Mirror, Mirror
Raella
The water of Mirror Lake was as black as obsidian, as 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 soaking 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, palms pressing 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 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. "Whom the iron fences keep. Pierced by wind and bound by law, show me what they never saw.”
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. I looked like a tragic princess from a children’s bedtime story.
In reality, I was a debt the pack had never wanted to pay. One of the last survivors of the Lesser Shifter Purge, hidden away in a tower and treated like a contagious curse. Lady Elodia, the late King’s consort, had paid that debt in the cruelest way she could imagine: by locking me away and forcing me to hide my face. A lifetime sentence of social isolation within the spire, 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.
The pack called me a spectre. The ghost in the tower.
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 standard, 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 to sleep. It kept Cinder slumbering beneath my skin, but at the edge of Mirror Lake, the silver-gray waters loosened the poison’s chains.
Cinder, I thought, my heart hammering against my ribs as I stared into her glowing blue eyes. Tonight is the great mating ball. Wolves from all over the kingdom will be there. We could find our mate. Do you think you could awaken long enough for him to find 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 wolf in the water bared a row of massive pearl-white fangs. A low, vibrating growl echoed in the shadows of my mind. Cinder didn't want a mate. She wanted to run north, into the feral magic wild of the Wicked Wood. A lawless place where paths shifted like living snakes, and where a traveler must never whisper their true name into the trees.
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 my newly awakened senses, 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 hair. I turned to sprint toward the safety of the low ravines, but my balance was completely ungrounded from the magic of the mirror. 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 neck scream.
“Got the stray,” Marcus barked, his voice a rough, gloating rumble against my ear as he pinned my arms. “The informant 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 bared teeth. “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. My claws retracted. My muscles turned to water. My knees buckled as the paralysis drained the very spine from my body.
“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. As my cheek hit the frozen mud, a sharp scent pierced through the poisonous haze. It smelled of ancient 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. The Big Bad Wolf of a story that hadn’t been written yet.
His face was hidden beneath a deep hood, but I caught the flash of his eyes. They weren’t the standard Aurelian gold. They were silver, like the frozen surface of the lake, burning with a cold, baleful intent.
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. His voice was low, smooth, and heavy with a dark promise that made the wolvesbane in my veins shudder. “But midnight comes with a thorny crown. A mate to bring the 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.
