Tierney takes the bucket, swallowing nervously, her eyes sheened with tears and staunchly averted from the bucket’s mirror-like surface. She takes a long, shuddering breath, her eyes meeting mine.
A warm tear rolls down my cheek, a laugh breaking through. “Go ahead. Take a look.”
Tierney glances at her reflection and lets out a hard gasp, her hand flying up to cover her mouth. “I look likeher,” she chokes out. Her face twists as she starts to cry, her eyes screwing shut. “I look like mymother.” She curls up, her arms around her knees, the bucket clattering to the ground and rolling over the pages ofThe Book.
Valasca’s eyes fill with tears, her face tightening as she looks away. Yvan kneels down in front of Tierney, his hand coming to her arm. “Let me help you. I can heal where the clothing tore at your skin.”
Tierney nods, sobbing, and Yvan gently places his hands over the angry, reddened marks on her body. One by one, the wounds fade under his Lasair touch. When he’s done, Valasca hands Tierney a simple brown tunic and black pants, everyone averting their eyes as she rises and throws on the clothing.
When I turn back to look at Tierney, I’m surprised to see how much taller she is now. Tierney shifts her weight and looks down at her feet, as if testing her new legs, her wavy midnight blue hair cascading over her shoulders. Then she glances up at all of us, her smile radiating pure, unbridled joy. She bounces on her heels, seeming finally,finallycomfortable in her own skin.
“Are you ready?” she asks Yvan and me, bold challenge now in her tone.
An anxious shiver ripples through me as Alder holds out the storming rune-stone. It’s warm and fills my palm with a staticky prickle as I take it from her. Small gray-and-black clouds drift over its surface, the central scarlet rune gauzily luminescent through the shifting haze.
“Picture the form you want,” Alder directs me. “In detail.”
I close my eyes and bring Aunt Vyvian’s face to mind. Her graceful figure. A black tunic, riding skirt and cloak. I build the image, painting it in my mind, detail by detail.
Aunt Vyvian’s braided hairstyle, delicate Ironflower earrings, swirling fastmarks, vivid emerald eyes...
When I’m confident my image of her is clear, I open my eyes and give a start. Aunt Vyvian looks out at me from the disc, the storm clouds hovering around her—so clear, it’s as if someone shrank her down to size and tethered her there.
“Is that right?” Alder asks me, touching the disc with her long, emerald-sheened finger. “Is that her?”
I scrutinize the image. Unsure, I concentrate more fully on the exact line of Aunt Vyvian’s jaw, the curve of her ears. Her face sharpens, bit by bit, until the image is finally the very picture of my powerful aunt.
Satisfied, I look to Alder. “That’s her.”
Alder nods and places her branch lightly on my shoulder. “Hold tight to the rune-stone,” she tells me.
I clasp it tight in my hand and close my eyes as Alder chants a flowing spell.
A buzz of unsettled energy courses through me from Alder’s wand. My skin tightens painfully, and I give a small cry, my eyes flying open. I’m immediately thrust into a near panic.
There’s nothing but black before me, and my body is covered with an oily substance, my fingers slick against each other. The oil abruptly solidifies, constricting my body, the breath driven clear from my lungs. I gasp for air and almost lose my footing. Then the black cloud abruptly breaks up and clears, and I’m able to pull in a long breath.
Alder’s emerald-dusted face is before me. She lifts her chin, looking pleased. Yvan, Tierney and Valasca are regarding me with wide-eyed astonishment.
“I look like her, then?” I question, my pulse thudding.
“Scarily so,” Tierney says, her usual sardonic tone seeping back.
I flex my fingers, my toes. Fidget and tense my muscles. It’s disturbingly claustrophobic to be in someone else’s skin while having a sense of my own body trapped just beneath it. I extend my arm and marvel at the sight of my aunt’s shimmering arm, her fastmarked hands, her manicured nails. I reach up to touch my face. It’s all smooth lines, the normally sharp bones of my cheeks drastically altered.
“Now hold the stone up and picture your aunt’s guard,” Alder says, her wand back on my shoulder.
I loosely cradle the rune-stone in my palm as I repeat the process again, calling up an image of Aunt Vyvian’s guard, Isan, this time. Black hair, square jaw, broad chest, surly moss green eyes. When the image scried on to the stone seems right, I hand the disc to Yvan.
Yvan grows very still and closes his eyes, as if unfazed and oddly practiced in this. Alder places her branch on his shoulder and sends the glamour over him.
I watch, transfixed, as Yvan’s hair flashes from brown to bright red, and then his form blurs and grows inky, sharpening and then coloring into...Isan.
Like Tierney and me, Yvan is completely altered—stocky and a good ten years older in appearance, dressed in Gardnerian military garb.
Yvan lets out a long breath and looks down at his splayed-out hands with apparent curiosity. I catch his eyes, now a darker shade of green, as he flashes me a penetrating, almost guarded look.
I turn to Alder. “How long do we have?”