Page 153 of The Mirror of Beasts

“Disreputable should have been your first clue, Gwyn,” Nash said solemnly. “As we can both attest, a bird may shed its feathers, but they always come back the same.”

“What’s going on?” Cabell asked, a new edge to his words.

“All this time, all these many centuries, you’ve been working against me,” Lord Death said. “Hiding her from me.”

Nash smirked. It seemed he’d come to a conclusion of his own, and now the ruse was at its end. “How it must bite to know she’s been in front of you this whole time and you couldn’t see it.”

“Her mother cast some enchantment to ensure I wouldn’t,” Lord Death said, furious.

“No,” Nash said. “You never saw Creiddylad for who she truly was, so how could you recognize her soul in its new form?”

Cabell sucked in a harsh breath, finally understanding. Slowly, I dropped into a crouch, my fingers closing over the stone beneath my heel.

Lord Death’s nostrils flared. “You dare—”

I whipped my arm around, chucking the rock at his head. Lord Death dodged it with ease, but the moment’s distraction was enough for Nash to slam his hands down on the blunt side of his sword, flipping it out of his brother’s hands and into his own. He advanced, forcing Lord Death back.

“Cabell,” Nash said. He didn’t take his eyes off Lord Death, but now he reached his own hand out toward Cabell. “It’s all right now. You can come home. You can always come home.”

Cabell’s throat worked. “We have no home. We never have.”

“That’s not the truth,” Nash said. “Our home has been us three, wherever fate brought us. You chose to be with us all those years ago. You chose to become what you are, and now you get to choose again.”

Cabell’s entire body seemed to tremble, but he didn’t move. He didn’t react at all.

“He left you, Bledig,” Lord Death sneered. “He let you believe you were something you were not, and hid your true nature—”

Nash continued, undaunted. “I didn’t want to leave you. I never meant to.”

Cabell didn’t move as Nash came toward him slowly. His face was almost pleading, begging for that to be true. “But you did. Annwn is my real home.”

“That is a world of darkness. You don’t belong there.”

“Don’t I?”

The question forced Nash to turn back. The words blazed out of him. “You’re my boy. There’s no magic in any world powerful enough to change that.”

I’d been watching Lord Death out of the corner of my eye, waiting for him to strike with death magic, or another weapon we’d yet to see. Instead, he offered Cabell his own hand.

“You know what you are,” he said as Cabell looked at him. “You know where you belong now.”

There was a movement at the top of the stairs. I whirled toward it in time to see the swirl of patterned emerald fabric. A wand that burned another symbol into the air in three quick strokes.

The curse made no sound. It didn’t flash or erupt like an explosion, even as the stench of its magic scorched the air. It was a faint thread of light that shot like an arrow right at Cabell’s chest.

I threw myself forward, but Nash was already there, knocking Cabell to the floor. The blast of magic struck his left arm and sent him spiraling back through the air on a wave of pressure. I screamed as he struck the floor.

The fighting roared behind me; the screeching of the hunters, the sorceresses bellowing commands. Curses flashed in the air around my head, scorching chaotic paths that blew chunks out of the walls, cracked the ceiling, and singed my arm. I threw myself to the floor, trying to cover my head to protect it. A curse glanced off the door beside Lord Death as he seized Cabell by the shoulder. The two of them disappeared into a swirl of shadows.

“Nash!” I stayed low, even as the fighting shifted away, retreating deeper into the headquarters, crawling toward his sprawled form.

Breath sawed out of him. His pale eyes widened as they locked on my face. His hand felt across the floor to seize mine. It was the grip that frightened me, squeezing with each shudder of pain, even before I saw what was happening to his body.

Gray stone erupted from the hole the curse had left in the sleeve of his overcoat, spreading over his arm like wet cement, hardening too quickly to wipe away.

Terror seized me as I turned toward the door again, screaming, “Help! Help! Please, someone!”

A sorceress had cast the curse, and another sorceress would have to break it—

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