The Mirror King (The Orphan Queen, #2)(36)

I’d have never seen my own face without a mirror.

“I know people who’ve been disappointed by their reflections. And—” A memory moved in the back of my thoughts, one of leaping across rooftops and catching a figure in one of the city’s mirrors. It was how I’d caught Black Knife while he’d been following me one night.

The wraith boy nodded. “There’s this truth about mirrors. It’s inescapable. But they can lie, too. They can distort the truth, even hide the truth. They create illusion.”

Like the glow of starlight all across Skyvale, or the way afternoons were so bright as the sun fell toward the horizon, shining in the mirrors.

“I see.”

“Do you?” He crept around my mirror, careful to keep out of its reflection.

“You don’t like mirrors because you see them as unpredictable. Unreliable. You never know what you’ll get from them, or how they might turn against you, even though they’re inanimate objects. You don’t like mirrors because they’re just like you.”

He bristled and shot a dark frown. “We are not the same.”

I gripped the handle of my mirror. “These don’t frighten me. I’m not afraid of the truth.”

“There are tales of losing oneself in reflections, or the essence of self being drawn out . . .” He went on, but I’d lifted the mirror to look into the biggest of the glass shards. My breath caught, and the wraith boy paused. “Do you see?”

His face was my face.

Not exactly, but the similarities were undeniable. His jaw tapered to a point, same as mine. The shade of his roots was the exact color of my hair. Even his eyes had changed to match mine.

Looking at him was like looking at the brother I’d never had. Anyone who saw us would have insisted we were siblings.

“My queen?” He spoke softly. Cautiously. “Do you want help? Are you trapped?”

I slammed the mirror glass-down against my thigh, making him leap back. “No. I don’t want your help. I want you to tell me what you’re doing. Why do you look like me?”

“Does it offend you? Frighten you? Do you not like what you see?” He drew himself up tall, shaking off the illusion of a scared boy. With his hands behind his back and his shoulders straight, he revealed shades of Patrick Lien, who he’d followed for days.

“You are a mirror.”

“No more a mirror than you, my queen. No more a mirror than anyone else who unconsciously shifts to reflect those around them. But”—again he touched his face—“some of my changes are more physical and I find I cannot transform as I once did.”

Was that good? Or a problem? I couldn’t even tell anymore.

“If you’d let me be around other people, I think my face would hold echoes of theirs as well. But yours is the face that matters the most. So yours is the one I wear. My unconscious reflection of you.”

“I don’t want you to look anything like me.”

“It is too late to stop it. If you let me see others, maybe—” He shook his head. “But you will not. You want to keep me locked in here where you don’t have to think about me. With walls between us, you can focus on everything you think is more important.” He settled into a neutral stance, his arms at his sides and his face clean of any expression. “Don’t worry.”

That was like a hailstorm telling crops not to worry.

“You created more wraith tonight,” he said, “when you awakened the cathedral. But that amount was so insignificant to the enormity of what is coming.”

“I know.” I swallowed hard. “Will it be able to break mirrors, too? Like you did?”

“I broke the mirrors because you made me strong. They scared me—and I still don’t like them—but I was strong enough to break them because of you. Because I wanted to be with you.” His gaze flicked up to meet mine. “This other wrath? I don’t know. It’s not alive. It’s not like me. It doesn’t have you to make it strong enough to fight the mirrors. But there’s a lot of it.”

Another non-answer. “The wraith was slowing not long ago, but now it’s touching the Indigo Kingdom.”

He tilted his head and dared step closer. “Explosions do not extend infinitely. The progress slowed because it was time for it to slow. But soon this land will change, too. Everything will.”

“What can I do? How long do we have?”

“I don’t know. Soon, I think.” He slinked closer. “Time for you is different. Or, it means something different. For me, it’s not as important. But the change will come on this land like an ocean pouring over the mountains. It will be fierce and fast.”

“That sounds like a prediction for something that’s supposed to be unpredictable.”

He bowed. “I tell you only the truth, my queen. Not because I don’t want to be trapped in your mirror, but because you are my queen and I will always do what I can to help you.”

As though we were friends. As though he cared about me beyond the control I exerted over him.

“It doesn’t matter why you answer me, or tell me the truth. Only that you do.” I spun and left the room, and when the door fell shut behind me, I slumped against it and sucked in a heavy breath.

“Your Highness?” Sergeant Ferris approached, cautiously. “What happened?”