Page 15 of The Mirror of Beasts

I blew out a hard breath, rolling my eyes. Of course. How convenient for them both. It hardly mattered; as long as it was in the sorceress’s possession, it was beyond our reach. Madrigal would put every ounce of her power into ensuring it would stay that way.

“What else?” I said. “That can’t be the only reason she petitioned the Council for us.”

Emrys folded his arms over his chest again, drawing my eyes to the crosshatch of scars covering his skin. Whatever reason he’d had to hide them before, it had no hold on him now. “Madrigal wants a heads-up if we think Lord Death is going to target her.”

That, at least, was honest. She’d always struck me as a creature who prioritized her own survival over all others, even her own kind.

“I just heard an unwelcome we in that explanation,” Neve said sharply.

“I want to help,” he said quietly. “I want to make amends.”

“Oh yes, because you’re known for your virtuous, valiant nature,” I scoffed.

It might have been the darkness, but I could have sworn he flinched. “Believe me or don’t. I’m still going to try.”

A freezing drip of condensation struck my neck and slid down the ridge of my spine. “You seem to be laboring under the delusion that your ‘help’ is something we’d want, when it’s not even something we need.”

“You did just now,” he pointed out.

“That was Madrigal, not you,” Neve said. “And we would have gotten ourselves out of this, somehow.”

“Please …,” he said again, a hand rising to press against his chest. After a moment, he added quietly, “I don’t even know what happened.”

“And who do you have to thank for that?” Caitriona said.

He flinched, as if her words had been a knife to the heart. But it wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to twist it and twist it until he felt the same pain we did.

So I told him. Everything. In the smallest, bloodiest detail, sharpening the truth’s claws to tear at him until there was no color left in his face and he looked like he might be sick.

Good, I thought. Our eyes met and some twisted part of me was glad to see him gutted. You get to feel it too.

What I realized too late, however, was that I couldn’t mortally wound him without cutting the others. In the long silence that followed, tears dripped down Olwen’s anguished face. Caitriona reached for her, only to be waved away.

“I’m … it’s fine,” Olwen said, pulling away, turning back in toward the cell. Neve reached out and punched my arm with a look that promised another lesson in how to behave like a considerate human being.

“That’s …,” Emrys began softly. But there wasn’t a word for it. Nothing could encompass the magnitude of what had been lost.

“You said you want to help?” Neve said, rounding on him. “Lord Death sent a message to the Council of Sistren asking for something to be returned by the winter solstice. What is it?”

He balked. “I don’t know. None of the sorceresses do.”

“Is this you demonstrating your usefulness?” I asked.

“You said you brought Viviane’s vessel from Avalon to find what memory Lord Death stole, right?” Emrys said. “Are you taking it to the Bonecutter to see if she can fix it?”

I opened my mouth. Shut it.

She. He’d said she.

The Bonecutter had been little more than green ink words on paper for as long as I’d been a Hollower. Green ink didn’t have a face, or a gender, and no one else in the guild, not even Librarian, had seemed to know who or what they were.

“Is that who you wanted to find, Tamsin?” Caitriona asked, her dark eyes shifting between us.

“Yes,” I grumbled.

“Then I’m at your service,” he said. “Because I know where her workshop is.”

The words struck me like a strangling curse. “You do not know that. No one knows that.”

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