Page 2 of The Mirror of Beasts

The door swung open at Emrys’s touch. He caught an unusual green scent—fresh and sweet and so unlike his father’s tobacco and sandalwood cologne, which usually clung to this room. With one last deep breath and a swipe at his unruly hair, Emrys stepped inside.

The shadows of Summerland House seemed to love this room best, stroking the books on the shelves and lounging on the old, velvet-tufted chairs gathered before a cold marble fireplace.

But tonight, the room was draped in crimson silk curtains that concealed all but what lay at its center.

A ring of candles glowed around him, making the fabric shimmer. With the storm’s thunder muffled by the static growing in his ears, and the pounding dread that seized his body, it felt, for a moment, like Emrys was trapped inside a chamber of a throbbing heart.

On the floor, a garland of holly and a garland of oak leaves had been knotted together in a strange pattern. One that seemed vaguely familiar.

“What in the hell … ?” he breathed out, taking a step back toward the door. But when he felt for it, the handle was gone.

There were a rustling of fabric and a shift in the air behind him. Emrys’s pulse jumped violently as a hooded figure parted the silk curtains and stepped out, a long silver ceremonial knife clutched in his hands. An eerie wooden mask, utterly expressionless, covered his face, but Emrys recognized the man’s rigid gait, the signet ring on the left little finger, the familiar scent of his tobacco and sandalwood cologne.

“No …,” Emrys began, his shock burning like bile in his throat. “Dad—”

It was the house that answered, triumphant and ravenous from the shadows.

Goodbye, boy.

“No, Tamsin. To break yours.”

As Nash’s words faded in the air, other sounds rushed in to fill the void of silence they left behind. Distant cars and voices moving endlessly through Boston’s old streets. Music from a nearby bar whispering through the walls. My upstairs neighbor pacing, his feet beating out a muted rhythm through the ceiling. The rasp of Nash’s fingers torturing his hat’s brim. All vying to fill the long silence that stretched between us.

And still, I couldn’t bring myself to speak.

“It’s been a long time, I know,” Nash continued, his voice gruff. “A long time past too long …”

Whatever he said next vanished beneath the roar of blood rushing in my ears. The throb of my heartbeat that seemed to make my whole body shake with the force of it. My hand closed into a fist, and before I could stop myself, before I could tame that surge of pure, unadulterated fury, I punched him.

Nash staggered back, swearing beneath his breath.

“Tamsin!” Neve gasped.

I shook out my stinging hand, watching with grim satisfaction as he pressed his own against his face to stanch the flow of blood from his nose. He reached up, resetting the bone with a terrible snap that made even Caitriona wince.

“All right,” he said, his voice muffled by his hand. He pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his leather jacket, holding it to his face. “I suppose I deserved that. Good form, by the way.”

I forced myself to take several deep breaths. As quickly as the anger had come, it abandoned me, and the emotion that welled up in its place was as useless as it was unwelcome.

When I was a little girl, I used to spend hours in our Hollower guild’s library, tucked between the lesser-used shelves of Baltic legends and incomplete Immortalities, staring at a glass display case it seemed everyone else had forgotten about, or didn’t care to remember.

The light above the polished chunk of amber inside sent a warm glow rippling over the dark shelves, beckoning. Inside its crystalline depths, a spider and a scorpion were knotted around one another, still locked in their battle for supremacy. Perfectly preserved by the same pit of resin that had killed them.

The amber might as well have been a window in which past could see present, and present past. It was frightening and beautiful all at once—it told a story, but it was more than that. It was a sliver of time itself.

I used to think that my memory was like amber, capturing each moment that passed, preserving it in excruciatingly perfect detail. But looking at the man who had once been my guardian, the same one I’d been so sure had abandoned my brother and me seven years ago as children, I began to question that.

I began to question everything.

Nash looked twenty years younger than the final memory I’d captured of him. Before I’d punched him, my mind had registered that the bridge of his nose was straight again, as if it had never been broken in a pub brawl, let alone three others. And his expression, so grave … there was none of the reckless adventurer, no sly grins or lying eyes.

Or maybe I was guilty of what I’d always accused him of: mythologizing the man just to tell a better story.

“Tamsy?” he prompted, brow furrowing. “Did you hear what I said about the curse?”

Exhaustion dug its claws into me. My lips parted, but the only words spinning through my mind were the ones he had spoken. No, Tamsin, to break yours.

“You don’t believe me, I see it in your eyes.” He glanced toward the door, momentarily distracted by the way it seemed to rattle as the wind picked up. “But I need you to listen to me carefully—to truly hear me—and do what I say for once in your stubborn life, because like spring, you are cursed to die young.”

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