Mina gently let Lynet’s body lie on the floor, still and unmoving, and rose in an attempt to recover some sense of dignity in front of this young woman. Nadia wasn’t looking at her, though; her eyes remained on Lynet, her mouth hanging open as she reached for the doorway to steady herself. There wasn’t time for her regret, though. “Has this poison definitely killed her? She put on the bracelet just a few minutes ago. Is there any chance she’s still alive?” Mina said.
Nadia shook her head, still staring at Lynet.
“Just come here,” Mina ordered, raising her voice. “I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of corpses before.”
Nadia swallowed and nodded, coming to kneel beside Lynet and check for some faint pulse that Mina had missed. Mina waited, hardly breathing, until the surgeon lifted her head and gave Mina her answer without even speaking.
Tears filled Mina’s eyes, and she turned aside, not wanting the surgeon to see her cry. “I don’t understand why you’re so upset,” Mina said. “You got what you wanted, didn’t you? You didn’t care if Lynet had to die for it.”
“You’re right,” the girl said, her voice laced with disdain. “We both have exactly what we wanted, my lady.”
Mina ignored her, turning now to Felix, who was waiting at the door. “Take her down to the crypt,” she told him for the second time. “Don’t let anyone see you.” To the surgeon, she said, “You’re dismissed.”
After one last hesitant look at Lynet, the surgeon left, but Felix remained. He started toward Mina, but she held up a hand to stop him. She didn’t deserve to be comforted when Lynet was dead. She looked up at the patches in the roof, now letting in the cool light of dawn. How could Mina have forgotten such a careless detail? Lynet could have used that snow to her advantage. But she hadn’t fought. She had trusted Mina, and she had died for her trust. And now there would be no more chance for escape, not from the crypt.
“Take care with her,” she said to him. She couldn’t stay in this room any longer. She swept past Felix without letting him touch her. She was covered in fractures, and she was sure that if he placed just a finger on her, she would shatter into a million pieces at once.
34
MINA
She pressed her fingertips to the glass of her mirror, but of course, she felt nothing. Mina had often considered forcing her heart to beat; glass obeyed her, after all. But even if it worked—and she wasn’t sure it would, or if her heart would crack with the effort—it would still be a lie.
The steady pulse in Lynet’s fingertips hadn’t been a lie.
Lynet had died thinking that Mina had killed her, that her efforts to reach out to her stepmother one last time had failed. You’re the only family I have left. That was what troubled Mina the most—that Lynet may have died believing that she was unloved.
Maybe we can make something new.
Not now, Mina thought. Not anymore. Nothing new ever happened in Whitespring.
What happened now that it was all over? Mina had won, and here was her victory, here in the mirror: a miserable queen, a hollow reflection. Mina wished she could finish her father’s work and replace each piece of her with a shard from her mirror. First her bones and then her flesh, until she became a living mirror, always reflecting out, but never in, so no one would see that she was once again carved out and empty, her heart dying with Lynet.
She couldn’t stand to look at herself anymore—her disheveled hair, her red eyes, her skin no longer smooth but lined with grief. She took up the little stool that sat beside the mirror and with one swing smashed it into the glass. The mirror cracked, and Mina swung again, until pieces of glass were falling like snow.
“What are you doing?”
His body was warped in the broken mirror, but she knew her father’s voice.
“Why is there broken glass everywhere? Did you do this?” She felt his heavy step reverberate underneath her, and without thinking, she pried one of the loose shards from the mirror frame, not caring when it cut her hand.
He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. “What’s the matter with you? I’ve never seen you so careless before.”
“Because I have nothing to care about anymore,” Mina said, wrenching herself out of his grasp. “Isn’t that what you always wanted? For me not to care about anything or anyone? I thought you’d be proud.”
He waved at her with a dismissive gesture. “I don’t have time for this. Where is the surgeon? She’s not in her workroom and she was supposed to—I can’t find her anywhere.”
“How should I know?” Mina said. “I hope she’s gone.”
He frowned at that, shaking his head in confusion. “And you put the corpse in the crypt?”
Mina narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “Why would you ask me that?”
Did he hesitate before answering, or did Mina imagine it? If he did hesitate, it was only for a moment. “You were so distressed before. I have to make sure you were thinking clearly enough to get rid of the corpse.”
“Stop calling her that,” Mina snapped. Her grip tightened around the glass in her hand, and she felt a trickle of blood spill from between her fingers.
“I don’t have time for your hysterics,” he said. “Clean yourself up. If you show any sign of weakness now, you’ll be deposed before that girl’s corpse is cold.” He chuckled as he turned away. “But then, I suppose it was cold from the start.”
Mina started to fling the piece of glass at his head, but then he let out a sharp cry, clutching his chest with one hand while reaching for the doorway with the other. Mina watched him but made no move to help. “What’s the matter?” she said, her voice flat. “A weak heart?”
He chuckled feebly. “Yes, Mina, exactly that.” He muttered something under his breath—Mina thought it sounded like “But not for much longer”—and then he was gone.
