The mirror is a part of the vast Unseelie Hallow that is the network of Silvers. I can sense Hallows. I can sense all Fae OOPs—Objects of Power. It is perhaps my greatest advantage.
I reach out with my sidhe-seer senses, expand and search.
I sense nothing. It didn’t work in the Hall of All Days, either. Impossible, I suppose, to sense a Silver while inside the Silvers.
My feet turn me, and I begin walking in a new direction with complete confidence. I’m suddenly certain I have seen the mirror I need many times and I know exactly where it is.
I’ll find the way out long before Darroc does. And although I will not leave without him—I have much use for him—it will please me to best him.
I hurry down a mint corridor, turn without hesitation onto an iridescent path, and rush down a pale-blue hall. A corridor of silver turns to blush wine.
The mirror is ahead. It draws me. I can’t wait to get to it.
I’m focused, so focused that the crimson hallway barely makes a dent in my awareness.
I’m focused—so focused on my goal that, by the time I realize what I’ve done, it’s too late.
I don’t know what makes me look down, but something does.
I freeze.
I’m at a crossroads, the intersection of two halls.
I can go east, west, north, or south—if such directions exist in the House—but whichever way I choose, the floor is the same color.
Black.
I stand uncertainly, berating myself for screwing up again, when suddenly a hand slips into mine.
It is warm, familiar. And much too real.
I close my eyes. I’ve been played with in Faery before. Who am I to be tortured with now? What is my punishment to be? Which ghost will nip at me now with needles for teeth?
Alina?
Barrons?
Both?
I fist my other hand so nothing can hold it.
I know better than to think if I keep my eyes closed my ghost will go away. It doesn’t work that way. When your private demons decide to mess with you, they demand their pound of flesh. It’s best to pay it and get it over with.
Then I can focus on finding my way off the black floor. I brace myself for how bad it’s going to be. I speculate that if golden floors in the Hall of ALL Days were bad, black floors in the White Mansion will be … forgive the pun … beyond the pale.
Fingers twine with mine. I know the hand as well as my own.
Sighing, I open my eyes.
I jerk away and scramble back frantically, boots slipping on the shiny black surface. I sprawl flat on my back with such a jolt that I bite my tongue.
I begin to hyperventilate. Does she see me? Does she know me? Is she there? Am I?
She laughs, a silvery sound, and it makes my heart hurt. I remember laughing like that once. Happy, so happy.
I don’t even try to get up. I just lay there and watch her. I’m bewildered. I’m hypnotized. I’m carved in two by a sense of duality I cannot reconcile.
Not Alina. Not Barrons.
At the juncture of east, west, north, and south, she stands.
Her.
The sad, beautiful woman who haunts my dreams.
She is so dazzling it makes me want to weep.
But she’s not sad.
She’s so happy that I could hate her.
She glows radiantly, she smiles, and it curves lips of such soft, divine perfection that mine part instinctively to receive her kiss.
Is this her—the Unseelie King’s concubine? No wonder he was obsessed!
When she begins to glide away down one of the corridors—the blackest of the four, the one that absorbs the light cast by candles in sconces—I push myself up.
Moth to a flame, I follow.
According to V’lane, the concubine was mortal. In fact, her mortality was the first domino in a long, convoluted line that toppled out of control and led to this moment.
Nearly a million years ago, the Seelie King asked the original Seelie Queen—since her death, many queens have risen, only to be ousted by another who achieved greater power and support—to turn his concubine Fae, to make her immortal so he could keep her forever. When the queen refused, the king built his concubine the White Mansion inside the Silvers. He secreted his beloved away from the vindictive queen, where she could live without aging until he was able to perfect the Song of Making and turn her Fae himself.
If only the queen had granted his one simple request! But the leader of the True Race was controlling, jealous, and small.
Unfortunately, the king’s efforts to duplicate the Song of Making—the mystical stuff of creation, a power and right that the queen of their matriarchal race selfishly hoarded—created the Unseelie, imperfect half-lives that he couldn’t bear to kill. They lived. They were his sons and daughters.
He created a new realm, the Court of Shadows, where his children could play while he continued his work, his labor of love.
But the day came when he was betrayed by one of his own children and found out by the Seelie Queen.