Page 62 of The Mirror of Beasts

“There’s no need to be rude,” Olwen told the seething creature.

“You will release me!” she roared. “Right this very moment! Or—or I shall drink your blood and whittle your bones into picks for my teeth!”

“How do you intend to do that from behind the glass?” Caitriona asked.

The scream that followed was pitiful enough that I almost felt sorry for her.

Almost.

“Olwen, do you think you could figure out a way to reduce the size of this so we can carry it out?” I gestured toward the mirror. “I don’t want to leave Neve up there alone for any longer than we need to.”

“I’m with you on that,” Olwen said. She pressed a hand against her cheek as she considered the mirror, thinking. The creature slid over to her, resting her face against her hand in the same way.

“What is it you intend to do?” the creature asked. “You came to find my mirror, did you not?” Her lips stretched wider, contorting into a serpent’s smile. “Do you intend to trap another with it?”

“Don’t you want a playmate?” I asked. “Or, I don’t know, a hearty snack?”

The creature floated behind the glass, drifting my way. “It is impossible. The mirror’s magic is only powerful enough for one.”

“You lie,” Caitriona said.

“Do I?” the creature replied. “The master of the house tried, oh, how he did. Pressing an enemy up to the glass, wanting to give me that plump little morsel …” She salivated at the thought. “But if one goes in, one must come out.”

The others looked to me, but I had no answers for them.

“Who is your enemy?” the being asked. “Perhaps if you let me go, I can eat them for you?”

“The King of Annwn,” I said. “Lord Death. Still hungry?”

The creature’s face swirled, magnifying her disgust. “The usurper?”

“Yes,” I said, though I had no idea what the being was referring to. I wasn’t about to give her something to dangle over us. “The very same.”

“Has he come, then? The new Holly King and his ravenous host of hunters?” the being asked. “Has he escaped Avalon?”

The Holly King. The personification of winter in the old tales. If those stories were true, his power would be at its greatest at the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. After, it would wane with each day, until summer rose again.

But … that didn’t make sense, did it? Not knowing what I did about Annwn’s death magic.

I studied the creature again. She was just haughty enough that my fishing expedition might work …

“Yes, he’ll remain in this world until the winter solstice,” I said, putting on an air of confidence. “Until his power is at its greatest and he can slay his enemies.”

“Poor fly-brained mortal, devouring every lie fed to you,” the being said, the words dripping with arrogance, correcting my guess as I’d hoped. “That is merely the day the boundary between the mortal world and Annwn is at its thinnest and a pathway can be opened. The day the Wild Hunt carries its bounty of dark souls to their prison.”

The realization braided itself together so quickly, it took my breath away. It was a leap, I knew that, but nothing else made sense. The threat wasn’t that he would open the door and pass through … it was that he would leave that gateway open, allowing the malevolent dead to escape into this world. And when they began to kill the living as they craved to do, it would only add to Lord Death’s power.

Caitriona made a questioning noise, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak.

“They aren’t just hunting dark souls,” Olwen told the creature. Then, catching on to the game, she added, “Oh, I forgot that you’ve been trapped in there for so terribly long, you’d have no idea what his true aims are, or what he’s desperately searching for.”

“I was there at the dawn of the world, and I shall be there at the end, when the last light of the Goddess fades and you mortals return to the stardust and clay that bore you,” the being sneered at us. “I carry the knowledge of the ages, and I will bear it still when time extinguishes you from memory.”

“You know nothing,” I said, fighting to hide the way my hands had begun to tremble. A sickly fear was making its way through me, a dread that had no name.

“I know what Lord Death seeks, as do all those who saw the blood spilled that day, who heard the last lamentations of the Goddess,” the creature said.

The world grew hushed around us again. The creature’s strange eyes glowed, a lure that drew me in, made me step closer to the rippling surface between us.

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