Reckless (Mirrorworld 1)

“You need no Jade Goyl to make yourself invincible!”

Kami’en eyed him like a stranger.

Your Majesty. Hentzau now often caught himself not wanting to call him by his name.

“Find him,” Kami’en repeated. “She says it’s important, and so far she’s always been right.”

The Fairy stepped to his side. Hentzau pictured himself squeezing her pale neck. But not even that gave him comfort. She was immortal, and one day she would watch him die. Him and the King. And Kami’en’s children and his children’s children. They all were nothing but her mortal stone toys. But the King loved her. More than his two Goyl wives, who had given him three daughters and a son.

Because she has hexed him! Hentzau heard a whisper inside him. But he bowed his head and pressed his fist over his heart. “Whatever you command!”

“I saw him in the black forest.” Even her voice sounded like water.

“That’s more than sixty square miles!”

The Fairy smiled. Hentzau felt rage and fear choking his heart.

Without another word, she undid the pearl clasp with which she pinned her hair like a human woman, and brushed her hand through it. Black moths fluttered out from between her fingers; the pale spots on their wings looked like skulls. The guards quickly opened the doors as the insects swarmed toward them, and even Hentzau’s soldiers, who had been waiting outside in the dark corridor, recoiled as the moths flew past. They all knew that their sting penetrated even Goyl skin.

The Fairy put the clasp back in her hair.

“Once they find him,” she said, without looking at Hentzau, “they will come to you. And you will bring him to me. Immediately.”

His men were staring at her through the open door, but they quickly lowered their heads as Hentzau turned around.

Fairy.

Damn her and the night she had suddenly appeared among their tents. The third battle, and their third victory. She had walked toward the King’s tent as if the groans of their wounded and the white moon above their dead had summoned her. Hentzau had stepped into her path, but she had just walked through him, like liquid through porous stone, as if he, too, were already among the dead, and she had stolen his King’s heart to fill her own heartless bosom with it.

Even Hentzau had to admit that the best weapons combined did not spread as much fear as her curse, which turned the flesh of their enemies into stone. Yet he was certain they would have still won the war without her, and that victory would have tasted so much sweeter.

“I will find the Jade Goyl without your moths,” he said. “If he really is more than just a dream.”

She answered him with a smile, which followed him back into the daylight that clouded his eyes and cracked his skin.

Damn her.

4

On The Other Side

Will’s voice had sounded so different, Clara had barely recognized it. Nothing for weeks, and then this stranger on the phone who wouldn’t really say why he had called.

The streets seemed even more congested than usual, and the trip was endless, until she finally stood in front of the old apartment building where he and his brother had grown up. Stone faces stared down from the gray facade, their contorted features eroded by exhaust fumes. Clara couldn’t help but look up at them as the doorman held the door for her. She was still wearing the pale green surgical gown under her coat. She had not taken the time to change. She had just run out of the hospital.

Will.

He had sounded so lost. Like someone who was drowning. Or someone who was saying farewell.

Clara pulled the grilled doors of the elevator shut behind her. She’d worn the same gown the first time she’d met Will, in front of the room where his mother had lain. Clara often worked weekends at the hospital, not only because she needed the money. Textbooks and universities made you forget all too easily that flesh and blood were actually very real.

Seventh floor.

The copper nameplate next to the door was so tarnished that Clara involuntarily wiped it with her sleeve.

RECKLESS. Will had often made fun of how that name did not suit him at all.

Unopened mail was piled up behind the door, but there was light in the hall.