Page 83 of The Mirror of Beasts

“Olwen would never leave us behind,” Caitriona swore.

“Even still,” Nash said. “Wyrm could be up to anything. Perhaps he only wanted to use her as a shield to escape and he’s already let her go. Perhaps he’s brought her to the next guild over in Edinburgh to try to get information out of her. Perhaps she’s beat the snot out of him and is now searching for you.”

Caitriona’s chest heaved with the force of her ragged breaths, but this time, she didn’t answer.

“Say he did bring her to Lord Death … where is the sense in going to confront him when you have no weapon to defeat him or his hunters?” Nash asked. “You’d end up killing yourself, not saving her.”

“So be it,” she said.

“Cait,” Neve said, horrified.

“Don’t you dare say that,” I told her, my shock finally slain by anger. “It would devastate Olwen to hear you say that.”

I knew because it killed me, too, and I didn’t know how to make her take it back.

“This world is appalling, full of horrors. Even the air tastes poisoned, but it’s alive and Avalon is in ruins,” Caitriona said, her voice trembling. “There’s no place in it for me, except to protect my sister, and if I cannot do that, then what is the point of any of this? What is the point of me, when all the others are gone?”

A hush filled the attic.

Caitriona’s shoulders slumped, her arms hugging tight to her center, as if she was afraid of what else might slip out. Days without sleep, with little food, and even less hope had worn through her armor and revealed the wound that had been growing for days, tearing open again and again.

I closed my eyes, hands curling against the fabric of my jeans.

“Caitriona,” Nash said into the silence. “I cannot give you purpose, or a reason to persist. That you must give to yourself. Have patience with your heart. There’s no steel that can be forged without fire. What you have faced before this moment has prepared you to meet it.”

Caitriona swallowed, looking down at her mud-stained sneakers. The words were almost … fatherly. If it hadn’t been for the look on Caitriona’s face, the way she was absorbing the words, I would have made a snide comment.

“I know what it is to have what you believed was meant for you ripped away, and to find yourself on a path you never imagined,” Nash continued.

My already dark mood worsened, and I had to fight everything in me not to scoff. He knew nothing of the sort. All he had ever done was follow his own whims and fancies, to the ultimate ruin of our family. I almost couldn’t take this.

“But there’s still good left to be found in this world,” Nash said. “Olwen is not lost to you, but we cannot risk endangering her by going in without a plan to destroy Lord Death.”

“We have the Mirror of Beasts,” Caitriona pushed back. The raw anger was gone, but the desperation in her eyes was still there.

Nash’s brow furrowed as he took a sip of his cold coffee. “I don’t see how that’s possible, unless you mean the Mirror of Shalott.” Understanding dawned on his face. “Is that why you were at Rivenoak?”

“Right place at the wrong time,” I said.

I couldn’t bring myself to revisit the memories of the last few hours, not yet. But one was circling at the back of my mind, and had been since we’d arrived at the library. There had been that one moment, when I’d faced Cabell, that a thought had come to me, as sharp as the sword in his hand.

Please let me be wrong, I thought, releasing a deep breath. Don’t let it all have been for nothing.

I forced myself not to look at Emrys’s unconscious form. His deathly pale face.

We couldn’t lose this one small win, not when we’d already lost so much.

Please let me be wrong, I pleaded. But I knew no gods were listening.

“I’m sorry to tell you that’s not the true Mirror of Beasts,” Nash said, his words stealing the last glimmer of hope I had left. He straightened, puffing himself up for whatever tale he was about to weave.

The words were bitter on my tongue. “It’s a sword, isn’t it?”

“Wait,” Neve began, startled. “What makes you say that?”

The floor squeaked as Nash shifted his weight. I couldn’t tell if he was proud or annoyed. “Yes, I believe it’s a sword, Tamsy. How did you figure it out?”

“Look upon me with despair, for I am the Mirror of Beasts. My silver sings of eternity as I capture all in my glare,” I said softly. “The blade is the mirror. You glimpse your reflection in it the moment before your death.”

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