My shoulders relaxed, and I sank onto the nearest pile of pillows. Perhaps Felix didn’t want me gone. Rather, he still felt guilty. He was trying to free me. It didn’t explain his misdirections when we had discovered my tie to the node, but it at least eased one worry.
It was time I returned the favor. I shook my head. “As angry as I was over how you brought me to Rose Castle, I’m not mad to be helping you break the curse. In fact, I’d be more upset if you sent me away now and I didn’t get to solve the puzzle.”
Felix’s ear twitched. “You could still help me. Just without the weight of the contract forcing your hand.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I think it is a moot point. There is no way under the terms of the contract that I can return to Leort with an addendum in hand. The magic will never see that as fulfillment of my terms.”
The duke threw himself onto the nearest pillow. “Damn it. You are right. I still think you going to Leort might be worthwhile, though. We need to know what Marc might be up to.”
My magic rang sharp. Either Felix still felt guilty and wasn’t admitting it, or he had another reason he wanted to send me away. “What do you think I’ll learn? If I confirm that Marc is in Leort—even if I confirm he is working with Lady Cecily—what does that do to help you?”
“We won’t know until we figure out their plans. That’s the problem. Cecily’s curse was an act of revenge after I rejected her. But what does that have to do with Marc? Is he the one who told her how to use the node? Why? What did he hope to gain? Finding out might not answer how to break the curse, but it could be just as important.”
“You need a spy in Leort, not me. Marc won’t answer my questions, and I can’t lock him up without cause.”
“A spy,” Felix whispered, his eyes losing focus. “A way to see what he is up to without his notice.”
I waited, but he said nothing else, his gaze still locked on something beyond the spire room. “Felix?”
He blinked, then leapt to his feet. “We need to search the storage rooms for the magic mirror.”
He ran out of the spire room before I could ask for clarification. I followed more slowly behind him, not wanting to trip and break my neck on the stairs.
Felix waited impatiently for me at the door of his suite, rushing out the instant I came near. He continued to rush forward, only to wait for me, over and over, until we reached the rooms on the third floor devoted to storage.
I opened the first door and stopped short. Compared to this, my sitting room was empty. Armoires, chairs, tables, even rolled-up carpets were packed together so tightly that there was no room for a person to walk inside. Every flat surface held ornaments, vases, and odds-and-ends.
While I gaped, Felix slithered through, popping back into view perched precariously atop the back of a chair halfway through the room. “Aren’t you going to help?”
“How? I can’t get through this, even if I knew what we were looking for. What are we looking for?”
“I told you, a magic mirror.” He leapt from the chair, landing somewhere out of sight with a clatter of metal against wood.
“Of course,” I muttered. “A magic mirror. How silly of me not to think that is a sufficient explanation.”
If the mirror had been created with the node’s magic, we wouldn’t be able to summon it, just like my pen. That didn’t mean I couldn’t summon every other object in the room. I began calling out each piece of furniture and all the knickknacks one by one, fillingthe hallway behind me. I carefully left an open path back to the stairs.
When I had cleared enough that I could stand in the center of the room, I spotted Felix again. He stood on the bed wedged into the corner of the room, his slight form dwarfed by the chests flanking him on the mattress. As I watched, the nearest chest popped open, and he rose on his hind legs to inspect the contents.
I called over the other chest to the area I had cleared and opened it. “I take it we are looking for a handheld mirror, if you think it might be in a chest?”
Felix glanced at me. “What other kind of mirror would we be looking for?”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, I don’t know, a stand mirror, or one that would hang on a wall?”
“Not very convenient to carry around that way.”
“You do realize that you didn’t tell me why we are looking for a magic mirror?”
“To spy on Marc. I completely forgot about the mirror until you mentioned spying. I’ve never seen it—let alone used it—but Duke Sebastien mentioned it in his journals.”
“Did he mention what it looked like?” I wrapped my fingers around the handle of a hand mirror at the bottom of the chest. The back was made of solid silver, embossed with intricate designs of roses, the vines trailing down and twisting together to create the handle. Once I touched it, I could sense the magic imbued into the metal and glass.
“No.”
I held up the mirror. “I think I found it.”
His eyes went distant, and I knew he was studying the magic clinging to the mirror. “Now we just need to figure out how to invoke the enchantment. I don’t remember what journal the mirror was mentioned in, so it might take a little time.”
