Page 63 of Cursed Crowns
She picked up the mirror and startled at the jolt in her fingers. It was only then that she noticed the sapphires around the rim. It was the same one from the Moonlit Menagerie! But the glass was cloudy now. She blew on it, then used her sleeve to wipe it clean. Suddenly, the glass began to glow, casting a faint blue light across the room. Rose gasped as a reflection flickered to life.
But the face in the mirror didn’t belong to her.
It belonged to Wren.
23
Wren
Wren stared at the dead mice with mild revulsion. There was no earth to accompany them. Alarik might be pleased with her, but that didn’t mean he trusted her.
She frowned as she picked up the first mouse. It was stiff and cold, its tail flopping over the edge of her palm. With no idea where to begin and no earth to assist her, she curled her fingers around the rodent and reached for an enchantment anyway. The words filled her mind at once, before tingling on the tip of her tongue.
“From death to life, heed my request, and wake from your eternal rest.”
The fire crackled in the grate. Outside, the rising storm howled. Wren scowled at the mouse. “Come on, you little bastard. Wakey, wakey.”
No use. It was an entirely new spell. She had never tried anything like this before with her enchantment magic, and she had nothing to trade for it anyway. She picked up another mouse and held one in each hand. She summoned a new spell, offering one corpse for another, but neither mouse stirred. They were as dead now as they were after the kitchen tabby cat had caught them.
Wren went to the door and told Inga to bring her some bloody salt.And some more frostfizz, while she was at it. No response. Wren fumed in silence. She would have to have words with the king tomorrow.
Exhausted by her own frustration—and ten more failed enchantments—Wren flung a mouse into the fire and watched it sizzle. In a fit of desperation, she sank to her knees and gathered up a pile of ash. She returned to the other mice, offering the ash in exchange for her spell.
Another failure. “What am I supposed to do with six bloodless corpses?” she muttered, as she paced the room. What could an enchanter do without earth? Alarik would have had better luck bargaining with a healer.
Wren thought of Rose, and her stomach twisted with guilt. She would never dabble with dark magic, and certainly not against Banba’s wishes. Then again, Rose would never have come to Gevra in the first place. She was far too cautious, too—
A blue light flashed in Wren’s periphery. She spun around, scouring the dresser for a twitching mouse. But the five remaining rodents were still very much dead. Wren was about to turn away from them, when she glimpsed another blue spark. Her fingertips began to tingle, the magic in her bones waking up in recognition of another.
She froze in mid-step.
The light wasn’t coming from the mice at all.
The hand mirror was shimmering. A gasp swelled in Wren’s throat as she peered over it. Inside its jeweled frame, someone else was looking back at her.
“Wren?” said Rose’s face in the mirror. “Is that really you?”
“Rose? Whereareyou?” Wren pressed her fingers against the glass, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. The mirror began to tremble, her sister’s reflection warping under her touch. A rush of windwhipped up, casting Rose’s hair askew. It seemed to be coming from inside the mirror.
“Oh no!” said Wren as the wind broke free from the glass and reached out for her, too. It threw its arms around Wren, tugging her into a howling tunnel. One minute, she was standing in her bedroom in Gevra, and the next she was seized by the horrible sensation of falling—no,plummeting—through the earth. The room whipped around her in a blur, her breath shallowing as the snow-swept mountains of Gevra slipped out from under her, and a new world slid into place.
The wind stopped abruptly, and Wren found herself kneeling on hard ground. The mirror was at her feet. No, not her mirror, but its twin. The sapphires were still glowing, but faintly now. She stood up on trembling legs, taking in the small candlelit bedroom. “Rose?” she called out, tentatively. “Are you here somewhere?”
“Wren? Where did you go?” came Rose’s voice from the mirror. “Wait. Oh no. Is thatsnow?” She gasped, as she whipped her head around. “Am I in Gevra? I’d better not be in Gevra!”
Wren picked up the mirror. “Well, at least you know where you are. This isn’t Anadawn.” She glanced once more at her meager surroundings. “Are you on the royal tour?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Rose paused. “I’m in Amarach. Or at least Iwas.”
“What?”Wren clutched the hand mirror, listening in stunned silence as her sister filled her in on the events of the past few days, how the desert had spat out Shen’s cousin and how his sudden appearance at Anadawn had set in motion a journey that had led them south, through a poisonous valley and all the way to the Amarach Towers. Where Wren now found herself.
She hurried to the window, straining to make out the valley of lost seers, but in the darkness she could only see the top of the towers flickering like tapered candles. And above them the starcrests arcing across the sky like a magnificent meteor shower.
“Wren! Are you even listening?”
“Sorry,” said Wren, holding up the mirror so they could see each other again. “I want to see what it looks like. Nobody’s been here for years.”
“Wren! Focus! For stars’ sake, I thought you might be dead. First, you disappear in the middle of the night—”