the circle’s center, its youth at odds with the vaults’ moss-flecked stone facades. Their Egyptian-inspired architectural flair was dulled by age.

The family names etched into the stone above their doorways were barely visible as nature encroached from all sides. Creeping fingers of ivy and dying grass spread with abandon.

The night seemed to breathe disquiet. I felt unseen eyes watching us from beneath the stalks of leaves jutting out of the shrinking mounds of snow, through the cracks in the walls of the vaults. Cold pressure materialized at our backs, as if filling in the place Caitriona had vacated. But when I turned, only Nash was there, his expression grim as he surveyed the burial grounds.

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