Shadowfever

Yes, he’d see that I broke into it. No, I didn’t care. He could just try to take his anger out on me. I had a fair share of my own.

He had files on me, on my parents, on McCabe, on O’Bannion, people I’d never heard of, even his own men.

There were bills for dozens of different addresses in many different countries.

In the bottom drawer, I found pictures of me. Stacks and stacks of them.

At the Clarin House, stepping out into the dewy Dublin morning, tan legs gleaming beneath the short hem of my favorite white skirt, long blond hair swinging in a high ponytail.

Walking across the green at Trinity College, meeting Dani for the first time, by the fountain.

Coming down the back steps of Alina’s apartment, exiting into the alley.

Slinking down the back alley, looking at O’Bannion’s abandoned cars, the morning I’d realized that Barrons had turned out all the lights and let the Shades take the perimeter, devouring sixteen men to kill a single one who was a threat to me. There was shock, horror, and something unmistakably relieved in my eyes.

Fighting back-to-back with Dani, sword and spear blazing alabaster in the darkness. There was a whole series of those shots, taken from a rooftop angle. I was on fire, face shining, eyes narrowed, body made for what I was doing.

Through the front window of the bookstore, hugging Daddy.

Curled on the sofa in the rear conversation area of BB&B, sleeping, hands tucked against my chest. No makeup. I looked seventeen, a little lost, completely unguarded.

Marching into the Garda station with Jayne. Heading back to the bookstore, without flashlights. I’d never been in danger that night. He’d been there, making sure I survived whatever came my way.

No one had ever taken so many pictures of me before. Not even Alina. He’d caught my subtlest emotions in each shot. He’d been watching me, always watching me.

Through the window of a crofter’s cottage, I was touching Nana’s face, trying to push into her thoughts and see my mother. My eyes were half closed, my features drawn with concentration.

Another rooftop shot. I had my palm on the Gray Woman’s chest, demanding she restore Dani.

Was there anything he didn’t know?

I let the photos fall back into the drawer. I was feeling light-headed. He’d seen it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly. He never asked me any questions, unless he thought I needed to figure out the answers. He never decked me out in convenient labels and tried to stuff me in a box. Even when there were plenty of labels to stick to me. I was what I was at that moment and he liked it, and that was all that mattered to him.

I turned and stared into the mirror.

The reflection of a stranger stared back.

I touched my face in the reflection. No, she wasn’t a stranger. She was a woman who’d stepped out of her comfort zone in order to survive, who’d become a fighter. I liked the woman I saw in the looking glass.

The surface of the mirror was icy beneath my fingers.

I knew this Silver. I knew all the Silvers. They had something of … K’Vruck in them. Had the king selected an ingredient of their creation from the Hunter’s home world?

As I gazed into it, I sought that dark, glassy lake and told it I wanted in.

Missed you, it steamed. Come swim.

Soon, I promised.

Alabaster runes popped up from the black depths, shimmering on the surface.

It was that easy. I asked, it gave. Always there, always ready.

I scooped them up and pressed them, one after another, to the surface of the Silver.

When the final one was in place, the surface began to ripple like silvery water. I trailed my fingers through it and the waters peeled back, receded to the black edges of the mirror, leaving me staring down a fog-filled path through a cemetery. Behind tombstones and crypts, dark creatures slithered and crept.

The Silver belched a gust of icy air.

I stepped up, into the mirror.

As I suspected, he’d stacked Silvers to form a gauntlet no intruder would make it through alive, protecting his underground abode.

Nine months ago, if I’d been able to figure out how to get in, I’d have gotten killed within the first few feet. I was attacked the instant I stepped inside. I didn’t have time to draw my spear. When the first volley of teeth and claws came at me, my lake instantly offered and I accepted without hesitation.

A single purple rune glowed in my palm.

My attackers fell back. They hated it, whatever it was.

I swirled through fog to my waist, absorbing the barren landscape. Skeletal trees glowed like yellow bones in the sickly moonlight. Crumbling headstones listed at acute angles. Mausoleums hulked behind wrought iron gates. It was brutally cold here, almost as frigid as the Unseelie prison. My hair iced, my brows and nose hairs frosted. My fingers began to numb.