Agatha Harkness's Arc

Chapter 19 of 21

Agatha reached her doorstep by dusk. The manor let her in, which meant it still trusted her. She fetched a spade and dug where she had buried the shard weeks ago. The soil came up easy, too easy. Where the corruption had stopped spreading, a hole gaped instead. The shard was gone. In its place spread a slick black stain, thick and smoky, clinging to the roots like tar. It carried a faint red glow deep inside, as if something burned under the crust. She knelt and touched it. The black smeared onto her fingers and would not wipe off. This was not the shard. This was what the shard had become while she slept in false peace. The corruption had eaten the glass and grown. Snow White had been right. Her buried problem had not stayed buried. Agatha called her broom. It swept down from the manor's eaves, the black cat riding the bristles, green eyes bright. She needed a colder opinion than her own. She flew north until the trees turned white and the air bit her throat. The Snow Queen's castle rose from the frost. Icilia met her at the gate, small and still, her scepter dripping ice. She did not offer warmth or a chair. "You buried rot," Icilia said. "You came to me too late." "I came to know what it is." Agatha held up her stained fingers. "Snow White says broken mirrors call it. She says every crack pulls faster." Icilia studied the black on Agatha's hand. "That is soot from a debt unpaid. Peter's voice paid Ursula. The stain is what the payment left behind." "Can your mirror stop it?" "My Mirror reflects. It does not clean." Icilia stepped closer. "Frost holds a thing that wants out. Your soot does not want out. It wants to spread." Agatha's jaw tightened. "Then it cannot be sealed." "Not by ice." Icilia lifted her scepter and touched the stain on Agatha's finger. Frost crept over the black. For a heartbeat it froze. Then the red glow flared under the crust and cracked the ice apart. The soot smoked free again. "You see," Icilia said. "It burns cold. It burns everything." Agatha wiped her hand on her skirt and left a black streak. The soot was climbing her wrist now, slow but sure. She had dug up the problem, and the problem had marked her. "Where does it go if I do not stop it?" she asked. Icilia turned back toward her gate. "Into you. Then into your walls. Then into every mirror still whole." Agatha stared at the black creeping up her arm. She had wanted only peace inside her manor. Now she carried the rot on her own skin, and no frost would take it off. She mounted her broom. She had to find who could unmake a demon's soot before it reached her heart.