The Mirror King (The Orphan Queen, #2)(34)

The door opened and her silhouette filled the space. “I’m here.”

“I need something to wear.” My body was stiff and bruised from the fall, but I pushed myself up and began rolling my shoulders, ignoring the stabs of pain that flared across my body.

“You need rest.”

I shook my head and winced. “No, I need to yell at the wraith boy.”

She searched my wardrobe and found a plain blue dress. “The prince stopped in, but you were sleeping. Sergeant Ferris had to carry you into the washroom, and then put you in bed after the maid and I cleaned you and changed your clothes.”

I glanced at the nightgown and robe I was wearing. Other people had changed my clothes while I’d been unconscious. Theresa was one thing, but the maid? I didn’t even know the maid’s name. Maybe I was less terrifying to her now that I’d proven myself mortal, at least.

“How long was I out?”

“Several hours.” She hung the walking dress over her forearm as she elbowed the door open wider to reveal the clock in the parlor. “Five, it looks like.”

“Ugh.” Stiffly, I switched dresses, then allowed her to brush and braid my hair.

“This pain isn’t all from the fall. Does magic usually affect you like this?”

“No.” I rubbed my temples. “Never, except in the wraithland. But I don’t usually awaken large things. It’s mostly been small items. Candles. Toys, when I was a child. The Hawksbill wall was difficult, but nothing like this.” My hands fell to my sides. “When I awakened the wraith, I immediately passed out for hours. Or a day. I don’t know.”

“There has to be a better way to recover than unconsciousness.”

“One would think. Perhaps it’s simply another muscle, one that requires regular exercise to build up to larger feats.” At least I could see straight now. And walk, even if I was unsteady. “Perhaps the effects would have been less dramatic if I’d practiced more growing up, or if I wasn’t also keeping that awful wraith boy animated.” I shrugged and checked my reflection in a cracked hand mirror. Bruises and scrapes marked my face, but I looked presentable otherwise. “Stay here. The supply room isn’t far. Ferris can escort me.”

“Are you sure?”

No. “Yes. I don’t want you or the others anywhere near him, if we can help it.” I shoved the mirror into my pocket, glass side down.

“Will you tell him to”—she frowned—“go back to sleep? Would that kill him?”

Could one kill something like that? Did it count as murder?

“Not here. He’d turn back into wraith and we’d have another Inundation. I’d have to take him back to the wraithland, but I don’t know what would happen then. Wraith is already infecting the Indigo Kingdom.”

She dropped her eyes.

“Other things I bring to life, like a match, aren’t really alive.” I hoped. “They just do what I command. But he—he’s alive. Aware. Sentient.”

“So what will you do?”

“For now? Yell.”





TWELVE


SERGEANT FERRIS AND the other guards jumped out of the way as I burst from my suite and into the hall. My whole body ached, but I wouldn’t show it—not right now—so I kept my strides long and even, my chin tilted up. Heavy footfalls sounded behind me.

“Your Highness?” Sergeant Ferris caught up easily.

“Just stay out of my way, Sergeant.”

I slammed into the wraith boy’s room, adrenaline buzzing through my system as the door clapped against the wall and came bouncing back. I turned on the light, illumination flaring over the small space.

“You!” My voice was ragged. I hoped I looked stronger than I felt.

The wraith boy was curled up in an empty corner of the room, so small that the clothes swallowed his gaunt arms and body. His feet were bare, and he shivered as though cold.

“Wake up!” I snatched a discarded shoe and hurled it toward him, aiming just above his sleeping form. It hit the wall with a bang, and the wraith boy peered out from under his arm.

“Hello, my queen. I’m pleased you’ve come to see me.”

“Get up.”

He rose to his feet, unnaturally graceful and deft in his motions. He was too flexible, too inhuman.

Glancing at me, he straightened his clothes and adjusted his size so he filled them out better. The seams bore signs of strain from earlier.

Strange, though. The fuzz of hair on his head had grown, and the wraith-white skin had darkened into a more natural hue of soft brown around his eyes and mouth and ears.

I made my words hard, like steel. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t send you to the bottom of the ocean to rot for the next hundred years.”

He unleashed one of those strange smiles that didn’t fit right on his face. “You won’t do that. You won’t send me away, or kill me, or order me to chase the boy who will not be caught. You will keep me here with you. And now you will give me your attention.” He closed his hands together, a small hollow between them as though he held a mouse or sparrow. As though my attention were a mouse or sparrow to be trapped there.

I stalked forward, drawing the cracked mirror from my pocket. My reflection flashed at me, hard and bruised. “Is this the kind of attention you want from me?” I turned the mirror toward him.