It took me a moment to realize that Lyra was the strix. Interesting. I didn’t think the Mortans were sentimental enough to actually name the creatures.
“I promise. Now, who are you?”
The boy eyed me with suspicion again, but his shoulders slowly slumped in defeat. “Leonidas.”
“Hello, Leonidas. My name is Everleigh. Now, why don’t you tell me why you want to send Lyra through the mirror and into my palace?”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to send her into your palace. Not really. I don’t care where she goes, as long as it’s far away from here.”
I didn’t have to ask him where here was. From my conversations with Maeven, I knew that the Cardea mirror was in her chambers inside the main Mortan palace. “Why do you want to send Lyra away? She seems very fond of you.”
The strix had turned the onyx points on her wings down and was nestled up against the boy’s leg like she was a puppy who wanted to cuddle with him, despite the fact that her head came up past his waist. Leonidas curled his arm around Lyra’s back and hugged her closer to his side, and I could smell their rosy love for each other through the mirror.
The two of them reminded me of Gemma, the crown princess of Andvari, and Grimley, her gargoyle. Leonidas seemed to have the same sort of deep, close relationship with the strix as Gemma did with her gargoyle.
“Stay with you, Leo,” Lyra chirped in a high, singsong voice.
I blinked. And Lyra could talk, just like Grimley could.
Tears gleamed in Leonidas’s eyes as he stared down at the strix. “I want to stay with you too,” he said in a low voice. “But we both know what will happen if you don’t go.”
Lyra shivered, and the onyx tips on her feathers pointed straight up, as if she were a porcupine getting ready to defend herself against some horrible threat. After a moment, she settled back down and pressed her body against Leonidas’s side again.
“Stay with you,” she chirped in a louder, firmer voice.
“Even if you could pry her away from your side, you would still have another problem.” I rapped my knuckles on the glass, making it ripple. “Like I said before, you can’t send anything through this Cardea mirror.”
A stubborn look filled Leonidas’s face, and he pushed up the sleeves of his light purple tunic. “I can send something through to the other side. All I have to do is use my magic.”
Power sparked in his eyes, and the scent of his magic drifted through the mirror—hard stone mixed with sweet honeysuckle. The aroma was sharp, old, soft, and fresh, all at the same time, as though his magic hadn’t matured any more than his body had. But I had sensed a similar scent before, so I knew how strong he was going to be someday—and exactly what kind of magic he had.
My eyes narrowed. “You’re a mind magier.”
Leonidas’s hands clenched into fists. He didn’t say anything, but his lips pinched together, and a muscle ticked in his jaw. Maeven really needed to teach her son how to lie. His emotions were written all over his face for everyone to see and use against him, and her too.
Including me—especially me.
“So let me get this straight. You want to use your magic to send Lyra through the mirror and into my palace.” I gestured at the chambers around me. “Most people in Bellona don’t like strixes very much. Queens don’t like them very much either, especially when they’re coming from Mortan assassins.”
Leonidas shook his head. “I’m not an assassin, and I’m not sending her there to hurt you. I’m sending her there to escape, so she can finally be free, even if I can’t.”
He’d said the same thing to Lyra before he’d realized that I was watching, and the raw, naked worry and clear desperation in his voice made me bite back my retort. I opened my mouth to ask what he wanted to protect the strix from, but a sharp bang sounded in the distance, like a door had been slammed shut—or thrown open into the wall behind it.
Leonidas whirled to his right. I couldn’t see what he was looking at, but his eyes widened, and the twin scents of his coppery fear and ashy heartbreak gusted through the mirror. “It’s too late,” he whispered.
“Too late for what?”
He gave me an anguished look. “To save Lyra.”
I opened my mouth to ask him another question, but he waved his hand, and that bright silver light flared in the glass. When it vanished, the boy was gone, along with his strix, and the mirror was just a mirror again.
I frowned at my own reflection. Who was going to hurt Lyra? Maeven? Someone else? And why would they harm a strix, one of their own creatures?
I crossed my arms over my chest, thinking about everything he’d said, but I had no way of finding out the answers to my questions. Still, I had learned something important about Maeven’s son.
He was very, very afraid of something—or rather, someone.
And that someone had to be the Mortan king. The boy hadn’t flinched when I’d said Maeven’s name, other than the normal way all children did when they were worried about getting into trouble with their mothers, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to say the king’s name.
More of that surprising sympathy filled me. I might despise Leonidas’s mother and the rest of his family, but he couldn’t control who his parents were or the situation he’d been born into.
I stood by the mirror for five minutes, wondering if the boy might return or if Maeven might appear, but the glass remained smooth and still. I turned away from the mirror to leave, when my gaze fell on the jewelry still sitting on the writing desk.
I walked over and stared down at the bronze pocket watch, the silver signet ring, and the gold-coin pendant. All the tokens of my enemies. I started to leave them here, but something made me scoop them up off the desk.
They felt as cold and heavy as anvils in my hand, and the mix of metal and jewels dug into my skin. But in a strange way, I welcomed the chilly weight and the pricking sensations. They reminded me that I had survived these enemies—and gave me hope that I could survive all my others.
I tightened my grip on the jewelry, then left Maeven’s chambers and locked the door behind me.
* * *
I should have returned to my own chambers, climbed into bed next to Sullivan, and tried to get some sleep, but I wound up on the royal lawn instead.
It was completely deserted, and not even the guards were patrolling out here, given the cold, blustery wind and the snow fluttering down from the midnight sky. The hard, tiny flakes had already gathered on the flower beds, iron benches, and towering trees, and I felt as though I were standing in a giant globe, watching the snow swirl all around me.
The snow-dusted grass crunched like bones under my boots as I walked over to the low stone wall that cordoned off the lawn from the cliffs and the two-hundred-foot drop to the Summanus River below. I drew in a breath, pulling the chilly air deep down into my lungs, then looked out over Svalin.
I had always enjoyed the view of the city from the royal lawn, but the contrast of the black night and the white flakes made it even lovelier than usual. Lights still burned in many homes and shops, and the soft glows resembled fireflies hovering in the sheets of snow. The glows also highlighted the metal spires that adorned the corners of practically every building and made the sharp, slender points look like swords made of molten gold, silver, and bronze. In a way, the spires were swords, since they represented Bellona’s gladiator history and tradition, just like the seven spires that topped the palace did.