Agatha Harkness's Arc

Chapter 7 of 21

Agatha carried the frost mirror home and set it on her altar. The stone slab held her carved circle, her candles, her bowls of dried herbs. She had used it for four hundred years. Tonight she used it once more. She lit the candles, propped the cracked glass upright, and pressed the bone charm to its center. Peter's true name waited inside the hook, warm against the ice. She fixed the shape of the room in her mind. Then she spoke the name aloud. The glass darkened. Frost crawled inward from the frame. The web of cracks pulsed with a light that was not the candles. Cold poured off the surface and filled the room. Agatha held her ground and watched the reflection deepen into a place with no floor. Something moved in it. Peter stepped forward inside the glass. Red hair, green eyes, a small figure in torn leaves. He looked no older than a boy. He was the fae king who had threatened to steal her future, who had learned her door and vowed to return. Now he stood trapped in her frame, and his eyes found hers at once. "You called me by my name," he said. His voice was flat. "That was rude." "I called you so we could settle the debt," Agatha said. "On my terms. I offer you a small price now, before you name a large one." Peter studied the cracked glass around him. He touched it with one finger. He did not look afraid. "You put me in a broken mirror. Clever." He tilted his head. "But you used the sea witch's charm to find my name." Agatha said nothing. Her mouth went dry. "I know that charm," Peter said. "I know her price. She holds your name until my debt is done." He smiled without warmth. "So you can't shatter this glass. Break it, and you break the summons before we've settled. Then my debt stays open. And your name stays with her forever." Agatha's hand hovered near the frame. He was right. The mirror was her ground, but she could not close the door. If she shattered the glass to seal him out, the debt would never resolve, and Ursula would keep her name until the end of time. The trap held them both. "Name your price," Peter said. "But I won't take a small one. You bound me twice tonight. Once to her, once to you." "I control this room," Agatha said. "You control a room you can't leave." He crouched inside the glass, patient. "I have no clocks. I can wait longer than you can." Agatha stared at the king in the frost. She had built the perfect cage and locked herself inside it with him. The summons had worked. That was the problem. Now she needed a way to close the door that did not cost her name.