Agatha Harkness's Arc

Chapter 6 of 21

Agatha came home from the sea with the charm in her pocket and no place to use it. The summons would pull Peter to her threshold. But her threshold was no longer hers alone. The king already knew where her manor stood. She had spent forty years teaching the house to hide, and now it hid from no one. She needed ground he could not walk onto freely. She had none. She went to Wanda's tea shop that afternoon. The pixies had set the tables and gone. Wanda stood behind the counter, drying a cup she had already dried. Agatha laid the charm on the wood between them. "I can call him," Agatha said. "But he knows my door. He'll come whenever he likes and I've gained nothing." Wanda set the cup down. "Then don't call him to your door." "It's the only ground I have." "No." Wanda reached under the counter. She drew out a hand mirror veiled in frost, its surface cracked in a web from a center point. Cold rolled off it across the counter. "A door doesn't have to be a place." Agatha stared at the mirror. "That's broken." "Broken things still open." Wanda turned it so the cracked glass faced Agatha. "Speak his name into this, not your threshold. He arrives inside the reflection. Not your manor. A room with no floor and no exit but the one you hold." Agatha understood. A fae king answered a true name anywhere. If she chose the mirror, she chose the ground. Peter would stand in a place that belonged to no world, and she would keep the only way out. "The debt still lands on me," Agatha said. "But I set the terms." "You set the terms." Agatha took the mirror. The frost bit her fingers. She unwrapped the charm and pressed the bone hook to the cracked center. The name lived inside it, warm against the cold. She did not speak it yet. She only fixed the shape of the room she wanted in her mind. "He'll be angry," Wanda said. "You pulled him by his name." "I want him angry inside a mirror. Not standing in my hall." Agatha wrapped the mirror in cloth and held it to her chest. Her manor was still exposed. Peter still knew the way. But she no longer needed the manor to be safe. She had traded the fight for a room she controlled, glass she could shatter and shut. When she called the king, he would come to her frame, on her word. She left the tea shop with the mirror and the charm together. The next step was fixed now. She would speak the name, and Peter would answer inside the frost. She only had to decide what small price to offer before he named a larger one.