Her father was right about one thing. If she faltered now, or even showed up at the Great Hall in disarray—her eyes red from weeping, her hand red with blood—not even her glass soldiers would be strong enough to keep her on the throne. And she had to stay on the throne—what else did she have now, except her dreams for the South? If she lost her crown, there was nothing left. She would have to follow Lynet to the crypt.
Why did he ask if Lynet was in the crypt? Mina wondered, still questioning that moment of hesitation before he answered. If he had been lying, then why? What could he possibly want from Lynet now? She remembered he had spoken of Lynet this way, like she was just a dead body, when he had first given her the poison—When she’s dead, bring the body back to Whitespring, and I’ll dispose of it.
Why the insistence that she bring the body back to Whitespring? What did he want from Lynet that he could only take from her now that she was dead?
He had been looking for the surgeon—
What’s the matter? A weak heart?
Exactly that … but not for much longer.
Mina let out a low groan. She should have known. She should have sensed it at once—when her heart had weakened as a child, Gregory had replaced it. He’d told her once that creating Lynet had drained his heart, and so now he planned to take Lynet’s—to reclaim the life and the magic that he had given to her. He would open Lynet up and leave her heartless, just as he had done to Mina.
I won’t allow it, Mina promised herself, her hand tightening around the glass. All the thwarted love that had collected in her heart, stagnating there for years without any release, came to life now, transforming into something as sharp and dangerous as the piece of glass in her hand.
Her hair was still a tangled mess. There was blood on her hands and skirt. Her face was bare and stained with tears.
It didn’t matter. She had been too late before, but not this time. She clutched her weapon and ran from the room to find her father.
Felix was beside her in an instant, and she wondered if he had been waiting outside her rooms since returning from the crypt in case she called for him. “Mina, what’s the matter?” he asked as he caught
up with her quickly. His eyes went straight to the blood on her hand.
She stopped and reached for him with her free hand, pulling him toward her by the fabric of his shirt. “I need you to take the guards—all of them—and stand watch outside the crypt. Don’t let anyone pass through the door, not even me.”
“But why—”
“Go the back way, from the servants’ door, not through the courtyard. I don’t want my father to see you. Please, Felix.”
He heard the note of panic in her voice, and he nodded, reassuring her that he would do exactly as she asked.
When he was gone, Mina continued down the hall, turning a corner and going to a window that looked out on the courtyard. Yes, there he was—Gregory was just stepping out into the courtyard, taking slow, labored steps. From the window, in the light of the early morning, he looked so small, and she was struck again by how feeble he appeared when he wasn’t looming over her, one hand gripping her by the wrist. She always felt like a child again in those moments, and so she had never believed that she could break that grip—never thought she could escape him, even if she tried. But she wasn’t a child anymore, and now, for Lynet’s sake, she had to believe that she was capable of stopping him.
With a fresh surge of determination, she raced down to the courtyard.
“Father!” she called, hurrying across the snow to block his path. She didn’t care that he wasn’t alone, that there were people watching.
He looked at her disheveled appearance in horror, and she heard a nearby gasp, probably at the trail of blood she was leaving behind. “Go back inside,” Gregory said in a frantic whisper. “What are you doing?”
She didn’t bother to lower her voice. “I won’t let you have her. I won’t let you have her heart.”
His eye twitched in response, but he simply put his hands on her shoulders and said, “You’ve had a trying day. Now go back inside before anyone else sees you like this.”
He tried to shove her aside so he could reach the arch that would lead him around through the Shadow Garden, to the crypt door at the base of the tower. But Mina shook off his grip and blocked him again. He was still looking nervously at the passersby who had stopped to see this spectacle of the queen fighting her magician father, and Mina suddenly remembered the night of her wedding, when he had tried to use the public eye to pressure Nicholas into giving Lynet over to him. He had lost, though, because that same crowd had made it impossible for him to argue when Nicholas had stood his ground. If Mina wanted to win, she had to keep him here, where everyone could see them. Her father was always at his most cruel when he had her cornered and alone.
But Gregory must have known that if he turned back now, he would never have another chance to step foot in the crypt. Mina would have him guarded day and night. “Mina, stop this at once,” he said. “You think you can turn me away by causing a scene, but you’ll do more damage to yourself than to me.”
“Only if I stay silent. I may have driven Lynet away and made her a prisoner, and I may have been too late to save her, but you—you’re the only one who killed her.”
The whole courtyard came alive with excited murmuring. More people were starting to gather now, including some who were watching from windows and balconies above. Once, Mina would have cared that they watched with something like glee at seeing their hated queen come undone at last.
Gregory was noticing the crowd too, and he shot Mina a look of absolute loathing, his lips curling to show sharp teeth. “You’ll regret that, Mina. Never put a man in a position where he has nothing more to lose.”
“You should have remembered that before you killed Lynet,” Mina shot back.
She thought that would have made him angrier, maybe even scared if she was lucky, but instead he was smiling, and she was the one who was suddenly afraid. “I’ll give you one more chance, Mina. Let me through.”
“I won’t let you near her.”
“Then you won’t have a choice.”
He lifted his hand, palm facing toward her the way Lynet had done not long ago in the tower, but then he closed his hand into a fist, and Mina felt a blinding jolt of pain in her chest.
