Page 213 of Mountain of Mirrors and Starlight
And then climbed off the balcony, heading slowly towards him. She kept expecting him to move, or for his body to transform into something else, explode into fire.
But he did nothing. He lay like a crumbled statue.
Aislinn reached his side, nudging the body with her foot. He still didn’t move.
She drove her sword through his ribcage. Just to be sure. Just to be safe.
I told you I would kill you,she hissed to herself.I just wish I’d been able to make it hurt more.
Caer stood in front of the Mirror, hands outstretched towards it. The tendrils fastened around him, but he held firm. He knew what it wanted. He was prepared to give it.
Owen stood beside him with some of his men, fighting anyone that dared come near him, but the numbers were dwindling. People were standing down.
He’d lost sight of most of the others. They’d vanished from view.
He was alone. Just him and the Mirror.
The room shook. Power pulsed in his veins. The glass swirled and trembled, leeching him dry.
You can have my magic,Caer told it.You just can’t have me.
The tendrils brushed against his chest, like ice against his heart. The entire world was screaming. The Mirror didn’t seem able to know what were his powers, and what washim.
You are not your powers.
Arms slid around his waist. He felt a head pressed against his shoulder blades, holding him tightly.
Aislinn.
“It wants me,” he told her.
Aislinn squeezed him tighter. “Doesn’t it understand that you’re mine?”
Mine, mine, mine.
His chest blazed with sensation, fighting off the darkness, pushing it out of him. The tendrils receded. Something cracked in his centre, a hard, dense pain—the sensation of something leaving his body, something being torn away.
He slumped down on the floor.
The room continued to shake, the dark waters tumultuous. Smoke blazed around the frame. For a moment, Caer was sure that he’d failed, or that it didn’t matter at all—the Mirror had its power back. That living magic had unlatched itself from him and grown into a titan, a free, feral being.
Maybe Caer had been tempering it, holding it back.
Maybe giving up his powers had been the worst thing he could have done.
He clutched hold of Aislinn, trying to read her face, hoping she had a final suggestion.
But she just stared back at him, her face frighteningly pale.
The armies stood still around them, faces frozen, weapons slumped in their hands. All gazes fell towards the Mirror and the thrashing, shadowy tendrils all around it.
Through the crowd, the only moving figure in the room, came King Hawthorn, parting the smoke with his hands, his body straining like it was bracing against a snowstorm. He staggered forward, hands moving, arms arching, a display between a dance and a fight.
The shadows whipped against him, clawing at his skin, but a single flick of his finger slashed through tendrils like butter.
Again, the Mirror roared, smoky tentacles lashing through the air. It pulsed and hissed and crashed, licking at the undead warriors, inciting them to action.
Hawthorn flung out another hand, and knocked dozens to their feet to be finished off by the bystanders.
