Page 117 of Fae Reckoning

“It can only be one or the other, Braque. Either she trusted you with everything or she didn’t. Either you were her favorite or you weren’t.” After a pause, Ivar added, “The one she promised she’d reward or not.”

A scoff eventually burst from the alchemist. “Of course I knew! I knew from the very start. She trusted me with Lisbeth.” He looked down upon Ivar. “And with you. You were part of her plan all along.”

“Why?”

“Like you said, you’re descended from the elven bloodline. Better to keep your enemies close than opposing you.”

Braque canted his head to one side and shifted the strap of his potions satchel to hook under a bulge of chest skin. “If you serve me now as your king, I will reward you as my queen has rewarded me. Well, perhaps not this exactly. But I will reward you.”

“Not a chance, you simpering”—Ivar took a step toward him—“conniving”—another step—“disgusting”—step—“unbearably irritating”—step—“wheedling”—step—“lying fool.”

Ivar stopped close enough that if he lunged he’d skim Braque’s brocaded tunic, pristine despite all the bloodshed.

The alchemist retreated a couple of his small steps before bumping into a dragon’s big, strong legs, and its hooked, lethal claws. It was Xeno; he’d positioned himself between Elowyn and Braque.

Ivar leapt over Talisa’s legs, snake parts, an amputated hand—still gripping half of a broken bow, a charred thumb, and a pair of severed ears that must have been some of the spies El had described, drawing both arms back in mid-air.

Braque, who’d been glancing up at Xeno’s dragon, looked in time to see Ivar eating up the distance between them.

Braque yanked open his mouth. Shadow streamed from between his lips like a flock of startled bats escaping a hungry dragon’s lair, zooming toward thewalls as if said dragon were in pursuit, fast on their wings.

Ivar scissored with both cutlasses in a rapidsheeeek, sheeeeekof sharp, flashing metal that caught the light of the lumoons.

A line of crimson red ringed around Braque’s neck. His eyes froze wide in shock.

Braque’s body crumpled to the floor before his head fell.

His body landed on top of Talisa’s.

His severed head rolled into a gap in the broken glass floor and landed, neck first, with a squelching slap that bonded it to the intact, inner glass flooring of the snakes’ prison.

“Fuck! The mirrors!” West shouted as alarmed cries rose all over the hall.

Pressing El to my body, my sword aloft, I looked at the walls that enclosed the great hall.

Hordes of monsters spilled from them. They had neither eyes nor ears, but wide mouths that kept opening and closing as if intent on consuming. Their shapes were roughly pygmy-ogre like, the surface of their bodies a constantly swirling, shimmering silver.

Dozens had already emerged, stepping out of the glass with a ripple as if it were water. Dozens more piled up behind them. More still appeared at their backs in the mirrors, eager to break through.

Those monsters who’d already escaped the mirrors to invade the hall—in precise, eerie unison—stretched their maws so wide they encompassed most of theirheads, and loosed a shrill, curdling shriek that couldn’t be of the fae, the Sorumbra, or of the living. It hurt my ears, but I would have had to let go of El or my sword to cover them. I pressed my arms to either side of El’s head, muffling her hearing.

Finally their screams ceased, leaving my ears ringing sharply and me wincing.

The mirror monsters swept their unseeing faces in all directions until they seemed to choose their prey—us.

36.CREATURES NOT OF THIS WORLD

RUSH

The mirror monsters trundled toward us with wide, waddling steps reminiscent of the pygmy ogres—only they made no sound, caused no rattle. Their bodies advanced silently over the broken floor when my boots crunched glass shards, if not worse, with every step.

I was in the middle of hoping they wouldn’t be able to affect us any more than they did their physical surroundings when one of them snagged a fleeing lady of the court first by her trailing nightdress, then by a shoulder. In one inordinately huge bite, the monster closed its lipless mouth around the entirety of her skull. When the monster’s mouth opened again, there was no sign of the lady’s aghast, screaming face. Her neck ended cleanly as if cauterized. Not a single drop of blood oozed from the lady’s body as it crashed into a pair of running goblins.

Fae couldn’t decide in which direction to flee since the mirror monsters were coming from all of them,herding us toward the center of the room. For the first time since my arrival at court, I was glad for the Hall of Mirrors’ extravagant vastness. It granted us time—just a little—likely not nearly enough to save us from this new danger.

Sneakles and feethles charged and slid between monsters’ legs before they caught on. A few made it through the front double doors; a pair sprinted for the open door to the tunnels. When others attempted the same, the monsters swept down, snatched them with meaty, brutish fingers, tossed them into the air, and caught them in their outstretched mouths. Their bodies didn’t so much as crunch as the changelings disappeared.

Parvnits skimmed the high ceiling, their wings a blur of speed. The first of them made it past the silver grabbing hands, but then the mirror monsters began to jump, heavy-feeling despite their unreasonably inert landings, which didn’t jostle a thing. They snatched the parvnits from the air, tossing them, as they twisted and beat their wings to get away, into their mouths two at a time.

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