Page 63 of Hemlock & Silver

I knew—I knew —that she had to be bluffing. Snow was the linchpin to all her plans. Without her, the Queen wouldn’t even be able to get apples back through the mirror to entrap more victims.

Knowing that someone is bluffing turns out not to matter much when they’ve got a knife to someone’s throat.

“Let her go and we’ll leave,” said Javier.

“This is not a negotiation,” the Mirror Queen informed him. Another drop of blood slid lazily downward. Snow’s eyes were half-closed. I wondered if she was about to faint.

Five apples. She’s probably going to die anyway. You know that.

I knew it. I still couldn’t move.

Javier set down his sword and took a step forward, his hands spread. “You don’t want to do this,” he said.

I was trying to watch both him and the Mirror Queen, so it took me a moment to notice that beyond them, the mirror-geld was gesturing. Even the guard who had been fighting it had turned to watch the scene unfolding, so I was the only one to see its hands moving.

It pointed to me, to the Mirror Queen, to something in its hand. Then again. I couldn’t tell what it was carrying at first, a small object of some sort. Then it turned it, and I caught a glimpse of reflected color and realized that it was holding the mirror.

Me. Queen. Mirror.

Javier took another step forward. The Mirror Queen’s gray fingers tangled in Snow’s hair. “Not another step, guardsman.”

Me. Queen. Mirror.

“If you kill her, you’ll lose your link to the real world,” Javier said.

“What makes you think I only have one?”

I slowly reached into my bag. The saints bless my father and Healer Michael for impressing the value of organization on me. I knew exactly what I wanted and exactly where it was.

Javier tried another tactic. “She’s only a child.”

“Her mother killed my child. Only fair, don’t you think?” The Mirror Queen pulled Snow’s head back by the hair. Snow let out a faint moan.

I pulled out the tiny square of mirror that I used to see if a patient was still breathing. I had no idea if this would work, or even what working would look like, but we were out of options.

If you caught someone between two mirrors in the real world, their reflection fell apart and became a mirror-geld. What would happen if you did the same thing on this side?

I didn’t know. Whatever it was, it couldn’t happen very often, because to get a mirror on this side—a true mirror, not a window back to our world—you had to carry one with you through the silver.

Which I had. Twice now.

The mirror-geld stretched out a hand, nearly at the ceiling, with its mirror in it. I turned mine in my hand, hoping I could match the angle and hoping even harder that the mirror-geld knew what it was doing.

“Enough talking,” the Mirror Queen said. “Either you start walking toward the door and take your monstrosity with you, or your king finds himself childless.”

I cleared my throat. “He’s got an older son, actually.”

The Queen said, “What?”

Javier said, “What?”

Both of them looked at me. Under other circumstances, their identical expressions would have been comical. I knew that expression quite well. It was the one that said, Anja, is this really the time to have this conversation?

“Prince Gunther,” I said. “I believe he’s currently attached to the court of Tohni.”

The mirror-geld’s arm moved back and forth, trying to get the correct angle. Please, Saints, let this work. We were only going to get one shot at… at whatever this was. I swallowed. “Tohni’s a fascinating place. They have a poisonous bird there. It’s the only known one in the world.”

“Guardsman,” said the Mirror Queen, “I suggest you take your idiot and leave. Now .”

“It’s a type of parrot who eats cocklebur seeds, and the poison seems to transfer to its feathers, so if you handle it, you break out in a ra—”

The mirror-geld stretched a final inch and turned its mirror just so. It reflected off the one in my hand and caught the Queen between us. For a moment, she extended to infinity.

Her white face erupted. Cliffs of gray mirror-stuff extruded from the side of her head, and she cried out in evident agony. Her hands sprouted dozens of extra fingers, and the red dress acquired a monstrous weight of gray sleeves.

The myriad reflections began to calve off her at once.

Unlike the incident I had witnessed before, there was nothing solid underneath.

When the mirror-stuff fell away, it took part of her skull with it.

One dark eye blinked from the floor, and what remained of her head looked like a half-eaten apple, bites taken out, leaving a bloodless void behind.

Snow, with astonishing presence of mind, jerked away from the dagger and slapped at the Mirror Queen’s hands. Fingers fell to the floor like grisly rain.

The Mirror Queen staggered back, out of the narrow band of reflection, and the grotesque doubling stopped.

The mirror-stuff growths shrank and snapped back into place, but the damage had already been done.

She tried to reach for Snow, but only thin slivers remained of her hands.

She lifted them before her single eye and cried out, turned, and ran.

Of all of us in the room, Snow was the only one who wasn’t frozen in silent horror. The Mirror Queen bolted through the door in the wall with the king’s daughter hot on her heels. That was enough to jar me out of my paralysis. I ran for the door and hit it at the same time as Javier.

The room beyond was dominated by the largest mirror the king’s wife had brought to Witherleaf.

A blast of light and color filled the room, and against it, the broken Mirror Queen looked even more monstrous.

I could see daylight through her head. Nothing that looked like that should be moving around.

The Mirror Queen staggered to a halt, turning as if at bay. Her mouth was perfectly intact, the red lips parting as she panted, revealing a blackened tongue.

Snow rammed into her midsection, shoulder first, driving her back toward the mirror’s surface.

Snow was only twelve and already half dead of poison, and the Mirror Queen, though torn apart, was still far stronger. But the Mirror Queen took half a step back to brace herself, and there was a small gray cat exactly in back of her ankle, and she went over backward and struck the mirror.

For an instant both she and Snow hung there, as if suspended against the surface.

Charcoal shadows ran up Snow’s arms and across her face, and I understood what Javier must have seen when I tried to push the bird through the mirror.

We both cried out and tried to step forward, but then the gray vanished and the Mirror Queen fell through and Snow fell through on top of her.

By the time we reached the other side of the silver, Snow lay unconscious on the floor, and of the Mirror Queen, there was only sparkling gray dust, and then no longer even that.