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“Sleep, Red,” Carnon said, dropping a kiss on top of my cloaked head. “I’ll wake you when we get there.”
I did sleep, and the fact that I awoke in the huge bed, light shining through the gossamer curtains of Carnon’s room, told me that hehadn’twoken me after all.
I sat up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes as I tried to figure out the time. I felt groggy, and it looked like the sun was just rising, so I had probably only slept a few hours. I turned, looking for Carnon and finding a folded note on his pillow next to my head.
Office. -C
Short and to the point. I stretched and dressed in clean clothes, feeling the need of a bath but deciding to wait until later. Carnon would undoubtedly be dead on his feet, and I didn’t want to make him wait. I also needed to check on Artemis’ wounds and make sure they were healing, and I had no idea where Carnon would have left the strix.
It turned out that she was also in the office, which I only got a little lost trying to locate among the maze of moonstone hallways. Akela was also there, head resting on his paws as he guarded Artemis, clearly deciding that her need was greater than mine right now. The strix was bundled up and resting on a pillow. She hooted pathetically when I entered the wood paneled room.
“Glad to see you up,” I said, crouching down and giving the strix a stroke on the head. She hooted feebly again, and I looked up to see Carnon watching me, a bemused expression on his face.
“Should I be offended that you greet your animal friends before saying good morning to your long-suffering mate?” he asked as I stood and crossed the room to him.
Rather than answer, I climbed into his lap, kissing him soundly as he wound his arms around my waist.
“You look tired,” I said, pulling back to study his face.
“You’ll make me blush if you keep complimenting me like that, Red,” he said, giving me a tight squeeze. I yelped, giving him a playful scowl.
“If I recall,” I teased, tapping his nose with my finger, “you once called me a corpse.”
“Hmm,” he said, catching the finger and pulling me down for another kiss. “I believe I said you lookedlesslike a corpse. That’s high praise from me.”
I laughed and pulled back, sobering at his rueful smirk.
“We have to come up with a plan to rescue Mama,” I said, glancing at the big oak desk, now covered in maps and papers and blotches of drying ink, and remembering my grandmother’s severed hand sitting atop it.
“I know,” Carnon said, sighing heavily and scrubbing a hand over his face. He looked like he hadn’t slept, and I frowned at the papers covering his desk.
“What’s this?” I asked, gesturing to the mess.
“I’m trying to figure out how to get us to your grandmother and back out again without dying,” he said, grimacing at the various maps. “The Bloodwood is wide. It will take at least a week to get from here across the whole place. And I don’t relish the idea of marching into the capital city with every witch in the territory ready to kill or attack us as soon as we are noticed.”
I frowned, thinking about what I knew of the geography around Ostara and the Bloodwood. The desk and the memory of the severed hand gave me an idea.
“What if we didn’t march in?” I asked, excitement growing as my idea took shape in my mind. Carnon looked at me with a raised brow. “What if we walked in,” I elaborated, “through a mirror?”
“I’m not sure you remember this, Red,” Carnon said slowly, giving me an arch look, “but that witch mirror was destroyed. Unless you’re hiding another in one of the pockets you so dearly love,” he patted my thighs for emphasis, “we’re stuck.”
“What if I could make one?” I suggested, excitement nearly bubbling over. “I know the witch signs and all the incantations by heart. All we’d need is a big enough mirror, a way to carve the signs in, and a safe space for me to work on it.”
“The last time you played with a mirror, it did not go well, Red,” Carnon reminded me. The screaming that had filled the palace had put everyone on high alert, and my grandmother’s severed hand was an unpleasant souvenir of that experiment.
“That’s because she was watching the mirrors,” I replied. “Hunting for me. But now she knows where I am, and wants me to get to her. There’s no reason for her to try to cross the mirror herself.”
“We wouldn’t be able to test it,” Carnon said, still sounding skeptical about the plan. “We’d be walking blind into an enchanted mirror, hoping to end upnotin the middle of a trap, possibly with no way back if she destroyed her mirror.”
“There are thousands of mirrors for traveling in the Witchlands,” I argued, pushing this objection aside. “If we needed to run, we could find another mirror. A way back. My grandmother has never been here, so she can’t safely cross through to the palace, and you could have Lucifer and Herne guarding the mirror from this side. We could destroy it as soon as we pull my mother through.”
Carnon bit his lip, considering. “How sure are you that you can create a witch mirror?” he asked, looking wary but intrigued.
"Ninety percent certain,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. Carnon raised a brow again. “Okay, eighty-five,” I amended, “but we don’t really have another choice.”
“This is almost certainly a trap,” Carnon said, looking at me seriously. “Are you ready to use your magic to defend yourself, and your mother, if it is? You may have to kill. It weighs on you, Red.”
I studied the serious lines of his face, so unusually grave compared to his normal wicked smirk. This was the face of a male who had killed to protect, who knew the toll of death on a soul. But the thought of Mama steeled my resolve.
