The Mirrored Shard Read Free Page A

both know I’m not welcome here.”
    “True,” Octavia said. She reached out and brushed her silver-tipped nails across my face. They left tiny, jagged furrows that stung and sprouted pen lines of blood. I touched my cheek and my fingers came away red. “I confess, I do find you curious. I like curiosities. I have a wing full ofthem. Two-headed hounds, a man with hair all over his body, a frog that sings in a human voice. But you, Aoife—you are the most curious of all.” She narrowed her eyes. “You’re like a closed box of cogs. I haven’t yet figured out what makes you tick.”
    “I lost someone,” I said. “I have to go to the Deadlands and see him.”
    “Why?” Octavia looked genuinely confused. “If he is dead, he is dead. His soul can be with you no longer.”
    I looked at my feet. I’d changed out of my Fae slippers and dress and into the clothes I’d been wearing when I’d arrived. They were musty and mud-covered but irrevocably human. I needed them, to remind me where I was going. “I have to see him again. To apologize, and to bring him back,” I told Octavia. “It’s my fault he’s dead. It wasn’t his time.”
    “Well,” she drawled after a moment, stretching like the reptilian creature she was. “I can’t have you running off. Even if you can rip holes in reality. That is by far the most curious of all my curiosities, and I think you’ll remain right where you are. At least, if you want your mother to stay healthy.”
    Octavia gripped my arm before I could protest, and dragged me out of the room and through the corridors. The few Fae still awake stared as they stepped to the side. My stomach lurched as we passed through a half-rotted door, twice as high as me, and started down a set of steps carved to look like skeletons holding up the treads.
    “Where are we going?” I ventured. Octavia smiled at me, her teeth more like blades than ever in the low light of this subterranean place.
    “I’m practiced at witchery,” she said. “I can make toads trip off your tongue and make you dance like a puppet, but I’ve found that nothing cements a lesson quite so well as a real-life example.”
    The room was dark and, from what I could tell, empty. Octavia yanked me to a stop in front of a small black cage. I wasn’t sure what sort of metal it was—it couldn’t be iron, but it appeared strong and the bars were woven to look like a thorn thicket. Probably constructed by Erlkin slaves, the goblin race the Fae caught and forced to work their mines and metal shops so they could avoid contact with anything poisonous.
    “Have fun,” Octavia hissed in my ear, then turned and stalked back to the staircase, her long blue and silver robe kicking up dust and the shells of dead beetles.
    The door slammed and I heard a bolt click into place. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself, to stave off anger more than panic. I didn’t know why she’d left me here, any more than I knew what was inside the cage, and I had no doubt that my confusion was part of Octavia’s plan. Fae loved to leave you off balance. It was how they tricked you.
    “You look like I feel.” The voice was low and raspy, but I felt an instant spark of recognition. The cage was largely held in shadow. I stepped closer and squinted through the fist-sized holes in the mesh.
    “Excuse me?”
    “That expression. That hate. I’m glad to see you haven’t lost that.”
    A hand flashed out and wrapped around mine, and I jerked involuntarily, the hot flush of shock pulsing through me. The grip was strong, and when I looked down I sawthat the flesh was the sort of pale that skin becomes when it sits too long in the dark and damp, veins standing out like road maps. The nails tipping each finger were shredded and bloody, and the knuckles crusted with dirt.
    “I’m just glad to see you, Aoife,” Grey Draven hissed. “Glad to know you’re as miserable as I am.”
    “I …” I stopped trying to talk. I’d hoped to never see him