Realization wrenched through me like an earthquake. I took a step backward, the sense of danger sharpening into fear. “You. You’re the ‘she’ the wolf spoke of. The one who controls the wood. The one who gathered the pieces of the house. The one who trapped him there—maybe even the one who enchanted him in the first place.”
She watched me with amusement. Fire crawled hot just beneath her skin, and I felt the sudden, awful heat of her.
She was the roaring fire behind the bedroom door. The wood that had tried to devour me.
I took another step back.
“Poor scarred girl. Lost and broken and unwanted. Marked by the Devil for his pleasure alone. No thought to how to change your fate. You haven’t figured it out at all. I am surprised.”
“Figured out what?”
She lifted a finger, and flame burst bright from the tip, a tiny flare of yellow that vanished again the next moment. “How to break the enchantment.”
The whole world stilled around me. My throat felt ragged and raw. Horror and hope warred within me, a lion raging against a bear. “Tell me. Tell me how to break it.”
She laid her hands back in her lap. “There is one thing that you must not do, one rule you must not break. You must break it.” Her eyes were dangerous, specs of blackness from the heart of the earth. Flames seeped from between her lips. “That will nullify the enchantment. That will free him.”
I thought of the lamp, a spark of light in the dark. “I don’t believe you.”
Fire danced around the ends of her hair. “You are thinking it is too simple an answer.”
Her heat bit into my skin, and I took yet another step back.
“You were looking for the truth. The truth is always simple, but that does not make it easy.”
Anger burned. “Who are you? Why have you trapped him?”
“My dear, Echo.” She rose from the throne, sparks raining down from her hair and searing black spots in the grass. “It is not of my doing. He chose this. He chose me. They always do, in the end. He came to me, in the wood. He loved me. And so I saved him. Preserved him. So he could live forever.” She held out a hand, flames curling through her skin. “What about you, Echo Alkaev? Would you like to live forever?”
The fairies surged around me like a sudden ocean tide, drawing me into their swirling, tangled mass. Stars wheeled bright above my head, close enough to touch. I moved with the dancers, straining to understand the words in the fairies’ voices, sweet as honey, sweet as rain. They folded over me, and I thought it would not be so bad to stay with them, forever, forever.
Heat pulsed behind me, and I turned to see the Queen of the Wood wreathed all in flame. She smiled as she stared straight into my eyes. “Make your choice, Echo Alkaev. Won’t you stay with me?”
I opened my mouth to answer her, to say Yes, let me stay.
“No!” came a sudden voice at my ear, “No, she will not!” A hand closed around my wrist and I turned to see Hal, wild-eyed and dirty. “Run,” he breathed.
He jerked me forward. For half a heartbeat I stumbled and thought I would fall, but Hal held tight to my hand, and the next moment I’d found my feet and was running with him.
We ran and ran and ran, twisting through the ranks of the dancers, fleeing from the queen of the wood. I could hear her roaring behind us, sense the heat of her unquenchable fire. She did not want to let us out.
But we broke through the last of the fairies and dashed across the border of the forest, a wide meadow stretching forever beyond. The sun shone brightly here, though it seemed pale compared to the starlight we had left behind.
I gasped for breath, still clinging to Hal, whose jaw was tight and hard. His eyes burned with fury. “What were you thinking?” he cried, grasping both my shoulders and shaking me, hard.
I cringed away from him and he let go, swiping one hand across his eyes and cursing vehemently.
“I’m sorry, Hal,” I gasped. “I’m so sorry. Please—”
He turned back to me, his face twisting with a sadness that seemed even stronger than his anger had been. “It’s not your fault, Echo. It’s not your fault.”
“I wanted to help you. I was only trying to—”
“I know,” he said. “I know.” He wrapped his arms around me and held me tight against his chest. I breathed in the scent of him: leaves and sun, wind and stars. And then he said: “I will miss you, dearest Echo, when you leave me.”
I drew back to look up into his face. “I’m not going to leave you. Not ever.”
“Oh, Echo,” he said as if his heart were breaking. “My dear Echo.” He wrapped his fingers around my chin, gently, gently.
And then he kissed me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
HAL’S LIPS WERE SOFT AND WARM, a little salty and a little wild. I wanted to sink into him but he pulled away from me, his face wracked with emotion, his eyes filled with secrets I didn’t understand.
“She lies,” he said. “She always lies. Whatever she told you—don’t listen. Promise me.”
“I promise.” In that moment, I meant it.
He smoothed my cheek with his thumb. I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d touch my scarred face in the real world like that.
“I miss you,” I whispered, “In that other world far away.”
He tilted his forehead against mine. “I am always there.”
“I know.” A stillness settled inside of me.
He drew back again, his fingers light on my arms. “I have to go now, Echo. I am sorry.”
I bit my lip to keep from crying, but I nodded. “Thank you for—thank you for saving me.”
“You are the one saving me.” He sighed, and turned, and vanished.
I told the library to take me home, and stepped through the mirror that wavered into existence.
I was back in the bauble room, knife-edged crystals brushing my shoulders, blood dried and sticky on the hand I was just drawing back from the mirror.
I stood there shuddering, staring at the fractures in the glass, the shredded leather frame, the barely-legible title.
The wolf had tried to destroy it. He’d obviously failed. Maybe that was the answer: destroy the mirror, destroy the queen—whoever she was—break the curse.
“She always lies,” said Hal in my head.
She’d tried to trap me. It had almost worked. Whatever hold she had over the wolf—and, I was now certain, over Hal—I was going to break it if I could.
I straightened up, ignoring the pain in my shoulders and my face and my hand. Ignoring my fear.
I could still feel Hal’s hand closing around my wrist, yanking me away from the dancers and the fire. I could still feel the echo of his lips against mine.
“House,” I commanded, “Bring me my sword.”
It appeared in midair and I caught it by the sheath before it hit the ground: the sword Hal had given me when we first started our fencing lessons. I wrapped my hand around the hilt and drew it out. Above me the wicked baubles began to hiss and spin on their silver threads, like a gust of wind had torn suddenly through the room.
I turned to the book-mirror, feeling stronger than I ever had before. I swung my sword as hard as I could and it crashed into the mirror, the reverberation shooting up though my fingers and into my skull. But it made no mark. I tightened my grip and swung again, throwing my whole body into it.
This time the impact knocked me backward, and I landed hard on my left side. I leapt up and attacked again, hacking at the mirror with everything in me. Over my head the knife-edged crystals started shrieking like children in pain. But I didn’t stop. I struck the mirror again and again, until a spiderweb crack appeared in the glass. Triumph surged through me. I could do this. I was doing this.
And then a blur of white crashed into me, hurtling me away from the book-mirror and onto the floor in a tangle of limbs. Blinding pain seared into my shoulder. I saw teeth and eyes and spots of red. I screamed, scrabbling desperately backward.
“Wolf! Wolf, what are you doing?”
He came toward me, his body low and tight, his ears pinned back, his mouth opened wide. There was blood on his teeth.
“Wolf, it’s me. It’s Echo.” My back hit a wall. The wolf crouched, ready to spring at me and finish what he’d started. Terror made my vision crawl white. “House! House, my sword.”