“Yet me hands touched none of it, which be best of all.”
Tiring of their cryptic conversation, Stain nudged Luce aside and dropped her saddlebag on the way in. She met Crony’s gaze, saw it brighten with affection, and answered with a tremulous smile. I’m so relieved you’re all right.
“Thank ye for comin’ for me.”
Stain wanted to hug her and mend everything between them like she had with Luce in the forest. But first, they needed to get out safely. There’s little time, she signed, then turned to Luce. Your secret tunnel is not so secret. If one knight knows the way, more will be coming. We must leave.
Her guardians exchanged glances and then looked back at her, as if awaiting her next move. Crony’s chains jangled, and Stain understood. They had no key. She motioned the shadows toward the shackles.
The witch calmly watched the pitch-black tendrils siphon in and out of the keyholes, snapping the chains free. She covered her wrists with her cloak’s sleeves and her ankles with her hem before her muddy gaze strayed to Stain. “Ye have somethin’ to tell me, wee one?”
The question fell easily from that serpentine tongue, not out of curiosity or shock for the miracle Stain had just performed, but prideful, like a compliment.
The shadows are my friends. My . . . attendants. Having answered Crony’s query, Stain’s hands dropped to her sides.
Attendants. Crony had once said that Stain would one day know shadows and understand how they offered freedom where shade offered only respite. Had she been speaking of this moment? Of today?
Stain bounced a questioning glance to both her guardians.
Crony looked up at Luce who raised his eyebrows.
The shopkeepers peered around the door frame.
“Ye three,” Crony said from her seat on the ground, “stay in the passage and close the door. It is for ye to keep guard.” She pointed to Edith’s basket and the squeaking box under Winkle’s arm. “We’ve somethin’ more important to attend than yer petty pranks. Don’t leave till I say, or I put a nightmare ward on each o’ yer houses and leave ye homeless forevermore. Be we clear?”
All three looked at the frenetic currents between her horns then down at the sobbing, catatonic knight, and nodded. Dregs’s was the last face they saw as the door clicked shut.
“Lock it,” Crony directed Luce.
He did as she asked, dropped the bag from his shoulders next to Lyra’s saddlebag, then returned to help Crony stand.
What are you two doing? Why aren’t we leaving? Stain shaped her questions while taking a tally of the room. Ratty old dresses covered unseen items along the dirt walls. Shelves hung in place, as if growing out of the dirt like roots. Dusty jars filled with items, magical, herbal, and revolting, lined the wooden slats. But it was the mirror that enchanted her . . . luring her closer. Long and oval, it showcased her entire form. And though broken, it held her reflection more fastidiously than any mirror she’d ever seen.
She couldn’t look away from the girl with dark fuzz covering her scalp; her wide eyes, glinting between lilac and amber in the shifting flames; her long, white lashes casting a lacework of shapes across her gray-tinted, scarred cheeks.
The mirror held something beneath its lacerated surface, a part of her she hadn’t known existed.
“Shadow attendants, aye?” Crony asked in the background over the knight’s moans, though Stain was too distracted to answer.
“Don’t worry,” Luce responded in Stain’s place. “She came to that realization on her own. And she brought her crickets.” Luce led Crony to the wall.
The witch’s bones popped as she leaned against a shelf. “So, all we be missin’ are moths.”
Stain furrowed her brow. Crickets and moths and shadows. She rolled the words around in her mind, wondering what was so important about each one. Why they gave her a sense of security, of acceptance. The more she thought upon them, the dustier the room grew, as if a haze rose from the walls. Stain blinked in disbelief as that haze became a rush of brown moths flapping in the small space, dancing with the shadows in the torchlight. It was if they’d been hiding there, blending with the dirt for ages . . . waiting for her to call upon them.
Joining the moths, her crickets dug their way out of the half-opened saddlebag and hopped around the room.
Stain released a soundless moan as Luce and Crony looked on with quiet calm—inscrutable. The white lightning that bridged the witch’s horns snuffed out, and the knight stopped weeping.
