The Mirror King (The Orphan Queen, #2)(134)

It stretched from the Red Bay, north to Tangler Bay, illuminating Snowhaven Bridge from beneath, and then beyond my sight. Cool, clean air came off the water, and thousands of stars appeared in the sky as the mirror cut through the haze of wraith.

“You did it.” Melanie lifted her face to the sky in wonder. “Between your mirror and the barrier, even the wraith in the city is burning away.”

It was glorious, yes, but as we all huddled together on Radiants’ Walk, I could only think about everything this victory had cost.





FORTY-NINE


I KNOCKED ON the door between my room and Tobiah’s.

“I’m here.”

Cautiously, I opened the door to find Tobiah sitting on the bottom corner of his bed, staring toward the balcony window. The curtains had been pushed back to reveal a spectacular view of the city.

“The wraith is gone,” I said.

He dropped his gaze to James’s sword lying across his knees.

“Colin’s and Patrick’s people were arrested. They shouldn’t be a problem anymore.”

Silence.

“Not that Melanie trusts we’ve seen the last of them. She’ll root out any lingering opposition.”

He didn’t move. He hadn’t bathed, or even changed out of his Black Knife clothes. He just sat there, slumped as he steeped in his grief. Tear tracks shone on his cheeks.

“This morning, I took a boat with Mel and Lieutenant Ferris. There’s a sheered-off edge on the opposite shore of Tangler Bay. It worked. The wraith can’t return.” I’d seen refugees crossing Snowhaven Bridge, taking rescue boats where the bridge hadn’t yet been repaired. “The castle wall is still silver. When I told Connor’s mirror to go back to sleep, it just stayed there.”

Now there was nothing magical draining me but the barrier; I couldn’t risk letting go of that without being sure the pieces would never be disturbed. It’d been simpler in Mirror Lake, which wasn’t connected to an entire ocean. But here, anything could happen to the scales.

So I held on to them, keeping the anchor scale in a pocket so I’d never forget.

“Did you sleep?” I asked.

“I can’t.” He curled his fingers around the sheathed sword. “Part of me wishes I could blame you. Or Chrysalis. Or anyone besides James, but it was his choice in the end, wasn’t it?”

My dress rustled as I crossed the room to stand beside him. “You’ve lost so much. It doesn’t seem fair that you should lose James, too. But yes, it was his choice. I think it was his way of proving he was real.”

“It’s interesting that he didn’t feel like the real one,” Tobiah said after a few minutes. “I knew him longer than I knew the first James. We got in trouble together. Had parties together. Complained about our parents together. When my father died, he was there for me, and when he was shot, I couldn’t leave his side. How he came into my life never made a difference. I cared only that he was there.”

“He’s still there. I know it’s not the same.” I touched his shoulder and hated my own inadequate words. “Of course it’s not the same. But James was made of our magic, and you know the most basic law of magic.”

“It’s never created or destroyed. It simply changes forms.”

I nodded. “So that’s James out there.” I pulled the anchor scale from my pocket and unfolded my fingers around it. “And this is James in here. Just another form. And he’s doing the same thing he did for the last ten years: he’s protecting. You. Me. The kingdom.”

“We didn’t even win. Patrick and Colin are gone now, but the wraith is still out there. The Indigo Kingdom is gone, and so is everything beyond it. We didn’t stop the wraith, just found a way to hold it back.”

“Sometimes that’s as much as we can ask for,” I whispered. “We didn’t ask to inherit this world with its too-big problems, but it’s the world we have. There’s going to be wraith as long as there’s magic, and magic is in us. It’s part of us, whether we want to deny it or embrace it. Maybe our parents and their parents did the best they could, but it’s up to us to do better. We’ll change the world.”

Tobiah leaned forward and rested his face in his hands. “I’m so tired of losing people.”

“I know. I am, too.”

He didn’t move or indicate he needed me to stay, so I smoothed a strand of his hair and left.

I filled the rest of the afternoon with council meetings to ensure refugees were cared for, city repairs were under way, and everything was moving as smoothly as it ever had.

When I returned to my room and peeked through the adjoining door, Tobiah was nowhere in sight.

That had to be a good sign.

Dusk fell. A fire already burned in the fireplace, throwing warmth into my parlor. I turned on a gas lamp and found my notebook, the black one Patrick had given me years ago.

There was only one blank page remaining.

I lingered over the ritual of preparing to write, choosing a pen and ink, considering the handwriting I wanted to use, and finally dipped the pen and touched the tines to paper.

When I was only nine years old, I began this diary to chronicle my return to my kingdom. I’ve carried it through kingdoms and battles and wraithland.

I’m home at last, but everything is different from how I imagined.