A Fair Account of the Traitors Snow White and Rose Red

The Taint of Grand Banes

If only I could faint with half her grace.

Bone-deep weariness settles into me as Micah leads our party away from the Mines of Kadith, but at least it is a small relief when Snow's bleeding wounds freeze over a mile from their border. It takes all my will not to collapse when Micah shows us into a cave set deep in the pine-covered stone ridge that I'd entered only in my kinsight dreams. The golden bear lays Snow in a bed of fresh pine needles. His claws scratch deep razor ruts in the bedrock as he gazes at her sleeping form with an almost agonized fixation.

He needs no words for me to understand his keen misery. No doubt he feels Snow's injuries are his failure for staying behind. Micah has always been Snow's steadfast companion whether as Chief Huntsman or Orune. For all the formal courtesy he treated her with at Court, Micah never let her isolate herself in cold solace, bringing Snow ripe berries, rare-colored feathers, and elaborately carved flutes he made during his hunts. I wonder if two people have ever been more in love without uttering it once.

I lay my hand on the bear's broad shoulder and his rigid muscles startle as his attention swings to me. "Don't torture yourself," I say softly. "It was our choice to go there—and it was the right gamble."

While my sister sleeps, I relate to Jack and Micah our encounter with Silverhand and the mystery of the lucidium mirror. But I'm forced to admit that I've never seen such a curious looking glass anywhere in the palace—nor am I keen to find out if Silverhand's sinister rant that the mirror and Snow's blood are bound together is anything more than lunatic babble.

A weary silence falls between us as twilight stretches shadows across the Wildershade. Micah rests his massive head beside Snow while Jack perches on a rock by the entrance. As for me, I've had my fill of dark spaces in the earth. After finding a copper lantern tucked in a corner of the cave, I light the candle and join the elf outside to escape the stifling heat building inside.

My breath catches as starlight refracts off the silver leaves like a storm of darting fireflies. "Stunning!" I whisper.

"Almost like a million mirror slivers, don't you think?" Jack asks.

The rare wonder I entertained shatters with his bitter reminder of all that has already broken, and all that still must splinter.

"If only," I say, biting my lip. I can vaguely remember a time before the night of splitting glass and Father's death when there were many looking glasses in the palace. How could I forget Nana Lune scolding Mother for her maze of mirrors? She'd awarded Estelle the title of vainest prick-me-dainty in all of Albemar! Mother had just laughed, hiding a vague smile behind her hand as she murmured that sometimes a mirror held a wider view than a window.

Mother. I wish with all my might to hold her in my arms as I remember her then—blissfully untainted by the uncertainty and ugliness that time has brought to our family. I wonder if Silverhand spoke truth and my mother's fate is somehow tangled in the dark designs of his "Mistress of the Wildershade." The idea of such a phantasmal entity is preposterous; then again, so was the apple bite that gifted the Leonesse line with geomagy. Curse the first Rosavere for leaving me with this mess!

I turn to vent my frustrations to the elf only to find him locked in a curious trance. Jack sits cross-legged with both palms out, his eyes fluttering rapidly as if half-asleep. Using the corverum all day must have taken a massive toll on his strength. Unable to access soil untainted by lucidium to regenerate his life force, the moon-gray hue of his irises has yet to return to its customary green vibrancy. I can't help but marvel a little that I'm keeping company with everyone I'd once meant to destroy. Kin slayer sister, nightmare beast, and renegade elf—how wrong I was about each of them!