Page 139 of A Tale of Ice and Ash
Chapter Twenty-Two:
The Mirror Crack’d
Eirwen remembered little of the ride back to the palace. She felt like they raced the whole way there at lightning speed, charging up the mountain, as if the horses were as inhuman as the master Bianca served.
She was a fool if she thought the old creature would keep his end of the bargain. If it wasn’t for what she’d done and the memories of the blood-stained snow, Eirwen could almost have felt sorry for her. The whispers she must have heard over the years…
Ivy and Juniper trembled in her arms. Bianca had shoved them in afterwards, along with four armed guards. She was riding somewhere else, presumably with Cole.
Cole.
She wasn’t dead yet. She couldn’t be dead. She refused to die, because she was not leaving him alone with her. That would break her far more than death. And it didn’t bear thinking what it would do to him.
Dying is easy. It’s the people that love you that pay the real price.
There was still time. There was still time as long as–
But was anyone coming for them? What if it wasn’t just Cole she’d be leaving alone, but the twins?
“It’s all right,” she whispered to them desperately. “It’s all going to be fine, you’ll see. Trust me. Don’t worry. I won’t let any more bad things happen.”
She was almost glad for their sobbing. It stopped them asking any questions or accusing her of lying.
Don’t be dead, please don’t be dead.
But even if, by some miracle, the dwarves had been spared, what of all the others who had rallied to their cause? What was the point of their selflessness? Bianca had crushed them. She had always had more power than Eirwen. She always would.
They arrived back in the palace. Hands wrenched them from the carriage, yanking them up the steps and into the throne room, throwing them on the hard, marble floor. Ivy and Juniper were dragged away from her and stuffed inside a cage to the side of the room.
A body was slumped beside it, broken almost to the point of unrecognisable. Wistal.
“A very useful source of information, that boy,” said Bianca, noticing Eirwen’s gaze. She moved past her, still clutching her basket of apples. “Although, to his credit, it took a while to get it from him.”
The urge Eirwen had, stuffed inside that passageway, overhearing the truth of her father’s murder, boiled inside her. That hard, cold rage knotted deep within. Her heart would be no good at this rate. Bianca had stained it.
I want to kill you,she realised.I want you to hurt. I don’t care what it costs me.
Cole was thrown to the floor beside her.
“Gently with the prince, please!” his mother crooned.
Cole was not co-operating. He continued to struggle against his captors, crying Eirwen’s name, until his mother clicked her fingers and waved them towards a pillar. The guards dragged him up and tied his chains around the stone.
Eirwen could not look at him. She could not look at the twins. Her gaze drifted up to the dais.
The Mirror stood suspended over the throne, its white face gleaming. Underneath it was a glass box, the size and shape of a coffin.
“It’s actually quite pretty, isn’t it?” the Queen said, following Eirwen’s gaze. “Do you like it? It’s for you, obviously.”
“A way for that thing to take my heart? What was wrong with trying toeat itlike you did before?”
Bianca laughed. “Too messy,” she said. “And my beloved Mirror assures me that this way will be much, much better for us all. A way to drain your strength and light, as well as your life. It will restore him to absolute power, and I will rule at his side.”
“You really are mad, aren’t you?”
Bianca glared. She placed her basket of apples to the side of the room. “I was going to offer you one of these,” she said. “It’ll be a lot less painful. Now I think I rather like the idea of watching you suffer.”
The guards dragged her forward. Cole screamed, fighting against his shackles until his wrists almost popped out of their sockets.
