Beth Wonders's Arc

Chapter 6 of 29

Beth was still counting coins when she felt him. Not saw. Felt. A thin cold pressure at the back of her neck, the same pressure she'd felt in the market the day she sold him her last shard. The star merchant had found her trail. "He's close," she said. Elijah didn't turn. "How close." "Close enough that my skin knows." The cat with too many toes stopped in the path and looked back at her. Beth's wings felt heavy. The wishing well had scooped something out of her, and she didn't have another trade to make. If the merchant caught her now, weak and short on silver, he'd take the coins, the shard's location, and whatever else he wanted. "I need to lose him," she said. "Not fight him." "Then move." The cat trotted off the path. Beth followed. The trees closed tighter. Bluebells started showing between the roots in small blue clumps, then in a wide ring. At the center of the ring stood a black building she hadn't put there. Her cathedral. Half-built. The obsidian walls she'd shaped from her first star piece months ago, before Frostwyn robbed her. Stained glass in three windows. The rest still open to the sky. It shouldn't have been here. Her world lived behind the mirror, and the mirror was gone. "You built this," Elijah said. Not a question. "Pieces of it." Beth's hand shook. "It's leaking through. The breach in my pocket space runs both ways now." Footsteps behind them. Not close. Getting closer. Beth pushed the cathedral door. It opened. Inside, a black and white checkered rug covered the stone floor. A purple vanity stood against the far wall, its scrying mirror dark. On the vanity sat the small branch-framed hand mirror she thought she'd lost with the rest. "Inside," she said. "Both of us." Elijah stepped in. Beth pulled the cat in after him and shut the door. She pressed her palm to the wood. "Don't be here," she whispered to the walls. "Don't be here from the outside." The stained glass dimmed. The obsidian went flat as pond water. Beth felt the building thin around them, not gone, just unhooked from the woods. Outside, footsteps passed the ring of bluebells and kept going. Passed. Faded. She sank onto the rug. Her wings sagged. "He didn't see it," Elijah said. "He can't. Not yet." She looked at the branch-framed mirror on the vanity. It shouldn't be here either. Nothing here should be here. Her half-built world was pulling her pieces to itself without asking. Elijah studied the empty windows above them. "You can hide inside it." "For an hour. Maybe two." Beth picked up the hand mirror. Its surface was warm. "Then it spits me back out, and he picks the trail up again." She had lost the merchant. She had also learned her unfinished world was awake, and it was hungry.