“Wrong.” Grimalkin appeared, trotting up and sitting down in front of a mirror, curling his tail around his legs. His golden eyes observed me 217/387
lazily. “It is not what could be, prince. It is what already is. You all have that ref lection inside you. You just choose to suppress it. Take the dog, for example,”
he continued as the Wolf came loping back, his ruff standing on end.
Ariel a gasped, shrinking against me, and Puck muttered a curse under his breath.
The Wolf ’s ref lection was enormous, filling three mirrors side by side, a huge, snarling monster with blazing eyes and foaming jaws. It stared at us hungrily, red tongue lolling between huge fangs, eyes empty of rational thought.
“A beast,” Grimalkin said calmly as the real Wolf curled a lip at him.
“A beast in its truest, savage nature. With no intelligence, no clear thoughts, no morals, just raw animal instincts and the desire to kill.
That is what your ref lections show you—yourself in your purest form.
Do not dismiss them as having no meaning. You only deceive yourself if you do.” He stood and curled his whiskers at us. “Now, hurry. We have no time to stand around doing nothing. If the mirrors upset you, the logical answer would be not to look at them. Let us go.” He lashed his tail and trotted off, back down the hallway into the dark.
As he padded away, not bothering to glance back, I noticed that the cait sith’s ref lection looked no different from the real Grimalkin.
Somehow, I wasn’t surprised.
As we hurried after Grimalkin, I glanced at my ref lection once more and received another shock. It wasn’t there anymore, and neither were any of the others. The candles, the f lickering f lames, still cast their ref lections, stretching away into infinity, but our images were gone.
“Hurry!” came Grimalkin’s voice, echoing out of the darkness. “Time is running out.”
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We broke into a sprint, footsteps echoing down the narrow corridor, passing hundreds of eerily empty mirrors. I could see the candles f lickering around us, thousands of orange lights ref lected in the glassy walls. But other than the lights and the opposite walls, the mirrors showed nothing else. It was like we weren’t even there.
We came to a crossing, where another hallway stretched away in opposite directions, vanishing into the black. In the middle sat Grimalkin, calmly washing a front paw. He blinked as we stopped, gazing up with a bemused expression on his face.
“Yes?”
“What do you mean, yes?” Puck said. “Did your feline brain finally snap? You said to hurry, and now you’re just sitting here. What’s the deal?”
“The exit is farther down.” Grimalkin yawned, curled his tail around his legs, and smiled at us. “But I doubt you will ever reach it. I find it amusing that you can speak so freely of intelligence, when you cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is not.”
“What?” Puck looked startled, but the Wolf suddenly let out a snarl that raised the hair on the back of my neck. I drew my sword and looked up, searching for hidden attackers.
Robin Goodfel ow smiled at me from the mirror’s reflection, arms crossed to his chest, a demonic grin on his face. I spared a quick glance at Puck, and saw him backing away, pulling his daggers, different actions from his image on the wall. His ref lection waved cheerfully…
…and stepped out of the mirror.
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“Where do you think you’re going?” Goodfel ow smiled, drawing his own weapons as he faced the real Puck. “The party’s just getting started.”
Movement rippled behind me. I spun, throwing myself to the side as the monstrous head of the other Wolf exploded from the frame and lunged at me. I felt its hot breath and heard the snap of its massive jaws inches from my head. Backing away, I drew my sword as it slid out of the mirror and into the hall, a monstrous creature with burning green eyes, drool hanging in ribbons from its teeth. It howled, making the mirrors tremble, and crouched to spring at me, and that’s when the real Wolf hit it from behind.
I leaped aside as the two giant wolves careened past, ripping and tearing at each other, vanishing down the side hallway. The smell of blood filled the air, the roars and snarls adding to the din of chaos. I turned to see Puck locked in battle with his twin and a second Robin Goodfel ow stepping out of the mirror behind him, raising his blade.
An arrow streaked through the air, striking the second false Puck in the chest, causing him to explode in a swirl of leaves. Ariel a, grim-faced and determined, raised her bow again, but a tall, pale figure slid out of the mirror beside her. I shouted and lunged forward, but the false Ariel a raised her scepter and struck her twin in the back of the head. Ariel a crumpled to the f loor, dazed, and the false Ariel a loomed over her with a vicious smile.