Mirror, Mirror
Raella
The water of Mirror Lake was as black as obsidian, smooth as polished glass, and twice as cold as a fresh grave.
I knelt on the frost-dusted bank at the northernmost perimeter of the Aurelian March. The tattered hem of my heavy wool cloak soaked up the freezing black sludge of the shore. The wind howling off the jagged mountain peaks cut through the coarse fabric of my clothes like a volley of silver needles.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t. My spine was locked tight, my palms pressed hard into the frozen mud as I leaned over the glassy surface, desperate to catch a glimpse of the only part of myself they had managed to keep in a cage.
Mirror Lake was strictly forbidden.
The royal boundaries of the pack lands ended somewhere behind me, marked by a line of ancient, iron-spiked fences driven deep into the frozen earth. If the border patrols caught me out here for a third time this month, Lady Elodia wouldn’t just strip my remaining meat rations—she’d have the guards haul me back up the three hundred winding stone steps and bolt the door to the North Spire for good.
But the heights were an inexpensive price to pay.
Mirror Lake was the only place in the territory where the suppressing magic of the potions couldn’t completely bind my power. The only place where the suffocating hum of their laws faded, allowing me to see her.
“Mirror, mirror, grave-cold deep,” I whispered, a small plume of white air disappearing into the frost. “Wake the oath the dead wolf keep. Teeth of winter, breath of ice, blood will pay the phantom’s price. Split the flesh and break the shroud, unleash the wolf they disavowed.”
I held my breath.
At first, the reflection that stared back was just my human face—a haunting, fragile thing that looked entirely out of place among the sun-bronzed timber wolves of the Aurelian Pack. Skin pale enough for blue veins to ghost beneath the surface. Ash-blonde hair spilling over my shoulders in a thick curtain that framed lips the color of a fading bruise.
Unwanted. Outcast. Orphan. One of the last survivors of the Lesser Shifter Purge, hidden away in a tower and treated like a contagious curse.
Lady Elodia, a monster hidden beneath a beautiful face, was a consort taken by the late King after his wife passed. Now she was high advisor to the Alpha King and my torturer. She kept me locked away and forced me to hide my face, my hair, my wolf. A lifetime sentence of social isolation within the spire. Years spent spinning the fine winter cloaks for the very royals who kept me caged, the constant prick of the spindle a reminder of my place. A spectre. The ghost in the tower.
I strained against the ebony depths of the water.
Nothing.
Where are you, Cinder?
Then, the dark water beneath my palms violently rippled. My human features dissolved, bleeding out into the blackness as the beast beneath the surface woke up.
She didn’t look like the brown-furred wolves of the Aurelian Line. She was massive—an absolute monster with fur the color of a mountain blizzard and eyes that burned like twin shards of blue glacial ice. A Frost Wolf. The old books claimed my kind had died centuries ago. The Royal Council preferred it that way.
I was given weekly doses of wolvesbane brewed from the crushed seeds of the Blood-Apple trees that grew deep in the Wicked Wood—a strain meant to put beasts like me to sleep. It kept Cinder slumbering beneath my skin, but at the edge of Mirror Lake, the moonlit waters loosened the poison’s chains.
Cinder, I thought, my heart hammering against my ribs as I stared into her glowing blue eyes. I’ve missed you. The potions are getting stronger, or we are getting weaker. I can hardly feel you when we are away from the magic of the lake. I came here because I have to talk to you. Tonight is the great mating ball. Wolves from all over the kingdom will be there. We could find our mate. Maybe he could save us.
For one reckless moment, I let myself imagine it. A stranger turning at the scent of my skin. Golden eyes widening in recognition. A bond so fierce that no council decree, no wolvesbane, no iron-spiked fence could ever separate us. Someone who would choose me. The ache of it echoed in the hollow cavern of my chest, a desperate plea for a ballroom to transform my loneliness into love, my prison into a home.
The wolf in the water bared a row of massive, pearl-white fangs. A low, vibrating growl echoed in the shadows of my mind, cold and entirely unromantic.
If any male wolf comes near us, Raella, I will eat his heart, Cinder’s voice rumbled, heavy with a feral, bloodthirsty promise. We do not need an Aurelian savior. We need to tear the throats from the guards, snap the spine of the Lady, and paint the snow red. That is how a Frost Wolf leaves a spire.