“You’ve told my secret,” Gregory said. “Perhaps it’s time to reveal yours. Have you forgotten, Mina, that when I create something, I also have the power to destroy it? I made your heart out of glass—that means I can shatter it with just a thought.”
The pain forced Mina to her hands and knees in the snow, and she heard Gregory’s words echoing in her head. The truth was that she had forgotten—she had always thought of glass as hers. But her heart had always been her father’s creation, just like the mouse he had made from sand all those years ago.
Felix and the glass soldiers still guarded the crypt, but even weakened, Gregory could use his powers to strike them down, knowing that Lynet’s heart would restore him. If Mina wanted to keep her father away from Lynet, she had to stop him here, now. She tasted blood in her mouth, and she tried to stand again, but she sank back to her knees as her court continued to watch.
She was so tired of being strong, so tired of fighting enemies both real and imagined. And now she would die because in the end, she was as easily broken as a piece of glass. She wondered if Lynet would have appreciated knowing that her stepmother was the delicate one after all.
“Give up, Mina,” Gregory said from directly above her. “You have no other weapon to use against me. It’s all over now.”
Mina kept her head down, not wanting him to be the last thing she saw before her death. And instead, she saw—herself. A fragment of herself in a piece of glass. The pain had become so consuming that she had forgotten about the broken mirror shard that she had brought with her, which lay in the snow now beside her hand, still stained with her blood. That was the one secret she had managed to keep from Gregory over the years—and Lynet must not have told him either. Even when they were enemies, Lynet had kept Mina’s secret.
I have to keep fighting for her, she thought, for Lynet.
She kept her eyes on the piece of glass in the snow, and then with the strength she still had left, she concentrated.
“You’re wrong,” she said, choking on her own blood. She lifted her head to see her father staring down at her, a satisfied grin on his face. “I do have one more weapon.”
A flash of light passed across Gregory’s throat in the space of a single blink, and then the glass shard fell to the snow at Gregory’s feet as a red line formed across his throat.
The blood started to spurt out an instant later, and Gregory clutched at the wound, his eyes wide with horror. He was gasping, keeling over, and landed beside her. He grabbed at her wrist, but she pulled her hand away.
She had made the cut deep, so that he would bleed out before he could do more damage to her heart, and she watched him as his limbs stopped jerking and his face went still, the blood still pouring from the gaping wound at his throat.
It’s done, she thought, and even through the pain in her chest, she felt safer than she had ever felt before.
She heard a dull roar in her ears that came from the crowd, horrified at the violence they had just witnessed, but not so horrified that they had done anything to stop it. They were probably pleased that she and her father had finished each other off.
Mina coughed, spraying more blood across the snow. It couldn’t be much longer now until she either died or the pain made her lose consciousness.
Another collective gasp filled the courtyard, and Mina wondered if it had happened at last, if she was dead, but she noticed that they were all pointing at something behind her, above her. Princess, she thought she heard. Lynet.
But that was impossible—Lynet was dead. Or maybe Lynet’s vengeful spirit had returned to see Mina die. Somehow, impossibly, Mina pushed herself up to her feet and turned to face the girl she had failed.
With her black hair and red dress cutting through the white haze of snow, Lynet was as vivid as a bolt of lightning against a dull gray sky. She stood outlined b
y the stone arch, and behind her were at least a dozen men, their faces blurred, carrying sharp and solid swords. Her beautiful face burned with rage, and she was vengeance itself, her own hand carrying a dagger as well.
Mina stumbled toward her as the pain continued to tear through her chest, and then she fell to her knees again at Lynet’s feet. Her fingers found the hem of Lynet’s dress, and it was so solid, so real—how could a ghost feel so real? “You’re alive,” she murmured, hardly believing the words even as they fell from her mouth. “This is real. You’re alive.” Death meant nothing to her anymore—Mina could endure a thousand deaths knowing that Lynet was alive and safe. A painful laugh tore out of her as she lifted her head.
“I’m ready now,” she managed to say through the blood. “I’m ready to die.”
35
LYNET
Lynet had woken with a scream trapped in her throat. Her heart—Gregory was going to cut out her heart while she was still alive—
But then she’d felt a painful thud in her chest as her blood began to thaw inside her veins, and she might have laughed from relief, except she couldn’t move at all. The relief didn’t last—she was still alive, but her eyes wouldn’t open, no matter how she tried, and so she didn’t know where she was, if she’d soon feel the pain of a knife splitting her open.
That interminable space between waking and being able to move again was even worse than the moment she knew Mina had poisoned her. The scream was building up inside her whole body, growing louder, and she almost thought that it might tear her open in order to get out.
A scream of helplessness, yes, like the itch she always felt under her skin when she came out of the crypt every year, but a scream of rage, too, because the reason she was lying here, half dead, was because she had put her trust in Mina. Perhaps Gregory had been right, in his own way—there was no cure for Mina, no way to heal the rift between them. Now Lynet understood what Mina must have known all along: one of them had to die.
Girls Made of Snow and Glass Page 31