The Mirror King (The Orphan Queen, #2)(35)

As quick as lightning, the wraith boy threw himself into the corner, shrinking as he covered his face with the top of his shirt. “Stop! Please!”

I pressed the mirror against my thigh. “Tell me what you did earlier.”

He peeked out from inside his shirt. “I came to find you.”

“Why?”

“Every night you leave the palace, always without me.” He straightened, his clothes falling back to normal. “I want your attention. But not”—he held up his hands—“with that mirror.”

What I wanted now was to smash the mirror in his face, but my hands shook so badly I could barely hold on to it. “So you decided to destroy the cathedral with thousands of people inside?” My mouth curled into a snarl.

“I wouldn’t have let you get hurt.”

I hurled the mirror at him. “That’s not the point!” He ducked aside and the mirror hit the far wall with a loud crack. When it landed faceup, the wraith boy jumped away, as though I’d thrown poison or swords.

“What should I have done?”

“You should have stayed here. Or trusted that I would have returned. Or—I don’t know. Not risked thousands of lives.”

“Yours is the only life I care about.”

“Theirs are no less important.” I moved forward and grabbed the mirror, its glass shattered even further after the impact. “Do you understand that?”

“I wanted you to notice me.”

“Well I didn’t want to notice you, and what I want is the only thing that matters.” A note of hysteria edged my tone. “Do you understand?” I asked again.

He hesitated, and then nodded. “What you want is all that matters.”

“There will be no more attempts to get my attention like that. You will not endanger lives for mere attention again.”

“Yes, my queen.” He knelt and made himself small, not a threat at all. “I will remember what you have said.”

“Good.” I bit down the urge to yell. He wasn’t human. I had no idea how he’d respond to continued assaults, and already my head thrummed with pain and rage and a hundred other things.

I stumbled for the door and grabbed onto the latch to steady myself.

“Why didn’t you catch Patrick when I sent you after him?” I asked, my back still to the wraith boy.

“I don’t know. He was good at hiding.”

The pressure in my head was overwhelming, pulsing around my eyes as I slowly turned around. “You need to answer honestly or I don’t know what will happen with this mirror.” I waved it around for effect, but the motion just felt crazed.

“You don’t need to threaten me, my queen.” The wraith boy looked up through white eyelashes; he hadn’t had any before. “I’ll tell you the truth. I don’t know why I couldn’t catch Patrick. He was fast. Good at hiding. I tried.”

Then it would be pointless to send him again—especially not knowing what kind of destruction he might cause in the effort. Sending him before had been reckless.

As we stood there, watching each other, his skin rippled and it was as though ink ran down his face and throat. The flesh darkened all at once, and his hair grew past his ears: a warm shade of golden brown, darker at the roots. When he blinked, his eyes shifted from blue to brown. His face, too, had slimmed at some point, though who could say if it would stay like that?

“What’s happening to you?” I whispered. There was something unnervingly familiar about his appearance.

“I am changing. It’s what I am. I am a changing creature, made from the changing lands.”

“Chrysalis,” I murmured. This room was his chrysalis.

The wraith boy straightened, a hound catching scent of his quarry. “You’ve named me?”

What? “No.”

“You said Chrysalis.” He wrapped his hands in the bottom of his shirt, stretching the fabric taut against his knuckles. “It sounds like a name.”

“It isn’t.”

He leaned forward, eyes wide and eager. “Please name me Chrysalis. I like”—he cocked his head—“the way it sounds. The way it fits on me. Like a skin.”

“And why should I give you anything that you like?”

“Because I want to give you what you like.”

“I like answers.”

He clasped his hands together. “If I give you answers, will you give me the name?”

The last thing I wanted to do was bargain with him, but I’d take what I could get. “Why do mirrors frighten you?” As though it were a weapon, I flicked the cracked hand mirror so it reflected the ceiling.

The wraith boy skittered away, though the glass hadn’t been aimed at him. “Careful! Careful!” His chest heaved as he peeled himself off the far wall.

“Tell me why you don’t like mirrors.”

The wraith boy touched his face, as though memorizing his own features. “There’s something about them, isn’t there? Don’t you feel it when you look in the mirror?”

“What do you mean?”

“Mirrors.” The wraith boy’s voice dropped lower as he slinked around the room, watching the hand mirror as though it might leap at him. “Mirrors are both truth-speakers and liars: a contradiction made of glass and shiny backing. Don’t you know anyone who’s hated their own reflection? Haven’t you ever seen something you wouldn’t have without a mirror?”