Cinder didn’t want a courtly mate. She wanted to run north, straight into the suffocating canopy of the Wicked Wood—a lawless place where paths shifted like living snakes, where one must never whisper their true name into the trees. Something called to her from the dark of the shadows and twisted roots, something I couldn’t explain but couldn’t deny either.
Crack.
A sudden vibration traveled through the frozen mud beneath my knees, shattering the reflection into a thousand jagged ripples. The sound was faint—nearly a quarter-mile away through the dense forest—but to the heightened senses of my wolf, the snap of that frozen branch was as loud as a cannon.
Adrenaline flooded my system. The border patrol.
I scrambled to my feet, my heavy canvas skirt dragging in the mud as I threw the hood of my cloak over my platinum hair. I turned to sprint toward the safety of the low ravines, but my balance was completely ungrounded due to the mirror’s magical pull.
Before I could take three strides, the shadows between the pine trees split wide open.
Two massive wolves dressed in the black leather armor of the border patrol lunged into the clearing. One of them—a brutal, scarred enforcer named Marcus—didn’t even give me the chance to fall. He caught me by the shoulder, wrenching me backward hard enough to make my spine scream.
“Got her,” Marcus barked, his voice a rough, gloating rumble against my ear as he pinned my arms. “The Lady was right. She’s passed the perimeter again.”
I thrashed wildly, my fingernails lengthening into sharp, defensive claws as I dug them into the leather of his forearm, drawing blood. My wolf howled, her icy blue eyes trying to force their way to the surface.
Marcus shoved his face close to mine, sneering at my half-transformed state, bone-white teeth bared. “My, what big teeth you have.”
“The better to rip your throat out with,” I snarled, snapping my jaws inches from his nose.
“Not today, stray.” He slammed a heavy forearm against my throat, choking off my air.
The second guard stepped forward, pressing a cold glass vial against my lips, forcing me to swallow three drops of a liquid as red as a poisoned apple.
Wolvesbane.
“No!” I choked out hoarsely, but it was too late.
The poison filled me like leaden ice. The brilliant blue in my eyes violently flickered out, dragging my wolf down into the suffocating dark.
Remember my face.
Cinder’s claws seemed to scrape once against the inside of my mind before she disappeared beneath the darkness.
My claws retracted. My muscles turned to water. My knees buckled as the paralysis drained the very life from my body.
“Please, stop. You’re killing her.” My voice came out hoarse and uneven. “Cinder, don’t die. Please.”
“Not so tough now, are you? Bind her wrists,” the guard ordered, his voice echoing as darkness clawed at the edges of my vision. “Drag her back to the spire. If she wants to play wolf, let her spin wool from behind iron bars.”
Marcus dropped me like a sack of flour.
As my cheek hit the frozen mud, a sharp scent pierced through the poisonous haze. It smelled of earth and crushed pine. From the deepest shadow of a gnarled oak, a figure stepped into the clearing.
He didn’t wear the black leather armor of the pack guards. He wore a long, charcoal-colored duster that billowed around his ankles like smoke. Even the darkness of the forest seemed to warp around him, his shadow stretching unnaturally long against the snow, shifting like a beast’s tail. His face was hidden beneath a deep hood, but I caught the flash of his eyes. They weren’t Aurelian gold. They were silver, like the frozen surface of the lake, burning with a cold, baleful intent. His lips were lifted at the corner, caught somewhere between a smile and a sneer.
As Marcus grabbed my ankles to drag me away, the stranger leaned down. His gloved fingers picked up the empty glass vial from the mud.
“The king desires no crippled hound,” the stranger murmured as a soft violet light enveloped the air around him. His voice was low, smooth, and heavy with a dark promise that made the wolvesbane in my veins hum rather than burn. “But midnight comes with a thorny crown. The mate to bring a kingdom down.”
Who—
I couldn’t finish the thought. The guards dragged my limp body backward through the freezing mud.
My long white hair trailed in the dirt like a broken banner, tracing a soft path through the frost. A trail of shattered earth.
Breadcrumbs for a beast to follow.