“Wake up, pig. There’s something I’d like you to see.” Luce kicked the man, eliciting an oomph. Scooping up the sword, Luce handed it off to Crony then jerked the man to his feet. The crickets scrambled into the corners and into the hems of old gowns, followed by the shadows and moths.
The knight swayed as Luce turned him to face Stain. The man stared at her eyes then rubbed his own, blinking hard.
“No,” he murmured. “Those lashes. It’s not possible . . .” His complexion drained to a greenish hue. He spun toward Crony. “Return me to the nightmare! Please! Please, anything but this!”
Unnerved by his reaction, Stain backed closer to the broken mirror.
Luce forced Erwan around again. “Afraid not, rotter. This is your nightmare now.” After locking the shackles around the knight’s ankles so he had to face Stain, Luce stepped into the corner next to Crony.
All the shadows rose and thickened until Stain could no longer see her guardians, providing a darkness so deep the torchlight circled only her and the knight. It was if they stood on a stage—as if they were performers in some grand, disturbing drama. The crickets began to chirrup softly, an eerie musical accompaniment.
After attempting to escape his shackles, the knight fell on his knees at her feet and pressed his face into the dirt floor. “I won’t look. You can’t make me. You’re not here . . . you’re not real. It’s impossible! I watched you die . . . watched the cadaver brambles mangle you. I shut the coffin on your corpse myself; we carried you away—” He gagged.
Stain’s legs weakened, her body numbing. It was you? Her hands hung at her sides, unable to form the question. Yet her accusation echoed—carried on the flutter of moth wings hidden around the room: You, you, you.
The knight cried out and slapped his hands over his ears, burying his face between his arms.
Stain’s barren throat prickled. Kicking a plume of dirt at his head, she forced him to lift his nose for a breath.
She stared down on him as the moth’s wings continued their mantra: You, you, you.
“A witch’s trick,” he mumbled on a groan. “You aren’t her. She had no voice. And your hair’s all wrong. Too dark. It was silver when I shaved it. One doesn’t forget hair like that. One doesn’t forget . . .”
Stain gripped her scalp to ward off a chilling sense of violation.
The knight grabbed the corner of a gown—one that hid a rectangular shape. “You’re a ghost. Gone. Dead. Nothing more than paint and mildew.” The drape slipped away, revealing a portrait underneath, veiled in white dust.
Hand trembling, Stain cleared the powdery haze. There, staring back at her, was the girl she’d seen each time she looked in Crony’s enchanted mirror . . . the one with long silver hair, lilac eyes, glowing pale skin, and no scars. Except this girl had shorter eyelashes, and she wore a crown while standing beside a kingly father.
This girl was a princess, something Stain could never be.
The crickets chirped louder, shuffling out from under the sheets, each of them coated in white dust. They hopped onto Stain’s pant legs and clambered up. Their movements comforted her, even as their bristly legs and feet crept along her neck and shoulders in waves, forming a cover all the way to her scalp, stopping at her temples and brow. Next, the moths slipped free from their hiding places and fluttered about her head.
Watching in rapt wonder, the knight’s eyes widened. Then he screamed, ripping his hair out in bloody clumps. “I was following orders! It wasn’t my idea, I swear it . . .” Tears and snot streaked his face, transforming the dirt upon his cheeks to mud. “Majesty, I beg you; have mercy!”
Majesty. Stain’s shadows pressed in around her, a gentle persuasion to turn back to the broken mirror. This time, she viewed a long mane of white crickets and a crown of moths. And she saw her true self at last: a murdered princess, resurrected.
24
The Splendid Subtlety of Singularity
The room fell to pitch-black. Stain’s shadows whirled at her command, their gusts snuffing out the torch and leaving only her eyes reflected back from the mirror, slicing through the darkness like shards of voltaic amber.
She spun as the shadows piled upon the screaming knight. Bury him, came the thought unbidden. Bury him like he’d tried to bury me. If she had the power, she would’ve carried him to the ravine, let his sins fill the forest’s lowlands with enough ashes to reach the sky.