Page 155 of Mountain of Mirrors and Starlight
You can’t do this,he told himself yet again,you can’t fall for someone you’ve only known for a few weeks. Not like this. Not this badly. Not someone who you might never be able to be with, not in the way you want.
And yet he wasn’t sure he could stop, wasn’t sure he could do anything to stop the tide now that it was crashing on the shore. He wanted to be with her. He wanted to whisper to her in the dark and dance with her in the day, to spar with her, weapons and words, to make her a bouquet of flowers and an engraved blade to go with it.
He wanted to drown inside her kiss, exist inside her bed.
He moved forward, and caught the edge of her sleeve. He could make out little in the dark, but he thought her face turned towards him, and he imagined she was smiling.
Eventually, the tunnel opened up into a wide, round cavern. Caer could still see little apart from a faint purple light, but as they crept out further onto a narrow pathway, sconces blazed to life—thin plumes of blue flame on spindly, black sconces.
The party stilled.
The cavern was almost a perfect circle, a dome beneath the earth. Shiny black thorns ran through the walls, sharp as glass, obsidian-dark. They crackled like lightning against the purple skin of the stone.
The narrow pathway ended shortly before them, dissolving into a lake that’s waters shone, blue-black, impossibly still. There was no boat, but ahead of them, on a tiny island in the centre of the lake, stood a black-framed mirror surrounded by thorns.
“I maintain that burying it would have been a much better idea,” Beau said, largely to himself. “But I do have to admire the aesthetic.”
They left the wargis on the bank and moved towards the water’s edge. “Ideas?” Minerva asked. “Is the water even safe to swim across?”
Beau held his hand out over the lake. A shudder passed through him. “That’s not water.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. But I’d advise against swimming in it.”
“Then what do we do?”
Bell looked around her. “We could go back to one of the other caverns. Salvage some wood. Build a raft.”
Everyone groaned with the thought of the extra time it would take, Magna’s fingers speaking of hours and the equipment they’d need. Caer was in no mood to prolong this, his mind twisting desperately between the thought oflet’s just go, let’s forget about it,andwe’re so close now. So close.
“Wait,” said Beau. “There’s something in the water. Hold on.”
He inched forward over the lake, holding out his hands, fingers splayed. He flicked his wrists, the water trembling beneath him, parting, churning.
Aislinn seemed to understand what he was doing. She stepped beside him, stretching out her arms, both groaning beneath the weight.
Somehow, Caer felt it too—the feeling that this water wasn’t water, that it did not want to bend to the might of two faerie royals, but relinquished its spoils nonetheless.
The lake parted. A small boat rose to the centre, black and shiny.
Magna and Bell hurried forward to inspect it, identifying a small hole in the hull, easily patchable even with their limited resources.
“No oars though,” Minerva commented.
“Oars?” said Beau, flicking the not-water beneath his hand again. “Where we’re going, we don’t needoars.”
Magna and Bell set to work fixing the boat. The others hung back, muttering and murmuring.
“Not enough room on the boat for us all,” Minerva deduced. “How many do you think it’ll take to lift the Mirror?”
“Doesn’t look too heavy,” said Bell, glancing up. “Send the giant just in case.”
Dillon stepped forward. “I’m going to assume that’s me.”
It was quickly decided that Dillon would go across with Caer (also for lifting purposes) as well as Aislinn and Beau (for rowing purposes) and Minerva (for leading ones). The repairs to the boat completed, the five of them set off. The remaining members of the party stayed on the shore, their forms shrinking as Beau and Aislinn buffeted them across.
Caer’s attention turned to the water. He understood what Beau meant, the otherness of the inky water below, the strange, dark sheen to it. But something else stirred in him too, and the more he stared at the lake, the more he wanted to slip silently into it…
