“Hel if I know. I haven’t seen any of them in several days, which leads me to believe they’re up to no good. He didn’t come to wish you good luck, that I can guarantee you.” For a moment, they just stared at each other. “So… can I come in?” Slade finally asked.
Hazel rubbed her hand down her face. “I guess getting more sleep is out of the question?”
“That would be correct. We have a lot to go over today,” he reminded her.
“Fine,” Hazel mumbled, opening the door all the way. “Come in.”
Slaide stepped past her, making his way to the writing chair. After she locked the door against unwanted guests, Hazel crawled back into bed.
“Tell me about the mirror,” Slaide demanded, cutting to the chase.
“I slept great, thanks for asking,” she responded, voice drenched in sarcasm.
“Hazel,” he warned.
“Fine. Gods, you’re so pushy today. What do you want to know?”
“Everything, Hazel. Every detail about your first experience with the mirror. How you managed to keep your wits when grown men rarely do.”
“Well, for starters, I’m not a man,” she said without a trace of her prior sarcasm. “Maybe he doesn’t like men. After all, men are the ones who use him and shove him in abandoned libraries to collect dust.”
“It’s an enchanted mirror. It’s not sentient—wait, did you sayhe?”
“Yes.”
“What in the name of the gods makes you think the mirror is male?” Slaide was truly baffled. A rare thing.
“His voice? His demeanor? Why don’t you talk to him and see for yourself,” she challenged.
Talk? She’dtalkedto it?
“I said something stupid again, didn’t I?” she asked unironically.
“Not stupid. Something I’ve never heard. The mirror doesn’t converse.”
“But it does. It talked to me. It told me my blood tasted familiar, and when I told it my name it said I was wrong. Which I thought was weird, but what can you expect from a senile mirror? Anyway, I found him to be chatty. Maybe that says more about others who have faced it than it does about the mirror. Or me.” She shrugged.
Could she be right? The mirror had been used to serve the selfish purposes of noblemen and Kings. Some went mad in the process, but each time, the mirror was tossed back into storage. Had anyone elsetriedtalking to it? Or was it that she’d triggered something in the mirror no one else could?
“Maybe,” he said, not entirely convinced. “Do you want to tell me what it showed you?”
“No. It’s personal.”
“Of course it is,” Slaide pushed, “that’s the point. The mirror uses your blood to see your fate. But it only shows you two true things. The lie is based on what it sees, but it twists the images into something loosely based on the truth. Regardless of truth or lie, everything the mirror shows you—shows anyone—is personal.”
“You first, then.” She folded her arms across her body.
“Me?No. Not the time or the place for that,” Slaide said, realizing the hypocrisy as the words left his mouth. “Fine. The first thing it showed me was images of myself, but in a female form. Mind you, I didn’t know about Sylvie’s existence yet. Thought that one was a lie. The next two were strange for me.The first… showed my death. I died defending Magnus from a powerful witch attacking the throne room.”
“And the last?” she pressed. “You only gave two.”
Slaide sighed. “You.”
“What?” Hazel asked, her confusion apparent by the dip of her brows.
“You. The mirror showed me you. A woman with fiery red hair burning enemies to ash with power unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Freeing the oppressed and destroying anyone who stood in her way. Tearing down this world as we know it and building it anew.”
He could see in her face that she was trying to figure out which one the lie was. It should have been obvious. She knew now that Silvie was real. He would never stand with Magnus—couldn’t she see that? Had he not made it obvious how much the King’s voice made him want to gouge out his own ears?
